Latte Land

I have to get back into the rhythm of writing legitimate blog posts. Also, I never promised they would be every day - I guess I was pretty sure I was not going to be able to pull that one off!

Currently, I am sitting in a new coffee shop, or cafe, or whatever you want to call it, that just opened in town. I'm drinking a 12oz caramel latte. I'm set for a while. I've got a Libba Bray book in my bag, and my computer. (Although only for about 2 hours or so, since my power cord isn't plugging nicely into the wall and I get weirdly paranoid about forcing it and blowing a fuse.) I'm set for a while. And I better be - there are two showings at my house this afternoon/evening, and I don't feel like going home for half an hour in between them. I plan to just stay here until it's time to meet my parents for dinner.

I really dislike this part of selling a house. I have to pick everything up and get out of the house for at least an hour - although the showing we already had today was half an hour. I mean, don't get me wrong; I like a tidy house as much as the next person. But this is getting intense and ridiculous; it happens all the time, yet no matter what we do to the house, no one is interested enough to buy it. It's all a result of people not being able to look past the aesthetic stuff - well, let's be fair. That's not always the reason. Often, it's because of location or price or whatever. But sometimes, it really is because of the aesthetic stuff. The other day, someone cancelled an appointment because they did a drive-by earlier in the day (who does that?) and didn't like the look of the backyard. The really annoying thing was that they weren't looking at our backyard; the fence at the back of our yard is not our fence. It belongs to the town houses in the lot behind our house, and we have no control over it. (Otherwise it would not be held up with cables, I'm pretty sure.) But it just drives me crazy. You can't see past a few things to what it might be like to live there? Especially after we renovated most of the house?

It's the problem I see every time I watch Property Virgins on HGTV. People don't like the paint, or the kitchen island, or the cabinets. All of these things are easily fixable! And at a minimum cost! I don't like kitchen islands, but I'd like to think that I would be able to see past it. Unless there's plumbing in it, I could just take it out, without gutting the entire kitchen. I yell at the screen every time I see people making this mistake, and I want to yell at the people dismissing the possibility of buying my house for making that same mistake. Things are fixable; they're easy to update, without doing major renovations, and really, our price isn't that steep.

But hey. It does depend on the particular person's situation. They might be in a really tight spot and not have anything extra to work with, not even enough to get paint. (Since paint can be uber expensive!) So if they don't think they can live with it long enough to get to the point where they can get the money to make it their own home, I can see why they would focus on the aesthetic thing. It's just hard when you're trying to sell a house because the situation you're in is one you don't want to be in for long, either. (Ours is mainly the commute.)

I think what makes me even more annoyed, and I'll say it, pissed off, is those people who say they're really interested, and their realtor says they're really excited - and then nothing ever happens. They say they're thinking about an offer but then they never make one. Don't pretend to be excited - don't let your realtor tell the person selling the house - and by extension, the people living in that house - that you're really excited and are probably going to put in an offer. It gets people's hopes up, and then when nothing ever happens, it's the worst. You can't look for houses because you need to sell your house first. Sure, you can look at houses - but it's the worst when you find one you love, and it gets sold because no one's following through on their excitement. If you're not excited, if you're not actually going to put an offer out there, don't tell your realtor you are!

In short - er, well this turned out pretty long, so I guess "in short" is just an expression here - I just really want  my parents to sell their house. This is mostly so I don't have to clean the house every few days and have to figure out something to do, somewhere to go, for an hour or more every few days. (I really miss school in this instance, and also, I need a job!) Due to my lack of employment, I don't like going anywhere - there aren't really any free places I can go. If I go somewhere, I usually need to buy something. I am pretty tight budgeted, because money actually sort of scares me, so I don't like it. I wish I could go to the library - that'd be ideal - but because of the town I live in, and the fact that anywhere I go, people will speak French at me and make  me feel like an outcast because I don't speak French, I don't feel comfortable at the library. Also, these showings often happen during the day, and the public library is attached to a high school, so there's always students in there. I don't have any homework to do, and I miss school, so I don't want to sit and take up a spot for a student. (Not that the library is ever that packed, but I hope I communicated the awkwardness.)

I cannot wait for my parents to move so I can get out of this town. I wouldn't have anything against French people - in fact, I don't have anything against the French community as a whole - but in this town, there is a certain kind of French group who are very snobby about being French and look down their nose at you if you are English, and they're taking over the town. Every sign is in French, and you're lucky if it's in English, and when it is, it's an afterthought. (Except for street signs, at least. Even the signs in WAL-MART are French first, and English after, in small writing.) It was not like this when we first moved here. I just don't feel like I belong or am welcome anymore - I can't get a job here, so I have to travel to Ottawa every day to go job hunting. (Although in Ottawa, I'm feeling the fact that I'm probably not going to be able to work here because I don't speak French and people are getting snobbier about it.) This town is a 15-20 minute drive from the nearest bus station to get into Ottawa. My parents' commute is at least an hour; they take a coach bus from here to Ottawa, and then another bus to their work places. It's the main reason why we're moving. They moved here so we could go to school, and I am happy about that; I met some of my best friends in school here, and I wouldn't be studying drama if I hadn't had the best teacher ever, Gwen Smith, but it's definitely time to move on before this gets swallowed by the French. Again, nothing against the French community - I certainly don't judge every French person I meet, and I have met some of the nicest French people here - but a large majority of the people here are rude and don't think you merit consideration. And a lot of them are in customer service.

It also means I don't really have a lot of outlets for arts work. After four years in Kingston, and four years in a very intimate, tight department with hundreds of opportunities, I guess I'm a little spoiled. I'm used to having so many options for shows, and so many different roles to try. Now, there's no opportunity really, because any arts thing I hear about is in our exclusively French newspaper, so there's no way to get into that theatre scene. (Also, there's not really a theatre scene to speak of.) I would make some, but I don't think the English community here is big enough to really get a following. I don't even know where to start with it. I really want to move into Ottawa so I can get back into shows, and have a chance - it would be too difficult to do a show in Ottawa while we live here due to the intense commute and the issue I have with driving in certain areas. (As in, downtown. Nope.)

But as I sit in this coffee shop and listen to people carry on conversations in a weird hybrid of French and English about Chippendales fully nude dancers (I saw Chippendale dancers, and they were not nude, and people in Kingston still tried to ban them, so that was interesting), drinking my $4 latte, I've decided I'm going to start trying my ideas out on paper. I've had a bunch of ideas kicking around in my brain for four years, mostly to do with the music I routinely listen to, such as ALL CAPS, and I think I'll try my hand at writing a script. I haven't written a piece since second year playwriting, and that one wasn't good - let's not talk about it - but with my lack of employment and the uncertainty of that whole area of my life, it's not like I don't have time to dedicate to it. Also it's something I've never done - it's a musical - and even if it sucks royally, hey, I don't have to show it to anybody if I don't want to.

I think this blog will help in my new desire to write. I have to write coherently here, and I'm trying to write in full sentences and sound at least halfway intellectual or funny or whatever I'm trying to convey (and failing miserably right at this particular moment), so I think that will help develop my writing skills. I've written one story that people on the Internet saw - my days of Harry Potter fanfiction will never be forgotten - and I'd like to try my hand at a different story, something that is closer to my interest in Harry Potter at this point. (AKA about James and Lily, rather than Harry.) I've been trying to write that story for years, and during university, I just gave up. It'll probably never come to anything, but I'd like to try. I'm also considering NaNoWrimo, but that's even less likely. It's just a journey I'm thinking of here. It might take my mind off the fact that I'm terrified of where my life is right now - all I want to do is go to college for my post-grad program but my wall of debt is barring the way. So writing might distract me.

This has been a very long and rambling blog post. But it's my blog and I'm allowed to do whatever I want. I might write another one shortly - as in, within the next two hours I have to be here - but who knows? Again, it's my blog. Go, me.