FINDING THE RIGHT PLACE

 We've sold our home, sold or donated many of our belongings and packed the rest, put a deposit on a rental house, and managed to still like each other most of the time. Neither of us has had time to pursue our artwork and photography lately, but we find temporary solace outside where we can talk at a table and listen to the birds. We continue our search for a new home.

My filled-to-the-rafters workspace

My workspace after staging

When we began looking for a new place to live, we set perimeters: no stairs, nice neighborhood with a sense of community, hood over stovetop, a small garden, no remodeling projects, room for a workspace for both of us, and character. Not too much to ask we thought. We scoured the internet starting in February. Real estate sales start online with photos of the properties for sale, inside and out. A new neighbor bought their house over the internet without a visit to the property, a complete virtual experience.

We've entered our name with a broker so we get notices of homes coming on the market. We've traipsed through open houses to find there is always something wrong that catches our eye including awkward division of room spaces, posts in the middle of a room, not enough sunlight, or we discover hidden problems after we read the disclosures. We've done all the right things, in between taking deep breaths, but we haven't found a new home yet. As we look on the internet, we begin to question our priorities: do we really need a single story, a hood over the stove (we could add one later?), workspace, how about a balcony instead of a garden?

We will find a home, but it may take longer than we thought.

We realized we needed to rent a place in the meantime, so, again, we scoured the internet in various cities and discovered there aren't a lot of furnished homes to rent in our area. We saw one in Marin County that looked enchanting with a great view of the San Francisco Bay from the deck. One sentence about stairs, but we decided to take a peek anyway. I drove to Marin and as I approached the street where the house was located, I started to laugh. The road was maybe one and a half cars wide with a series of switchbacks that reminded me of the hairpin turns we witnessed watching the Tour de France's cyclists climb in the Alps. We kept going because the leassor was waiting for us. The closer to the house I drove, the more both of us laughed. There was no way we could rent this place. Difficult parking, narrow road with cars dangling half on and half off the road. Then we saw the carport available down the hill from the house and stared up the two-story flight of stairs to the house. We continued to the address, we parked as directed in a neighbor's carport, walked on the uneven ground to the front door, and met the delightful owner. We thought, "If we were 20 or 30, we would jump at this chance, but one twist of an ankle and we'd be done for now." The view of the Bay was spectacular.

We stopped for lunch in Larkspur nearby, a favorite town of ours. We walked around the main street and noticed for the first time the number of stairs leading up the hills away from town. We stopped at a quiet park at the edge of town and decided to look for rentals near a beach (Flat Land!)

It was fitting this morning as posted my blog today, that the reCaptra image to click on was STAIRS.