Sunday, March 28, 2010

Base Housing

We have a pretty decent house right now. We haven't really had any problems so far, we live on the first floor, we like our little back yard that feels like we have some privacy, the neighborhood is quiet with no screaming kids or punk teenagers, and we are really close to the shoppette and my preferred gate. But it's only a two bedroom, and with another little Louis on the way we have the option of getting a bigger, three bedroom house. That's awesome, but it's up to you to move all of your stuff, and that's only after you've been on a waiting list and have finally accepted something they've offered you. You get two choices, pet friendly or not even if you have pets. If you decline both offers then you get kicked off of the waiting list for 90 days. That is definitely not awesome.
We have been on the waiting list for a couple of months now and the housing office finally called us last week. They offered us two tower apartments on another base. The towers are not pet friendly. We told them at our initial appointment not to offer us towers because we have cats, and even though housing does not give a shit, the lady wrote it down on our paper anyways. Tim gave them some attitude, and the woman on the phone told him not to worry about the tower offers and that they did have an opening on this base for us to look at. Why didn't they just offer us that to begin with??
So we stopped by the housing office a little while ago and picked up the keys to go check out this house. It happens to be in the oldest and worst neighborhood on the base but we decided to give it a chance and take a look. We get there and it's already covered up because it's being repainted on the outside. It's on a hill...so there are stairs. Now, I am not one of the lazy people that can't handle stairs, or a parking spot far away from the front door of a store. If you ran into me at the BX right now, I would be the only person taking the stairs, waddling my pregnant ass all the way up next to everyone who is on the escalator. Sure it kills my lungs right now since they have run out of room in there, but it's exercise and the only exercise I'm getting right now.
So anyways, back to the house. At the top of the stairs there is an ugly trunk from a huge tree that has been cut down. Hopefully it was just really old and a hazard and not just cut down because it was in the way or someone didn't like it there. I hate not having trees where I live, but since I'm in Okinawa there are plenty of trees and jungle around. A girl and her daughter were getting into their car but they stopped to talk to us and were hopeful of getting new neighbors. That was very nice and I was surprised because I'm used to everyone on my street keeping to themselves. Then we went on our way into the house. Oooh an upstairs and wood floors. And by that I mean cement stairs perfect for cracking your skull open and strips of linoleum made to look like wood floors. I go to peak in the downstairs bathroom right across from the stairs and here a loud drop of water. Hmm...ok. I take another step in and realize that I am now standing in water and that the whole bathroom is flooded. Lovely.
Then I take Tristan upstairs while Tim stays downstairs. The bathroom up there seems nice and has a window, a little bigger than our bathroom now. Really shallow tub though. The one we have now is really deep. All three bedrooms are really small, but the second one is a tad bigger than the first, and the third is a tad bigger than the second. Very small windows in all the rooms and the second bedroom had two big closets, which makes no sense to me. I don't even know if our king size bed would fit in the bigger room. I don't know why all the windows in all of the older housing are so damn small.
Tim came upstairs, so I went down. The living room seemed pretty decent, but again a small window. I am used to having the big sliding glass doors. The kitchen was really small, smaller than any other house we've had. That's okay though I guess, it's not like we spend much time in there haha. Except for when I'm painting. There was a laundry room that was nice and big, so we would finally have a good place to put the damn cat box. There was a door in there leading out to where you put your trash, and the living room had a door leading out to the back yard. Tim said the ceilings were called drop ceilings, meaning it had the panels you can push up on, and it was there to cover up the real ceiling that was so shitty they couldn't fix it. He also said that the house smelled like fresh paint and mold. I am definitely worried about mold issues in the older houses. Oh and there was a cement closet under the stairs with no light and I told Tim that's where we would put Tristan when he's bad LOL.
Well we both agreed that we liked the house but not enough to take it. If they had moved us in there from the start we would have been happy with it, but not compared to what we have now. So we took the keys back to the housing office and no one asked us anything, so I guess we will wait for them to call and see what we have to say about it. I wonder if they will wait to offer us a second house or just go ahead and kick us off the waiting list now. Little Collie won't need her own room right away but I hope to eventually move into a bigger house sometime in the next three years!

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