We didn't get the house we first looked at. We offered them lots less than they were asking. They had another offer they didn't like and asked both of us if we could come up with more money. We upped our bid as much as we could; the other party offered more.
We ultimately looked at eleven houses, including a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment overlooking the Monongahela River. It would have been perfect, if we could have gotten rid of ninety-percent of our belongings, and lived a minimalist life. We finally settled on a small townhouse with a basement and a giant addition on the first floor. It's in Suncrest, a mile west of where we are now, still too close to the hospitals and between the basketball coliseum and the football stadium, three miles across campus to Tree of Life. We are in the City of Morgantown, which means we will have curbside recycling, and better local representation than we have now in an unincorporated part of Monongalia County.
There have been distractions the last few weeks. We had the Jewish holiday of Purim. It's become traditional to perform a play based on the book of Esther, with costumes and funny characters. Joe writes parodies of famous musicals, writing new lyrics to the familiar songs. This year, it was "Little Orphan Esther" base on the musical "Annie." I played King Ahasuerus, in a crown I made as part of the Purim carnival that preceded the play, and an old royal blue bathrobe with white stripes and Joe played Mordechai. He spent hours working on his play, and we had a few nights of rehearsals.
The weather this February was Minnesota-like, often below zero or snowing. Just last week, after bitter cold weather for weeks, it warmed up. Then it rained like in the days of Noah. The rain turned to snow as temperatures dropped, until we were left with more than eight inches of snow, and one day in early March, a low of -3, setting a record for the month.
This isn't an easy place to live. Two of our five delegates to the West Virginia Legislature signed on to a resolution to the United States Congress to call a Constitutional Convention to ban any recognition of same-gender relationships in the entire country. This sixty-day term, which ends this week, the Republican-led legislature passed bills to overturn mine-safety regulations, to allow anyone to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, to delete the state requirement, after last year's disastrous Elk River chemical spill, which left all of metropolitan Charleston with no water for weeks, to have all chemical tanks in the state examined annually. Many people have expressed disgust with the whole state, and threatened to move away.
I credit Barbara Evans Fleischauer with our decision to stay and put down roots. She is the one liberal from Morgantown in the legislature, and the fact that she has support made me think we can find more people to hang with. West Virginia University's new president, E. Gordon Gee, has expressed unflinching support for gay rights. We are dining with him April 1. Joe says "We are winning the gay rights battle, even here." I have to go with his optimism.
So despite living in a politically hostile town, with below-zero weather and terrible storms in winter, we are taking the leap and buying a house. We will try to make this place work for us, even if I have to run against the legislative troglodytes myself in 2016. We're already talking about taking Joe's vacation in February next year. Meanwhile, we are nervous and excited. We move the second week in May. Here's a pic of our house. It's semi-detached, so we only have the left side. We met with the inspector today, who found some small wiring and plumbing issues. We hope the current owners will correct these issues.
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