Charles Osgood Didn't Mention This

Even though CBS Sunday Morning didn't do a milepost on me today I know it is a big mile marker. 5 years ago tonight I was sitting on the floor of my apartment drinking champagne out of paper cups with a small group of friends. We were sitting on the floor because there was no furniture in the apartment. There was no furniture in the apartment because it had only been my apartment for a matter of hours.

I took an hour or so off of work at the evil job to sit in a board room at a law office I had no connection to with a bunch of people I had never met before and signed many pieces of paper and many, many large checks. Wait, I take that back, I had met the previous owner once or twice before. He's a micro manager so he'd been around to lead the real estate agent through her job in much the same way that he re-ran the numbers on the check I wrote him 3 times. For the record it turned out to have been right the first time and he shouldn't have messed with it.

It would have been a weird thing to do even if I hadn't been buying by myself but I feel like there was an extra measure of bizarro world in doing it alone. It was like trying to buy suppositories in a foreign country. Or something else like that where you can't really even ask what the word for something is. I felt about a foot shorter and ill dressed and like everyone was trying to scam me but there was nothing to do but stay on the ride until it came to a full and complete stop.

I am still, frankly, a little weirded out that I own something that's worth more than everything else I own or am by several hundred times. If I didn't own my apartment and hadn't bought it at the time I did I would be in the process of being forced out of this neighborhood by wacky real estate hijinks. I love this neighborhood and I want to stay and this way I can. On the other hand it's a gentle stretch for me to continue to pay for the privilege of owning my little bitty dwelling. I don't have a lot of wiggle room if something goes wrong and if I were to try and follow my bliss and quit my j.o.b. and do the things I like exclusively it wouldn't be long before I'd have to sell the place and make a lot larger changes than I'd like.

Five years ago, though, I decided to make the leap. It was a now or never situation and I'm not much of a leaper so it's a pretty big deal that I did and I am glad. Still a little petrified to be living in this foreign land but happy to be here. Which is probably the best that anyone could ask.