Tuesday is my wife’s (and Michelle Obama’s) birthday. The FLOTUS and the First Lady Of The House (the FLOTH?…sounds like a disease). Birthday activities begin tonight, with a trip to Tosca likely followed by a pitcher and some keno at Harry’s and culminate next weekend with a trip down VA wine country and an overnight in our favorite B&B, one with a private deck that sports a hot tub. We sat in that hot tub almost two-years ago to-the-date, the evening before we drove back down to DC in order to put a offer on our house. There was snow on the balcony and we sat in the hot tub for hours, drinking bottles of wine, planning the layout and future parties. The next morning we talked to the owners of the B&B, they wished us luck, and we were on our way to Dupont Circle to sign a million papers and bite our lips as we stared at the string of six numbers that represented a 30-year commitment.
The house buying process was hectic. A scandalous affair between our lender and our original realtor forced us to defend some of our earlier decisions to fire her and we destroyed her claim to commission in a rather theatrical manner. The Great DC Blizzards of ‘09 threatened the aging roof of the house, and we would drive by everyday to make sure it didn’t collapse. Thankfully no holes were punched through the roof until the roofer fell through it when he was fixing it which was unfortunate for the roofer but good for us, in the end. We closed a month after putting an offer in and moved in three days after that, on my birthday, and our movers got into a fight amongst themselves that almost came to blows. Amidst all of that commotion, my wife’s car broke down while she was out getting us pizza, and I had to call my friends to watch over the movers while we dealt with that situation. That night, the four of us had dinner at Busboys & Poets and shared a cake before my wife and I crashed on the floor. A week later we handed the keys to our old apartment to our landlord. Two years later, we look at our mortgage statements and laugh at how slow the principal goes down, even though we pay extra every month.
Next weekend we’ll sit in that same hot tub and drink more bottles of wine and probably look back on the past two years. The years were filled with ups and downs and experimentation and successes and failures. And we’re both two years older, on the border of new lives, thinking about kids but not after one more summer of wine and hot tubs and new memories to look back on the next time we find ourselves in the same place.
