When is the Future?

I was talking to a friend about my idea to buy a Belltown condo. He and his partner are interested in moving in the opposite direction -- out to the country, perhaps on one of the San Juan Islands. Where my motivation is to walk to work, his is to telecommute from a remote spot. When his partner got a new job where he can telecommute, all of a sudden the present turned into the future for half of the pair. If Travor was going to telecommunte anyway, why not move to the islands now? Zach wasn't ready for this.

Sometimes the future has arrives sometimes like a train on a schedule. Other times, it pops up when we least expect it.

When I started to look at condos in Belltown, the future came up out of the ground like an early crocus in the spring. You know it is coming, and you know about when, but it still is a surprise. I was surprised that Jack and I had such synchronicity, that we both thought that the time for the future was now.

My other future, the one I knew was inevitable since the day she was born, arrives tomorrow morning at 7:45 a.m., when Claire-Adele gets on a plane for College Park, Maryland. That had always been a someday, a point in the future that we could and couldn't imagine.

I am surprisingly sad about this. I thought I'd be immune to these emotions, that my happiness for her would override my own sense of loss. That didn't happen. I don't want to rain on her parade, be a wet blanket snuffing out her excitement and anticipation. And yet.

I got her (and me) some flowers, the all purpose gift, appropriate in times of both happiness and sorrow. And so we share them, and each enjoy them for our different reasons.

A (Clean) Room of My Own

So Why do I want a condo? I found an amazing loft. I fell in love with it. I also fell in love with two other units, so I am perhaps appropriately cautious. I understand how people can love other people. I can understand how people love dogs. (Cats, not so much.) But how can people love space, places and locations? We do, though. What do they give to us? What do we give to them? I can see how a garden can be reciprocal, but not so much a regular place.

And yet. Last night, the Boy, Jack and I were watching Weekend at Bernie's. (The Boy was looking at his phone during the movie, which is odd because he was the one who wanted to watch this movie. I would have been happier to watch the new Nanette comedy special on Netflix, but I digress.)

In the movie, the two young men who schlep Bernie around for the weekend comment on "The view! The view!" Like they had never seen the ocean or sand before. Why do we like views? Do they make us feel calm? Do they erase our other thoughts and we relax? There must be a reason why we like or dislike the space we live in because having an emotional reaction to our surroundings seems to be universal. I am not talking about "taste" or what kind of countertops people prefer in their kitchen, though that is part of it.

How will I know when I have found the right space? I thought I loved this new condo. I did, but I find this love is like a roller coaster. One minute I find reasons to think it is divine, that it will be the center of all of my happiness, and then I think of the open aspect of the loft and think "At every morning while I am trying to sleep, Jack will be grinding his coffee and I will be pissed." Every noise he will make in the kitchen will float to the bedroom. Likewise, every noise we make in the moring will wake the Boy. There are giant sliding doors to shut, but they open on top. No grinding coffee, no emptying the dishwasher without waking everyone in the place.

Oy.

Or maybe it will be good for me and Jack not to empty the dishwasher upon waking. Instead, we will read the newspaper, a magazine, a book. Or, he can walk across the street to get his cup of coffee. It will be the city of chrissake and there are coffee shops every three feet in Seattle. Maybe we have Quiet Hours. Maybe I'll sleep like a log.

Before we watched Weekend at Bernie's, the Boy started getting my grill about how horribly messy our house is. He has a point. I have a full-time job and his father who works nights and weekends on top of the usual nine-to-five, and neither he nor his sister do any chores and I am too cheap or am challenged to pay someone to clean my house for me. So, I focus on laundry, grocery shopping, vaccuuming, etc., such that the clutter build up is getting impressive.

So this is my desk.

Yeah.

And I want to live in an open floor plan where this (see above) will have no place to hide.

Or will it?

Could that be the beauty of having two places to live? One is clean and awesome and pristine and the other looks like this (see above again, if you want to)?

I just want a clean room of my own, like one of these beautifully staged places with carefully chosen artwork on the walls and perfectly sized furniture. I can leave all of the crap in the Ravenna house.

Or maybe I want to change who I am. Instead of being NE Seattle soccer and PTA mom, and can be a version of a middle-aged urban hipster who walks her dog at the Seattle Scuplture Garden everyday and has a perfectly clean and tidy apartment with cavernous ceilings. Who catches the latest movies at the Big Picture, and hangs out at the Balck Bottle and buys her veggies from Pike Street Market. Seriously. Is that who I want to be?

Hell yeah.

Condo

Two weeks ago when Claire-Adele and I got back from London, I was pissed at Jack. I don't remember exactly what I was pissed about, but I was pissed. I was tired from the trip and probably PMSing and then set off by something that legitimately made me mad. I was probably pissed that he works too much and is never around. In my anger and rage, I decided to Google "Belltown Condos," and up popped a really cool looking place on the Redfin website. If your wife is ever mad at you, the last thing you want to find on her search browser--worse than details of an affair--would be surreptitious searches for real estate. This condo had two bedrooms, an outdoor dining terrace, a view of the Sound and was two blocks from where I work.

"Do you want to tour this place?" a little box popped up and asked me.

Hmmmm.

"Yes," I clicked back. The next day at lunch, I checked it out.

I was in love. Or lust. Smitten. Whatever. I needed this place. So much so, that I called Jack to tell him about this amazing place even though the reason I looked at it in the first place was because I was mad at him.

"What?" he said. "Why are you looking at Belltown condos?" He was not amused. I didn't care.

"We have an appointment Saturday at nine to see it," I said.

When I got home from work, we sparred about it. I can't remember the exact details, but somewhere along the way, I said "You can either quit your job or you can buy me a condo."

"I am not quitting my job," he said. So a condo in Belltown it is.

"Why do you want a condo?" he asked.

"I want to go back to my urban roots," I said. "I could live like I did in London, like we did for years in Chicago." In London, Claire-Adele and I had stayed in a flat South Kensington five minutes from the Underground. In Chicago, Jack and I lived in Lincoln Park. My notions were not some romantic fantasy. I have lived this life before and I'd do it again.

Where I lived in my twenties. We were in the second floor apartment above the door.

"We could always rent this place," he said, referring to what I am now calling my Ravenna home. I knew he was considering it. He could be budged.

When we left the next morning, Jack was still fuming, or at least acting like he was. Perhaps he wasn't mad, just confused and confounded. Until he saw the place.

He agreed it was amazing. All I had to do was bait the hook and he bit.

Sunday, we walked along the Sound in Myrtle Edwards Park next to the Seattle Sculpture Garden. There were dozens of people out walking their dogs in the park, including our Congresswoman.

"I could see walking Fox here every morning," I said. Living close to the waterfront is one of the main reasons I want to live downtown. I saw Jack's shoulders uncoil from stress. He smiled for no reason. We currently live less than a block from Ravenna Park, which is awesome and amazing, but it can't compete with water and mountains.

Monday morning when I was at work, Jack texted me: "Maybe we could check these places out," with links to places that are 50% above what I had wanted to spend. Places on the top floor with spectacular views. I guess I baited that hooked with a synthetic opioid. Jack was more gung-ho about the idea than I was.

The kids were not nearly as thrilled.

"Why do you want a condo?" both kids asked me at dinner one night while Jack was working.

"I'm going to college," said Claire-Adele. "Please don't spend all of my tuition."

"When are you going to live there? I have to finish high school," said the Boy.

"We have extra money from paying off the mortgage and now I'm working," I said. "I want to put that money to good use."

I could see the light bulb pop above my daughter's head. "So you want to spend your money on something tangible that will create value in the long-term?" she said. Actually, I can't remember exactly what she said. What she said was better phrased and sounded like it came out of the mouth of an economist. Sometimes my kids surprise me.

"This is a stupid, impractical idea," the Boy said. Sometimes they don't surprise me.

The next morning, I was walking Fox and I ran into my neighbor, Stanley and his dog, Taylor, and I told him of my plan. I was actually feeling cold feet about the condo concept before I ran into Stanley. Did I really want to have two houses, one downtown? Wouldn't I miss my neighbors and my neighborhood? We were eating dinner in the back yard the other night on the back deck. Under the canopy of trees you can barely see the sky. Why would I leave this Eden?

I explained my idea to Stanley. I must not have been very convincing.

"Lauren," said Stanley, "It sounds like you've thought about it, but it still sounds impetuous. You are usually so analytical, so thoughtful. This isn't really like you."

Yeah, it's not.

"You should talk to Amy," he said. "Her mom sold a house on Hunts Point and moved downtown while Amy was in high school."

"What did she think about it?" I asked.

"You should talk to her," he said.

I don't want to talk to Amy. I love her dearly, but please, just tell me the punch line. Don't make me wait. Most especially, I don't want to hear from Amy that my kids might be right. This might be crazy.

An hour later, I was riding the bus to work and I was started to think. If I were in a downtown condo, I'd still be in bed because I could walk to work in five minutes. Or maybe I'd be walking Fox. Who is that woman walking her dog at 8:30? She must not have anywhere to be, people might think of me, but ha! I'd show them. I can walk my dog at 8:30 AND work. My crazy idea was back on the front burner. While I was on a mental roll, I texted my friend Sarah about the condo idea and asked her what she thought. In the past, she has not passed judgment on my spending habits.

"I think it is brilliant," she said.

In less than two hours, I have two opinions: impetuous and brilliant. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

London -- Fashion, Or Momma Suits Up

Before Claire-Adele and I went to London, we went shopping.

"Why do you need to go shopping before the trip?" I asked.

"I need clothes to wear," she said.

"So?" I said. "We can shop there. That is the cool part about London. Shopping."

"I need clothes to wear," she said.

Fine. We went shopping two days before the trip. We hit Nordstrom Rack downtown one day after work for both of us. If she wants to go shopping at the Rack, that is fine with me. What she doesn't realized that this opportunity of shopping in one of the leading fashion cities in the world mixed with her mother's generosity and credit card will only come but once, maybe twice, in her lifetime.

So we went to the Rack downtown. While she was shopping, I was poking around. I wasn't planning on buying anything because I was going to shop in London.

Until. I. Saw. The. Designer. Racks. I felt like Bilbo Baggins when he enters Lonely Mountain and sees all of the elves gold. Is all of this for me?

I thought I'd looked through the racks when I saw It. It was destiny. We were meant to be together. Me and a black St. John black wool Chanel style jacket. When I tried on this jacket, I didn't feel like a million bucks. I felt like five to ten million. The jacket was one third of the original price, but still astronomical.

I brought it home, I showed it to Jack and the Boy. The Boy, who is a big fan of Neil Patrick Harris's Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother. The gay married family man with two kids plays a very well dressed scoundrel and a womanizer. Barney's tag line is "Suit up."

Even the Boy was impressed at the cut and fit of this jacket.

"Momma suits up," said Jack.

I packed my bags, including in two dresses I bought of the bargain rack at The Rack and one dress I had in my closet for eight years and never wore. I am not one of those people who buys clothes they never wear, mainly because I am not that adventurous to buy anything that I might possibly feel the least bit uncomfortable wearing.

And then we left for London.

When we were there, Claire-Adele suggested we get off at a random Underground stop and explore. I picked Notting Hill. On our way to the restaurant, we walked by a thrift shop with a window full of fancy shoes. We had to go in. Turns out this "thrift shop" only sells designer stuff.

Not in my size otherwise I'd own them.

Yeah, those are Prada.

Claire-Adele started looking at the clothes. She found a dove gray sweater with ruffles along the front button area. It would be a perfect sweater to wear in the fall on the eastern seaboard. It was 70 pounds, so I checked the label.

Armani.

This was my kind of thrift shop.

A few days later, we were in line to see the Harry Potter play and we talked to some women from Florida.

"You have to go to Kensington Palace. They have an exhibit of Princess Diana's dresses," she said.

So we did. This is something Jack and the Boy would not want to see.

The dress she wore to dance with John Travolta.

Could you see me in this suit? I could! Love it.

She wore this to a fundraiser in Chicago for Northwestern. Go U NU!

There more more clothes in the rest of the exhibit. I don't Jack and the Boy would have had much fun here, either.

This is a replica outfit made out of what appeared to be Tyvek or some other industrial paper.

I love this outfit. 

These dresses were designed to show off the fabric. Like a billboard.

Emeralds

Diamonds. This was valued at 1.4M pounds and was used to pay the estate tax for someone's estate.

So my clothes aren't as awesome as Princess Diana's. No one's clothes are, which is why these clothes are in a museum. Nevertheless, Claire-Adele and I were at the Tower of London, and this woman stopped me and told me she loved my dress.

"This is the first time I've worn it," I told her. "It was in my closet for eight years."

"Sometimes those things are the best finds," she said.

Even in the Tower of London, we saw some cool fashions that Jack and the Boy might have foud interesting.

This one is cool.

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