The homes that got away

My husband and I are driving down 45th Street in Wallingford. Ah, Wallingford, I reminisce. Remember when we used to live there? I think about that cute yellow house with the palm tree in front, the maroon bathroom, the yellow-and-blue tile in the kitchen. It was ours for four glorious days this spring.

Later that weekend we are driving through Green Lake. Ah, Green Lake. That was a heartbreaker to have to move out of there. We had a nice lot; we could walk to the lake. The kitchen was so much fun to cook in, especially for parties; it had the perfect cupboards filled with baskets for my baking goods: one basket for cookie cutters, one for decorating tips. I had already planted a row of lavender and rosemary on the terraced edge of the front yard. There's also the house near 23rd Street. We didn't live there for very long. Not long enough to get attached or even really to place our belongings down. I can drive down 23rd without crying.

Of course, we go way back with the Central District and Madison Valley. That's when we were young and naïve. We lived there for awhile. I remember long afternoons on the deck in the sun, and hanging out in the living room waiting for the inspector.

The inspector. That's right, I remember as I wake from my reverie and my intangible inspector falls off his imaginary ladder.

We haven't actually lived in any of these places. We've only bid on them. And lost. In this housing market, we've tried to tell ourselves that we shouldn't get attached to any of the houses we bid on. The chances of actually getting one seem so low ... . And yet, how can I even think about bidding that much money on something I am not actually attached to? Just writing that check for earnest money is enough to make me sweat. Would I write a check that high on something I only had lukewarm feelings about?

And, of course, there is the time spent with the house itself. First I visit. Then I visit again and in our case there is at least one more visit to bring the parents by. By this time, I have usually mentally painted every room in the house, placed most of the furniture and planted a few flowers.

The housing market. It's taken many sweet memories away from me, even if they are technically memories of things that haven't yet happened. We've gone through four real-estate agents. Our social life has been completely stifled because we spend all of our free time driving around, looking for a place to live. And friends who say "you'll find the house you're meant to be in" are wearing us thin.

After we find one, we usually spend some time in a local coffee shop writing out the offer. The amount of money we are willing to spend has shot up dramatically from when we started this process. We sign page after page of legal documents, wondering if this will be our last offer, or if we are only just beginning.

Later there is the pre-inspection. (If you count the money we've spent so far on pre-inspections we could take a fairly nice vacation to Europe. It's a good time to be a house inspector, in case you are looking for a career move.) The time during the inspection is the worst. It takes a few hours and the only thing to do is sit around as if I own the house, or follow the inspector around waiting for him to find something drastically wrong, making mental notes of all of the things I will want to fix after I move in.

Usually by the end of the inspection, I've hung all of our pictures on the wall, planted a vegetable garden, and often torn down a deck or built a wall. I've even decided on things I would change in a year or two, effectively making it feel like I've been in the house for some time.

I've envisioned my commute, and feel as if I've been coming and going from that house for years. I've found the nearest grocery store and the restaurants we'd want to visit. I've pushed the kid we haven't yet conceived in a stroller we haven't yet bought down the sidewalks around the house we don't own.

After all of that happens, there is the nervous excitement of the next 24 hours before the sellers, these mysterious people I've never met but who have so much control over my life, look at our offers. Then, a few hours after I have started to really worry, and usually about the time I have logged back on the Internet to find our next house, we get the call from the agent. So far, it's never been a good one.

I am trying to be positive. But it's hard as we drive down 45th. It was so nice to live in Wallingford. We had to move out too soon.

Wendy Lawrence is a freelance writer who lives on First Hill — but wishes it were Wallingford.