Does anything on the menu look good to you?
I was leaning towards the ribs and a beer. What are you thinking?
I’m not sure. Maybe carne asada tacos? And I want a spicy Bloody Mary for certain.
No kidding. This house hunting is not for sissies. Three different neighborhoods and three totally different properties wore me out.
I’m glad we had the GPS. That made it a lot easier.
None of them felt right to me. The new one on Calle Bonita was pretty nice, lots of light, but those diamond-finish walls? How are you going to hang any art?
Well, you can get those display systems with Plexiglas rods that attach to the ceiling, like they have in the galleries up on Canyon Road. That would fit right in with the chrome hardware and concrete floors. No, the whole idea of hospital finishes is too cold for me.
The big problem was the neighborhood. I like that part of town for all the trees and walking distance to the grocery store, but I counted ten lots in the subdivision and only five houses are built, so you know we would be living with construction for a while.
Still that one was the best of the three. The place on Garcia was tiny. It would have been fine for me in my twenties, but the idea of a communal washer-dryer out by the carport has no appeal. Did you hear the other couple ask the agent how you deal with that in the wintertime? I loved her answer:
Oh we have sunshine three hundred days a year.
That’s what they mean when they say ‘The City Different.’
What did you think of the place on Don Cubero?
Yeah, I told you when we looked at the pictures that one was a long shot. If the realtor doesn’t show any pictures of the interior, it’s for a reason. That house was a disaster, built in 1925, added on to more than once, and the floor plan was inscrutable. I guess a hundred thousand dollar make-over would help. It was charming, but not livable.
The garden was beautiful.
Trust me, you are looking at a maintenance nightmare. The dog would go crazy eating all those leaves.
So what do we do?
Let’s go home and take another look at where we are. It’s not Santa Fe, but I wouldn’t mind at all if we decided we didn’t have to move.
Harpeth Rivers is a New Mexico transplant from all over who has in the last year written songs about isosceles triangles, played bass guitar in a band, and declared himself “Retro-eclectic.” His novel-in-progress is entitled Last Year.
