March 2007

Your Honor, Please allow me to address you on my sister’s behalf. I’d be standing next to her in court and delivering this message in person, except I live in Pennsylvania and was unable to take the day off from work to make the trip to Maryland (because I already took the day off to do something much more exciting!).

The license plate cover my sister had affixed to her car was a surprise birthday present (actually Christmas, but this way makes for a more convenient and believable timeline), and I put it on her car without her knowledge. And while you’d be right to say that ignorance of the law is no defense, it was my ignorance that landed my sister in this predicament, not hers. Justice would not be served by punishing her for my mistake.

Here in (the great state of) Pennsylvania it is not a crime to shield one’s license plate using a cover of any kind, so long as they do not obstruct legibility from directly behind the vehicle. The plate cover was designed only to disguise the plate from cameras positioned at angles above the car, such as “red light” cameras installed at traffic signals. While I would not dream of arguing that one state’s laws are better than another’s, especially with someone in your position, I would like to point out that the State of Pennsylvania has not seen fit (yet, thank god) to criminalize the act of disguising one’s property from the corporations supposedly acting on the behalf of government. It’s not a cut-and-dry issue by any means; Virginia only re-started its program following a two-year hiatus after legislators forced their removal.

What it all boils down to is that I thought I was doing my sister a favor, and mistakenly thought I was within my rights to do so. Please accept my sincerest apologies on her behalf.

My grandmother had eye surgery today. It’s technically cosmetic surgery since the surgeons were lifting her eyelids and removing fatty tissue around her eyes, but the idea is to help her see better.

Before today, she was essentially looking at the world through a tunnel of flesh, whereas now she’s proably not seeing much of anything at all due to the enormous amount of pain she’s in. After today, however, with the pressure around her eyes alleviated and the offending eyelids nipped back into their correct position, my gradmother will see things more easily.

She’ll look a lot hotter, too.

There once was a house on Balligomingo Avenue. It was a lonely, tucked-away little structure located between two roads. Some might find it surprising the way this house was able to feel cozy and remote in its location, its proximity to the Schuylkill Expressway and the lack of neighborhood arguing against it. The first floor’s unique layout — six little rooms centering around an L-shaped kitchen, each with only a 7-foot ceiling — combined with a master suite spread over the entire third floor did more than just help to achieve a cozy feel; those features defined it. The other parts of the house seemed to underscore the point: spacious dirt basement, walk-up attic, a porch and a deck, two more bedrooms with another bathroom-and-a-half, a view from the third floor looking out up a the hill of the expansive, grassy lot.

While seemingly perfect for a couple like us that doesn’t plan to have children, reality quickly set in. The quaint, smallish rooms couldn’t even hold a nice sized couch, let alone our seven-seater; it would have to go. So would our table, or any table that seats six for that matter. My grandmother’s wall units would look silly almost touching the ceiling and the cherry hardwood floors, while exquisite, just scream “floor rug!” when we picture ourselves cozying up in front of the television. The deck large enough to hold 30 people merely drives home the point that we couldn’t even fit half that amount inside if it rained. The biggest drawback is the sloping lot, up which we’d have to climb every time we needed to reach our cars. Even if we could deal with the lack of parking long enough to put in a driveway, it simply doesn’t make sense. $300,000 is a great price for a newly-renovated house with so much character, but not if the first thing we’d do is start renovating it to suit our needs. No, it isn’t the house for us.

But if that’s really the case, why did our thoughts keep turning back to it? The fact that Dia and I constantly called each other at work with ideas how to maneuver things or with crazy parking solutions told me that maybe it was the house for us, obvious limitations notwithstanding. It was the realization that we couldn’t get this house out of our heads that led me to conclude that we should put in a bid for it, one that was surely low but would leave us comfortable enough to entertain those crazy parking solutions. If our lowball was rejected then it simply wasn’t meant to be; but if it was….

And this was our thinking even while touring houses in Elkins Park and Huntingdon Valley Friday evening — houses which looked more and more unlike anything in which we would ever want to live. In fact, this housing essay would have had a completely different ending if for some reason we cut our night short and didn’t visit the little house in Abington.

It’s absolutely perfect in every way. The second floor is the master suite I’ve been wanting, the kitchen and two bathrooms are completely new, and the place is on a great street that dead ends at a park. Two sets of french doors open onto a spacious side porch, a garage at the end of a long driveway, a full basement for our mountains of junk — the cute little cape seems to have it all. There just so much right with it that there’s not much else to say other than I felt like I finally found a house in which I can picture myself living.

The only obstacle is that Dia is still a little neighborhood-shy and stuck on finding the absolutely picture-perfect house on a hill. So first I need to convince Dia that she feels the same way I do and we’ll be home at last. I guess we’ll see.