Fancy house

Shopping for a house was an enlightening experience.  My internal voice definitely yelled 

CLASSISM!!!

many, many times.  The most obvious culprit, I think, was the letter that we were asked to come up with the first time we put in a bid on a house.  We had only been actively looking for a week when an amazing house came on the market, priced way under its realistic value.  It had a ton of room, a basement I could stand up in with room to spare, and was right next to a subway.  We ended up in a bidding war with another potential buyer, and our agent asked us if we wanted to submit a letter to the owner to try to increase our chance of being accepted.

I have to give my agent credit here.  She made it clear that these letters have problems, and in some areas they are illegal, but she had an obligation to tell us our options.  She sent us some samples, and those samples made me angry and sad at the same time.

All the samples were staged photos with staged stories, all saying the same thing:  We are a conventional, attractive young couple, doing a conventional life, and we are so grateful for the opportunity to bid on your home.  The grovelling was the worst.

If I was being honest my letter would say "My spouse, child, and my girlfriend are moving in together.  We are making an unconventional sort of family that makes us really happy, and I think this house will give us a great place to do that."

Sending exactly the right letter can add significantly to the effective value of your bid.  Sending my honest letter could easily erase my bid entirely.  This is why these letters are not allowed some places, of course, because they often end up enabling bigotry.  White people who own houses preferentially sell to other white people.  Other privilege ends up working the same way, naturally, and since straight, conventional, etc. people own a disproportionate share of the houses, this puts another barrier in the way of people who aren't that.

In the end it didn't matter.  The seller and the buyer discovered that their mothers had the same name,  and that was enough to convince them it was fate, and we didn't get the house.  In the end, that was a good thing, as the house we did get was not as good (mostly because the basement is short), but the location is better and the price was far more manageable.  There was no second bidding war as we were the only bidders the second time around, so we didn't have to do face down the letter thing again.

I can see the angles.  I could have just made up the perfect letter, bought into the classist bullshit, and sold my ass off.  I know how to sell!  I know exactly what lies to tell, should I want to.  Instead, all I wanted to do was to write down "I am offering you a ton of money, take it or leave it, but don't expect me to grovel for your damnable charity, or pretend that your house is going to continue on being a bastion of your values."

When we sold the condo our agent told us that the bidder was a mathie of some sort or other.  My response was "I don't care in the slightest.  Show me the money."  It turns out that I am the sort of person that I want to deal with in real estate.  Who knew?

I am prettier now

Over the last 8 months I got two new tattoos.  They are a lot more obvious than the previous ones as they are located on my forearms, and like my previous arm tattoos they are a set.  This time the set theme is roots and wings.  Here is the first:

The blueberries are on my left arm and they represent my origins.  I have memories of picking blueberries with my family, especially when I climbed up to the rapids on the Kam river above Kakabeka Beach.  Walking across giant exposed hunks of Canadian Shield to find blueberries growing in little dips where the dirt accumulated is a powerful memory of mine, and I did this many times growing up.

We even had special machines my family built to clean and process the blueberries.  After a big berry picking session there would be coolers full of the berries to deal with, and we had specially built berry cleaning tools.  They were basically a ramp to pour the berries down with a bucket at the bottom to catch them.  Halfway down the ramp was a grate the berries would roll over, and a fan blowing through the grate would send all the sticks and leaves flying away, cleaning the berry haul.

The blueberries remind me of where I came from, the people that helped raise me, and the connection to the land and knowledge of nature that I still retain small pieces of.  It is where I came from - the family I was born into.

The other tattoo is where I chose to go.  It is an icosahedron, unfolded from a 3d shape into a 2d map on my arm.  The numbers come from a d20, a standard die used in roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons.  The d20 represents the games I love to play, the unfolding reflects my mathematical training.  I have told people that when I die I want it cut off my arm, folded into a die, stuffed, and put on a mantle somewhere.  Perhaps it can be rolled when a particular important skill check needs to be made, or when ogres attack.

The colours on this tattoo are a representation of the people who now surround me.  I am quite straight, unfortunately (I recognize that being queer is a struggle, but I have had a few exciting offers, and if I was bi I could have taken full advantage!) but there is a lot of queer in my house, and I wanted to have something on my body showing my support and solidarity.  In particular I wanted to send a message to Pinkie Pie that cannot be mistaken - I will put my effort and attention (and fury, should it ever come to that) into taking care of them no matter where on the rainbow they end up.

The rainbow d20 reminds me of what I have decided to do, the skills I have honed, and the family I have chosen.

A few things to say

I haven't blogged in quite a while.  I have mostly felt like there isn't much to say that isn't already being said better somewhere else - unless I spend a tremendous amount of time on a thing I might as well just post a link to someone who already wrote something similar but better.

However, my life recently underwent a huge change and during the change I found a lot of things that made me want to rant about classism, so to the internet I go!  I have a couple of posts I want to make, firstly just talking about what is up with me right now, and then the rants will follow.  I have no idea if this will mean I generally continue to blog or not.

I bought a house!  I am now living on the Danforth in Toronto, right near Pape subway station, on a quiet side street.  It is hard to take a good picture of it because of the cars and trees in front, but here it is:

There are many complicated feelings about the house.  I love what it is, and I think it will be a grand place for my family.  However, I have feelings about sustainability and good urban planning that put a damper on the celebrations.  In big cities having people all live in single family dwellings is a problem.  I would have preferred a large condo instead of a house.  Unfortunately there was simply no condo available that would work for us because people don't build big condos for families - they are built for couples/singles.  I needed 4 bedrooms, and that is a tall order for a condo.

The second big change, definitely related to the first, is that my family changed.  The Flautist moved in to the house with me, Wendy, and Pinkie Pie.  I have been polyamorous for ten years now, but my living situation always looked conventional, and now it doesn't.  That makes things complicated, because now when I meet the neighbours or Rogers installers they assume that The Flautist is my daughter.  This has led to some awkward (and sometimes hilarious) moments.

We were all happy to be building a new family, but it is complicated.  Other people have questions, and we have to thread the needle between being open and informative, and stonewalling questions that are invasive.  It isn't always easy to determine which category a given question belongs in.

I like my new life.  Houses are SO MUCH WORK though.  I don't know how I will ever get through my jobs.