We bought a house

And everything else keeping me busy

It’s killing me that I haven’t been sending newsletters consistently lately. I started this year with a goal of maintaining a weekly cadence—which I managed for like six weeks lol—but life has thrown far too much at me over the past couple of months. It has felt like every single minute of my time is already spoken for and my writing time has been squeezed out by other things that have to take priority. It’s a bummer! I feel particularly bad for the new subscribers I’ve picked up in the past couple months who haven’t seen much back from me. All I can say is Sorry!!! Life should be calming down soon and I hope to get back into a regular schedule. Everything that’s been going on are really positive developments but in the short term they’ve been nothing but time-eaters. Read on for all my life updates (or don’t! I won’t take it personally!).

By far the greatest new imposition on my time is that I have a job again. When Liz, Patrick, and I moved back to Santa Fe a year and a half ago, I left my job in trade media because I couldn’t bear to rephrase press releases anymore (and because the big boss was a return-to-office freak who wouldn’t let anyone be remote). I’ve spent the intervening time as a stay at home dad and (intermittently) focusing on this newsletter. Since mid-February I’ve been working at the little non-profit, two-screen movie theater four days a week, selling tickets and scooping popcorn. It’s frustrating that I have years of actual journalism experience and a degree in classics and philosophy and this is what’s available to me, but it’s a great gig. With only two screens, there’s a mild rush every two hours for the next film and then I’m free to go back to reading or writing until those showings are over. I’m basically doing all my reading on the clock (I have a huge book report backlog at this point). I wrote my review of Late Star Trek on the work computer (it was murder to do all those italics on a Mac) and edited the interview transcript into something readable there as well. I’m at work right now as I write this paragraph.

Even so, it cuts into my writing time. It can be hard to lock in when you know you could be interrupted at any time by someone walking in. The other day I wrote the first few paragraphs of something and reached the point where I needed to start thinking a little more deeply and expansively to articulate my point; I could feel that I wasn’t going to be able to get into that headspace at work and just had to stop.

When I’m not at work I’m parenting. Patrick is two and a half now. It’s a wonderful, incredible age—he is so fun and so funny and surprises us every day with his imagination and intelligence and sense of humor. He is always coming up with new games and scenarios, always has a new bit he’s workshopping. He is learning like crazy and gets better at communicating every day. I get to watch day by day as he works out the mechanics of grammar and puts together longer sentences and more complex ideas. When my car’s alternator failed last month he went to daycare and told everyone “Daddy’s car is at the mechanic but they’re going to fix it.” Amazing.

He also has an incredible memory. He will, unprompted, bring up things that happened months ago, like details from a birthday party. He also remembers small things I wouldn’t expect; for instance, this weekend we went to a museum and saw two little bunny sculptures, both labeled as Coco, presumably the name of the artist’s pet rabbit. The next day, Patrick decided a rabbit toy of his was named Coco. Everything I’ve ever heard from other parents is that their kids never remember anything. We’re blown away by his capacity to recollect and the enjoyment he seems to get out of it. When he was younger Liz and I had a joke where whenever he would accomplish anything we would agree, “He’s so advanced,” as if the most important thing was that he was a genius in the making. But we were talking about his memory recently and I said to Liz, “But seriously, I think he might be a genius.” Other parents weigh in—am I too impressed? Are other kids closer to this than I think?

He’s also soooooo much work. His energy reserves are literally infinite and he expects us to keep up. He loves various forms of imaginary play, like “cooking” at his play kitchen, which you would hope to a brief respite for us, but if he wants us to join in he will be unrelentingly insistent. He still naps in the afternoon but he’s at an age where his wake windows on either side of that are about six hours. So he wakes up at 7:00 am, naps 1:00-2:30, and then stays up until nearly 8:30 pm. Even on daycare days he has four hours in the evening to run us ragged before he goes to sleep. Then Liz and I generally start watching tv around 9:00. When am I supposed to write?! Voyager isn’t going to watch itself!

Now, granted, I don’t work Wednesday or Thursday and Patrick is at daycare. But setting aside the idea that I might need some time to just rest, even these days have been fucking packed with other stuff that needs to be taken care of (not to mention the day-to-day of dishes and vacuuming and laundry and all the rest).

Like the headline says, the biggest of these life developments is: we bought a house! Since October we’ve been living in a full house—rather than an apartment—that we really like, but we’d been renting. Basically since the day Trump was reelected Liz has been beating the “he’s going to crash the economy” drum and became increasingly convinced it was imperative we lock down stable housing before everything went to shit. So about six weeks ago—before “Liberation Day” but with plenty of tariff threats in the air—Liz called up our landlord and asked if he would consider selling us the house. His weirdly blasé response: “Sure, if the price is right.” Three minute phone call.

So we hired a real estate agent and got it appraised and did some light haggling and within two weeks were under contract. I was so pessimistic every step of the way, absolutely convinced it would fall through—that he would back out of the deal, that we wouldn’t be approved for a mortgage, but it all went off without a hitch. Fun fact: did you know that the way mortgage companies calculate income and loan risk, part-time jobs just don’t count? Liz and I are both part-time so even though our household collectively works more than forty hours a week, for their purposes our annual income is $0. That is to say, my mom is a co-signer on our loan. It’s so cool how if you’re poor you’re just not allowed to do the things that help you become not poor.

Most of the home-buying process has been smooth sailing—sign some documents and run out the clock until the closing date. But even so it eats your time. There’s the general inspection you have to be there for, then the separate plumbing inspection. More paperwork, more requests for bank statements, and on and on and on. Last week, the last week before the closing date, those requests turned into a barrage of emails all subject line URGENT DOCUMENT NEEDED ASAP. I was been glued to my phone for days because the moment I put it down I started worrying I’m dropping the ball on something crucial. Last Thursday my mom and I went to make the wire transfer for the down payment. I love that wire transfers are used for precisely two things: sending off vast sums of money to buy property, and scams.

I hadn’t realized how much the process was weighing on me until the deal closed on Monday. Like the famous frog in the boiling water, the stress had accumulated so slowly I hadn’t noticed how much had built up and how much of my thinking I’d given over to it. Instead I had been chastising myself for feeling dumb and not coming up with good insights and essay ideas like I normally am. Of course dummy! There hasn’t been room in my head for that sort of stuff.

What else, what else? Oh, last week as well, in the flurry of paperwork to close the house sale, water started seeping up through our bedroom floor! I had suspected we had a burst pipe for a week or so ever since the bathroom tile became suspiciously warm and the hot water started running out during showers. Our hot water had to be turned off for five days while the plumbers worked at an exceptionally leisurely rate. Having no hot water for five days is rough in any circumstances so much more so As A Parent. I had to make so many phone calls to get updates from them and ensure they were coming back to finish the job. Not interesting but just another headache during such a busy time. The shining silver lining of the ordeal is that, because it happened before the house closed, it was still technically the responsibility of the property management company so they had to pay for everything not us. Shout out to those hoses for their impeccable timing!

Also also last week, Patrick won the preschool lottery. I’m learning you can figure out with 100% certainty whether someone has kids or not by whether their reaction to this news is “preschool lottery hahaha” or “oh my god you are SO lucky.” For those of you in the former camp, what I’m talking about here is state-funded (?) facilities that are completely free to attend. Daycare is our single biggest expense right now—we pay $300 a week and that’s considered cheap. It’s not hyperbole to say that having that expense simply deleted will completely transform our budget. As you can imagine, spots at these preschools are highly sought after and highly coveted, such that they are awarded by literal lottery. We entered several; for one of the others we were 68th on the waitlist. When Liz and I went to a registration session last Wednesday—say it with me, more of my writing time getting eaten up—there were four other sets of parents there. It goes without saying we had no expectation of winning one of these few spots. It is, again, something exceptionally fortunate that has come to us totally out of the blue, just because.

Anyway, the house is ours, the pipes are fixed, the paperwork for preschool is all submitted. I’m still not going to have the time to write everything I want to but I will try hard to keep to a consistent schedule. Thanks for bearing with me.