Alan: There are lots of ads and I now have a couple of agents sending me things. I feel like it’s somewhat inevitable that we will move to the east end so now we have even more things to look at. I will make my peace with it after we move in.
I could see our blog ending in the next week or so, though I sometimes think why are we taking a place for four thousand in the east end when we still have ten months to find a place for a reasonable rent in the west end and we could save a lot of money by waiting and taking our chances.
But maybe we’re just being realistic.
And maybe we’re just really really tired of this. Not just the looking but the dashed hopes and the stress and depression.
Anyway if it is ending – and by that I mean this blog and not the looking - I just need to say this one thing. I don’t have to actually but I’m going to anyway.
I get why everyone keeps telling me that Baņuta was hilarious in our last entry or the one before but in real life I think I’m at least as funny as my girlfriend. In the blog though, I’ve been the one laying out the hard facts, clearing the way for Baņuta to come in with the biting satirical rejoinders.
It’s okay, I don’t mind promoting and elevating my girlfriend. She is definitely the writer in the family and a brilliant wordsmith. I hope she gets a job at the New Yorker writing biting satirical essays. And then maybe we can pay for our expensive place in the east end.
If she gets a well-paying writing job, maybe I can get a chauffeur.
I went to see a place in the east end by myself a few days ago. I gave myself 45 minutes to get across town. And I was cooking along pretty well until I got near Yonge street. The street I normally took to get to the east end was blocked and at a standstill. I skirted around and at first I thought I had avoided the slowdown. But at the next point of entry it was the same thing. I still don’t know what caused the bottleneck. It was just there. And I hated getting stuck there. I constantly have to remind myself in traffic that these people are no more to blame than I am. Unless they drive too slow or waste a good advanced green.
Anyway eventually all those cars got out of my way and by driving a bit too fast I was able to get there in time and see a nice place, on a nice street, that was too small for us.
Traffic-wise it seemed to me that if you’re in the east end and you’re staying in the east end, things move along much more nicely than they do within the boundaries of the construction-thick west end. But if you’re going from the east to the west or vice versa you are royally fucked. And if we move there I’ll be doing that a lot of the time.
There are a lot of side benefits to this house hunt and one of them is we’re getting to see parts of the city we almost never see and more than that, we’re looking at these neighborhoods with an eye towards imagining ourselves living there, not just visiting. Having now spent a lot of time lately driving around the east end of Toronto, I have one observation, which I will now share at the risk of offending thousands of residents of this fine neighborhood.
The East end from my experience is mildly interesting all the way along Queen Street and a lot of the way along Gerrard but if you’re near the Danforth, past Coxwell it starts to feel to this urban west-end boy that you’re not in Kansas anymore, so to speak. It’s fine, I’m sure we’d get used to it but I went to a coffee shop, a record store and a supermarket in the neighbourhoods out there and I did feel a bit like a tourist.
We’ll move there for the right place. On any given day though, if you’re between say Sherbourne and University and you hear a man shouting expletives, it’ll probably be me in my car. And I may be honking too. And screaming “I’m the funny one!”
Baņuta: I met Alan online some four years ago. We had a whirlwind romance that started on Monday and ended that Sunday. Unbelievably, he broke up with me. Harrumph, I say. I didn’t think I would see him again. But in the months that followed, as I dated other men, I would tell my girlfriends that I was pining for that (expletive deleted) filmmaker. And yes he was very funny.
I’m pretty good at pining, and lately I’ve been pining for that house we dubbed the ‘Wisteria House.’ Why, oh why didn’t we take it? It was the one with the studio, the one where I wept in a rainstorm because Alan hated the idea of moving to the East End, and I was sure we’d found our home.
Wisteria House was taken, but I couldn’t stop talking about it. I’m pining, I’d say to Alan. I blame Ann, he would reply. Me too, I blame Ann, our landlady, because she made us wait for two whole weeks to decide whether to let us stay and blast our rent sky high or not and then the answer was a no.
So one day, while pining, I dashed over to a strange house with a Lemony Snicket kind of gate in front. It was in the Annex, a block away from my brother’s house. It had a chandelier and tiled floors and a room with no windows but an ensuite bathroom, a perfect room in which to lock a mad aunt or your pack of corgis. Another strange feature was that the place had not one, not two, but three kitchens. The real estate agent, a sad-looking philosopher, told me to Stop Looking Until Next Year because then prices would go down and all the madness would end. How I loved that man’s crystal ball — someone make him mayor, quick!
I dashed away from the kitchen-bloated house and drove the dreaded forty minutes eastwards to a lovely cottage being busily renovated, situated on an alley next to a church, around the corner from my favourite Indian restaurant. If I lived there I could be fed and absolved of my many sins in five minutes flat, but it was not to be. A whole room had gone missing. I’d seen it on the ad — an office in a sunroom. Oh, that photo was for the staging, the owner laughed, as if to say those photos of the property, who takes them seriously? The vestibule was staged for the photo and no one could use it as a room. We parted ways and I’m still slapping my thigh; all I lost was three hours of my life that afternoon, after all.
A savvy New Yorker friend says that the way to deal with high prices in Manhattan boutiques is to pretend that the stores are museums. Then not being able to afford that dress doesn’t make you feel so bad. I’m taking that advice: from now on, instead of hunting, I’ll pretend I’m touring an interactive museum of homes in our weird city.
At home I resolved to Stop Looking (note to self: must tell Alan) and sat down to work at my computer. But first I had to procrastinate and shop on Kijiji for garden lights, but once I got to Kijiji, my resolution cracked and there I was in the real estate section.
It was a miracle. The Wisteria House with the studio was available again!!!! The people who rented it had bought a house and wanted to get out of their lease.
I sent all the financial info to the owner and booked an appointment. I got my daughter Kaiva to come with me, because if there was something wrong with the place, she would tell me right away.
She didn’t need to.
Seeing my dream house for a second time was like the bad second date when you realize that you hadn’t noticed how rude the guy is to waitresses and how he rips open sugar packets and the sugar goes flying all over the table and that you really don’t think you can get used to his out-of-control eyebrows. The wisteria was no longer in bloom. A toddler screeched in the background like a Japanese noise band and we saw how dilapidated the house actually was, with no room for a piano, no room for Alan’s records or his desk. I’d forgotten there was no A/C and that the broadloom was as dirty as a joke. And I had to accept that my dream studio would be shivering cold in the winter and steaming hot in the summer, and I’d be cursing my initial enthusiasm.
Maybe the miracle was that I would get to stop pining.
Alan: I got home from being disappointed by another apartment to find Baņuta breathlessly telling me that a miracle had occurred and her dream home had come back on the market.
I was happy for her. There were always things about the place I didn’t love but my daughter and I had decided that we would make the adjustment in order for Baņuta to have a place she adored.
I know I just talked about how there are parts of the east end I’m not thrilled about, but this place is inside the border of the familiar. And as for the driving, my daughter and I have been taking the subway a lot more lately, so we’d probably augment a good deal of our travel with public transit.
But to see the place again, I still decided to drive there.
Baņuta and her daughter went there without us and arrived early. The traffic was brutal, I knew we were going to be late, and even though I don’t like yelling at cars with my daughter in the car, I couldn’t resist as 15 minutes late turned into 30 minutes late. But as we pulled up in front, I resolved to put on a happy face for my girlfriend who I assumed had just reunited with the place of her dreams. Imagine my surprise when I saw Baņuta sitting outside waiting for us and not looking as happy as I would have expected.
She didn’t say why. She just said go in and see it. So we did and of course my daughter liked the place right away. And I didn’t blame her. But I have to admit I was confused by Baņuta’s expression. Did she want me to find fault with it or to make my peace with it?
Her daughter Kaiva’s expert poker face as well gave me no clues.
I had already told Banuta that I was worried her dream writing studio would be oppressively cold in the winter, that she would hate the kind of heat provided by a space heater, she’d have to write in her too small bedroom, she’d come to regret taking the place and a shit show would follow.
But I still thought maybe she had put on that grim face, feeling like she shouldn’t put pressure on me. So I went up to what would have been my room, a lovely room that nonetheless had too many encumbrances to suit my needs.
We drove to a nearby park to make our decision I liked the park. There were people doing Tai Chi. I thought it would be a nice place to take my daily constitutional, even if we are likely losing the hills of Swansea as well as High Park and the Humber River.
We sat on big rocks and Baņuta made it clear that she had misgivings. I was relieved, and my daughter was disappointed but took it with good humor. We drove the short distance to Little India for a dosa and to go over the pros and cons and consider our options. But before the food arrived, Kaiva let us know that we had already decided not to take it and put us out of our misery before our torturous dithering could ruin our meal.
That’s the third place we actually liked, but nonetheless walked away. I promise not to emphasize this point again but Baņuta and I have specific needs that have to do with our habits and our work. When we look at a place, we’re not looking for marble countertops or great water pressure, which we dream of having someday but which we live without in the rented home that has made us both happy for years.
Baņuta needs a room she can write in, either an office or a bedroom big enough and with the right windows and light to make her be able to relax enough to do her work. I need a room that fits my desk and my records and my stereo and also has a bed in it.
We also need a bathtub.
We’ve seen places that clearly won’t work and a few places where we thought we could make it work if we had to, but nothing perfect for us. Baņuta believes that when we find our house, we will know it as soon as we walk in. Unless she walks right into her writing room, that isn’t going to happen but i know what she means.
It’s kind of fun for me to look at these places with my girlfriend, see her react to a tile floor or a strange closet, sort of know what she must be thinking but get to hear her express it in her own inimitable way when we get back outside or when she writes about it here.
Baņuta is much more busy than I am right now and she’s also understandably kind of worn down by the process. I have time, I like driving around and swearing at traffic as long as I give myself enough time, and I also believe that the perfect place for us might come at any moment and we shouldn’t take off a few months because we’re tired or we think prices might come down. So I’ll look at a few places next week by myself, channel my girlfriend and think about mad aunts and corgis as I peer in the strange windowless chambers I’m sure to see.
Pro tip Alan: (my daughter and so, grandkids, live in Leslieville). Rosedale valley road is your friend. You pop out at Gerard and river. And if you’ve got a lot further east to go, pottery road after rosedale valley.