The Suburban Experiment

The Bean is moving to the Burbs.

"Be careful," said my college department chair. "One day I had the big house in the suburbs and before I knew it the big bills were coming in."

I hope our our small colonial in a dense downtown will not wreak the same level of karmic havoc. We were trying hard to remain within New Jersey state's definition of a smart growth community. You know, so we could qualify for the state's recently-developed, itty bitty rebates on homeownerish things for smart growth areas, and rest easier with the knowledge that a larger entity had given us approval for our decisions.

We are just starting to love the house again after realizing that, despite its problems as exhausively explained by our stellar home inspector, the house is actually liveable, even in its current state. Even with kitchen cabinets that are about to fall off the wall--well, there is at least a roomy kitchen that can be made quite nice one day.

But back to the Bean: she has already been at the house for what must be LONG stretches for her, and has handled it as well as we can expect. The concept of don't-touch-the-paint is a weighty one that must involve at least one item of clothing sacrificed to the gods of uh-maybe-we-should-have-a-babysitter-for-this. In the meantime, I'll continue to be impressed if parenting and painting can occur at all simultaneously, or at least within the same three-hour span.