The Half-House

Technically our new place is a duplex, but I like to call it a half-house, as the word duplex brings to mind rows and rows of cookie-cutter units, mirror images of each other. The fact we managed to avoid living in such an impersonal place is something I'm pleased about, as I'd rather live in a home that is a little less reminiscent of a hotel, a place where it's a little less obvious that this is just a waypoint and you'll soon be moving on, just as many others have moved through before you, and more still are doing so all around you.

So it's a little different, a little special. It used to be a whole house, before it was turned into two apartments, a house, incidentally, that my husband spent some amount of time in during his college days. Imagine, if you will, a U shape. At one end of the U is the bedroom, and as you go down there is the living room, go over and there is the dining room, and back up the U is the kitchen and the bathroom. The bedroom and living room are seperated by French doors, and there is a large entryway to the dining room. The entrance to the kitchen and the little hall that leads to the bathroom is big as well, so the whole place has a very open, airy, roomy feel. The living room has a large, low window that looks out south upon fields and a wooded mountain (a small mountain; we live in the Ozarks and they are old and weathered down... I like to imagine what they must've been like when they were new, when they stood surely as tall and jagged as the Rockies, on the edge of a sea that is no longer here...) and is perfect for Pearl to pull up on and look out and cruise along. The dining room used to be a porch, so it is a few inches lower than the rest of the house, and the window has steps beneath it. At the end of the kitchen what used to be a door to some other part of the house is filled with shelves and serves as a pantry, as is what used to be a window and now is my spice rack.

There is a little yard outside surrounded by a picket fence and right outside our kitchen is a huge tree. It's nice to have a little patch of land but it is right on a busy, noisy road so I don't know how much time we'll be spending out there. There are several nice parks in town where I'd prefer to get our "yard" time.

Our lease lasts for six months and after that we rent on a month-by-month basis, which will really take the pressure off on looking for a new place. We'll have more time to begin looking and waiting for a better place then; someplace in a better neighborhood, with another bedroom, with a washer and dryer, someplace that is perhaps even a house rather than an apartment or a duplex. For now this place is great and I'm glad we were able to find something so nice and affordable on such short notice.