Settling In to the Nest

We've been in our new house about 6 weeks now, and it's starting to feel like home. We've got most of the boxes unpacked and new furniture to make the rooms functional. Sure, there's still a few random piles of "what do we do with this?" stuff strewn about, but I feel it's an acceptable level of clutter :)

Here are some of my favorite things about living in our house so far, in no particular order:

• Ease of laundry. At the apartment, our dryer vented out into a hallway. (Lame!) So that meant I had to plan my drying cycles for a time of day when I could leave the balcony door open to let out the hot air. But on scorching days I would wind up running the A/C to counteract the dryer, which seemed like a pointless waste of money. It was extra ridiculous that the dryer was near the A/C thermostat so it would cause it to kick on quickly. In the house, however, we have a normal dryer that vents outside. It's by the backdoor so even if it does heat up a little, it's not roasting the whole house.
  
• Back yard. I knew we'd all enjoy having a yard! The boys have managed to play unsupervised for about 5 minutes without major incident Yes, one of them did dunk the other's hair in the water table, but only because "me need wash his dirty hair." Oh, I see...how helpful of you...
  
• Close to park. Yes, our apartment was also close to a park, but by the time you walked all the way to the elevator, went down to the ground floor, crossed the train tracks, crossed the street, and made it over to the playground...well, it was a bit of a production. Now, since the boys are older, we got them balance bikes. It's about a 3 minute walk to the park here! We are struggling with the return trip still. Usually at least one of them has a meltdown and refuses to ride home. But I have hope that things will improve (keep trying, you'll get better).
  
• Separate play room. Being able to toss all the kids' toys in a room and close the door is awesome! And not having toys in their bedroom seems to be more conducive to sleeping.
  
• Dining room table. This hasn't been quite as amazing as I hoped, but it's certainly better than high chairs crammed in the kitchen. Gus is currently refusing to sit in a chair by himself (he wants to sit on someone's lap for meals), which is driving me up the wall. I try to tell myself that he won't always want to sit on my lap. When he's 20 and off living by himself, I'll surely sit at my lonely table and fondly remember the days when I had a squirmy preschooler knocking roasted sweet potatoes off my plate.
  
• Friendly neighbors. After a year of anonymous apartment life, it's a little weird to be in a neighborhood again. So far everyone has been welcoming and friendly. (Not Southern friendly, though. No one brought us any chicken and dumplings yet. That literally happened in Memphis!) But one neighbor did mow our lawn for us when it was turning into a jungle and we hadn't got a lawn mower yet, and another brought us some cookies and gave this kids a wading pool. It was strange, though, to hear one neighbor speak fondly about the former occupants of our house since we only know them as the persnickety sellers who refused to give us any repair credits or concessions...
  
• New amenities. We're just a few minutes from Aldi, a grocery store I grew to love in Memphis. We also have a Food4Less nearby which is a Kroger brand store, so they have all the regular Kroger products at lower prices. Also we are by a gas station that accepts credit cards for the same per/gal cost as Arco where you have to pay cash. The kids are excited that there's a McDonald's with a PlayPlace just a few blocks away.
  
• Windows that open. This house has tons of windows, and we love it! We can get a nice breeze in the mornings and evenings that means we don't have to use our air conditioner as much. Plus it's just nice to be able to see what's going on out in the world. I especially enjoy this view of palm trees from the kitchen window.

Life is good in Pasadena! Stop by and see us if you're in the area. Or heck, plan a trip to the area and stay in our play room/guest room! I promise to pick up all the Legos before you get here :)

Moving Will Solve All My Problems

With our home purchase set to close later this week (God willing/si Dios quiere/inshallah), I'm feeling anxious, reflective, and hopeful. I've moved a lot in life. It tends to stir up a mixture of emotions/perspectives, but one that I've noticed most often is totally misplaced optimism about changes that will result.

Example: When we moved from Seattle to Memphis (in 2013) I was sure that I would break my addiction to Cheetos. Why? I thought that because I'd be working from home, I'd have time to make myself more healthy snacks. LOL! Sure, I had time, but I had no motivation. Actually, I stopped eating Cheetos and all milk products not long after arriving in California last year because my body just wouldn't let me eat dairy anymore. That wasn't my plan, but it's how life turned out.

And now in 2018, I've pretty much convinced myself that as soon as we move from an apartment to house here in Pasadena, our lives are going to completely change for the better. Here are some of my hopes and dreams.

• We are going to have a dining room table where my children will sit and eat their meals. We will all eat together as a family. I will have a weekly menu board and cook/meal plan tasty dinners that all 4 family members will like.
  
• Of course I will no longer be crouching on the floor next to the couch feeding the children bites of peanut butter bagel for breakfast while they watch Octonauts.
  
• I will create an amazingly functional organization system for the new playroom. Our home will no longer be strewn with toys in every corner of every room. My children will pick up their toys. (Confession: I cracked myself up by typing that last sentence!)
  
• My children will play in the backyard with minimal supervision giving me copious amounts of free time to implement all of my above plans. They will explore and get dirty but not seriously injure/maim themselves while doing so.

Realistic expectations? Probably not. But a girl can dream...

Where to Be Rich in LA

House hunting brings out the demographer/sociologist in me. I haven't lived here long enough to have a total handle on what are the "good" and "bad" areas, but I'm starting to get some ideas.

(I apologize in advance for all the feathers I'm about to ruffle.)

Areas that are good tend to have:

• Rich people
• White people
• Maybe Asian people
• "Good" schools as defined by a score of 8+ on Great Schools
• Well-funded public services
• Crime that is not overt

Areas that are bad tend to have:

• Poor people
• Brown people
• Black people
• Asian people who aren't integrated into mainstream American culture
• "Bad" schools (scores 1-3)
• Poorly funded public services
• Visible crime, graffiti, gangs
• Noise and/or pollution

You know what I see as the main differences on these lists? Socioeconomic status and race. So if I ask myself, "Where should we live?" what I'm really wondering is, what kind of white people are we? Statistically speaking, our income puts us in the third quartile for Pasadena (between 50-75% of median). I feel awkward calling myself rich, but I think it might be true.

Then I see these lists like "Best Places to Raise a Family Around LA" which should be titled "Where Rich People Live." I mean seriously, #1 on the list is Manhattan Beach, where the average sales price of a three bedroom home is $1.8 million. So I guess my family is richer than we are poor, but we're not rich rich.

The point I'm trying to make here is that one can't just choose to be rich. In many cases, the deck is stacked against you from the start. And we can't keep using socioeconomic status as a proxy variable for everything in life. Which leads me to the following scatter plot:



(If that's not displaying properly on your device, or you'd like to see the supporting data, click here.)

What are we seeing in this chart? 
A correlation between a school's rating on Great Schools and the percentage of its student body that is low income, which means qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. (As an aside, that is really poor around here because there's no adjustment made to the calculations to factor in cost of living in your particular area within the lower 48 states.)

What are we not seeing?
A large portion of the not-low-income families in Pasadena that are not represented on this chart, because their children aren't enrolled in these schools.

Pasadena Unified School District has kind of a mixed reputation around here. In the 1970s, the district was ordered to bus students to end de-facto segregation, a bit of history I haven't found anyone too eager to talk about. As of 2016, only 55% of students living in PUSD boundaries attended public schools. The rest are in charter, private, home school, or transfer out of the district. At the same time, there are several schools with new magnet programs focused on STEM, Arts, and IB, and they also offer dual language options. I'm familiar with a group called Pasadena Education Network that seems to be doing good work towards promoting integrated schools. So overall, I'm observing some positive trajectory.

Where should I try to buy a house, then? (I mean, assuming we stay in Pasadena. We also have been looking around Glendale and Eagle Rock, which is a whole other ball of wax.) To complicate matters, PUSD offers open enrollment, meaning that if you don't want your student to attend your neighborhood school, you can go through a lottery system to obtain a seat for your child at a different school. So it doesn't even really matter, school-wise, where we buy because we can put the kids in a different school. We just have to give them a ride.

But you see that? How privileged am I that the need to provide transportation daily to/from a school a few miles away wouldn't even give me pause? We are a two parent family with only one of us working outside the home right now. We have the resources to pay for a vehicle, gas, and insurance. I'm not trying to work two minimum wage jobs just to keep food on the table here. And I have the mental bandwidth to think about all these things two years before my kids will even start kindergarten.

What a world we live in.

If you want to learn more about these topics, here are some resources I recommend:

• How America's Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty (TED talk by Kandice Sumner)
• Follow Integrated Schools on Facebook
• "The Problem with Great Schools" inspired me to write this post

Home Shopping with Toddlers

In the past six weeks, we've taken our kids to some 40 open houses. And as far as I know, they haven't broken anything! They've picked a couple lemons without authorization (#socallife) and might have trampled a few flowers underfoot. They've tripped over too many uneven floors/unexpected steps to count. They are doorbell-ringing experts. And, they've learned to be on the lookout for cookies or other goodies up for grabs. 

In fact, they've been house hunting for so long they've even started playing "open house" at home. Really! They set up boxes on the floor, then one kid said, "ding dong, you have sign? Me come see you house?" The other one said, "no, too dirty, me vacuum first." LOL

Real estate in the Los Angeles area is expensive. Exorbitant. Some might even say unreasonable. And yet, we've decided to throw our hats into the ring and purchase here as well. 

Why, you might ask? I'll tell you. 

The rent is too damn high.

For realz, people! We decided that we might as well make a mortgage payment for as much as we're spending on rent. The other option would be to move from our (expensive) apartment to a slightly less expensive rental, but we still want to buy eventually and moving with two little people is no joke. (We just did it last year, you know!) So, we sold the condo we owned in Seattle and now we're ready to buy here. We're hoping that the market doesn't totally tank right after we make a purchase, but one never knows.

It is hard to believe how quickly properties get snatched up and how much they wind up selling for. We are finally ready to put in our first offer on a house in the next couple of days. I am not overly optimistic about our chances of winning the bidding war. It seems like everyone I ask around here put offers on 5-10 properties before they finally got one. Maybe this will just be our warm up offer. The house is pretty cool, though, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Things I've learned about real estate in California (perhaps in general):

• Be super skeptical of homes without many photos online
• "California basement" is a polite term for "den of spiders and rodents"
• You could hire 21 different types of professionals to inspect your property, if you so desired
• Always pan up on Google Street View to check for giant power lines overhead
• It's hard to thoroughly inspect a property during an open house when your children are running amok
• There are way too many factors to consider in the home buying process. It is overwhelming!
• People who write home descriptions like the words/phrases "exclusive," "rare," "in-demand," and "don't miss out"
• There is no point in describing your listing in the Glendale/Pasadena area as "close to shops, restaurants, and schools" because that literally describes every home around here, as long as by "close" you mean "within a couple miles"

Hopefully before too long, we'll have a new nest to feather. Until then, we'll keep perching here in our cozy apartment. (Actually, not cozy. That's a code word for tiny. I should describe this apartment as spacious and well-appointed, in the highly-sought-after city of Pasadena!)