This Porch Is Your Porch, This Porch Is My Porch (updates on the Airstream, the apartment, the house)

The Airstream, First

It is now parked behind a locked, electrified fence in an auction lot. We left the keys inside as well as Tracy’s Airstream baseball cap.

What should have been an end-of-life farewell was a torturous journey. There was so much miscommunication between the insurance company’s tow truck contractors and subcontracts that, after several days of missed calls and wrong info, we ended up having to hitch up again to follow the tow truck to a lot (you heard that right, the trailer wasn’t even towed after all that), then we sat on the side of the road (which we would never have done if we owned the trailer) waiting for someone to open the damned gate.

There are even more sordid details here that I won’t go into, but trust me: it was a comedy of errors. Now the Airstream sits out in that lot without any fanfare. I don’t even take a photo.

The Apartment, Bleh

The apartment is coming along fine, although, my god, other people live in this building, too! I have to remember to put on a bra and shoes when I take the trash and recycling via the elevator into the underground parking garage.

There are lots of dogs here, too, so much that Tracy has full Banjo-walking duties because I can’t wrap my head around running into another dog in a hallway. I’m working on that; that’s my psychological problem.

Banjo still has a good deal of nervous energy about the move, and she follows us around inside or lies in doorways, like, “When are we going back to the trailer?” She’s even been playing with the dog toy the staff here gave us as a welcome gift, which you know means her psyche is a little wonked out. Banjo does not do toys. Maybe this is Banjo 2.0 though.

She did show a good sign yesterday evening: she stood looking through the sliding doors to the balcony, wagging her tail, so I let her out there, and she got in her bed and watched the goings on in the center square thing we have here. In other words, she made a choice to enjoy something in the apartment on her own (even if it is actually an outdoor thing). Go Banjo!

The House, Not Ours Yet

Which is a great lead-in to the title of this post. The house inspection is Friday, and I won’t be here for that because I’ll be on my way to see Finn for the weekend, which is supremo! My point is that we’re far from closing, so I don’t want to go on and on about the attributes of the house or our plans for the house, or any on and on-ing.

I will talk about its porch, though. It has one hell of a great porch.

Doesn’t look amazing here, but believe me, it is large and it has huge potential. I happen to be a porch-designing and loving queen, too. So much that my username for several online sites is This Porch.

And, of course I have a story on that. I will try to be brief here. A band I loved and am fortunate to be good friends with—actually, I took this picture of them on a different porch long ago.

In any case, I had a party where they were to play on my porch at my former house in West Virginia. Long story involving bad planning and good weather which ended with them playing inside on a beautiful day and no one showing up, which is a tragedy I feel to this day.

But, while talking with Melissa in that band about how much I love my porch, she started playing This Land Is Your Land idly on her guitar, so I sang that with my porch as the glorified subject. This Porch became a way I think about myself.

This is the porch the band would have played on had I not worried so much about a thunderstorm.

This is the back porch of the same house, which I did yoga on and in general love very much.

This is a balcony, not a porch, but close enough: I loved this balcony (at the apartment where I lived after the house). And the kid relaxing on it.

And, this is a different shot of the side porch of Tracy’s house (same porch as up top on this post) that I also loved very much.

Can you see a theme here? Plants, bright colors, lots of seating. In other words, outdoor living when the weather permits. Which I realize will be not at all what I’m used to, but I’ll take what I can get.

This house—that we haven’t yet closed on—has room in the back for a patio as well, which excites me, and Tracy is curious about making an upstairs deck. We shall see on all of it.

There be my update on the Airstream, the apartment, and the house. Whew.