Househunting on the cheap in the Bay Area

Things I like: 

• Quiet streets
• Yellow houses
• Yellow kitchens, also white, or blue.
• Laminate or hardwood floors
• Yellow (or white or blue), sunny kitchens with hardwood floors (duh!)
• Tile floors also
• Big, bare yards (blank slate!)
• Big windows
• Open spaces
• No neighbors!  Or few of them, and quiet - like I have now.
• A place for the Leopard to roll around in the sun and show her chubby pink belly to the sky
• A short, predictable commute to work.  1/2 hour, just long enough to eat breakfast and assemble my mental armor.
• Green houses.
• Pink houses.
• A place where I may consider transferring the decomposing body of sweet sacred Georgia Brown.
• A place where I feel safe OR a place cheap enough that I reserve some money for a big fence and an alarm.  But preferably the first.
• A place where I can lie with no shirt on in the clean sunny dirt (see above).
• Having a vegetable garden.
• Not having to freak out about locking up my bicycle in maximum-security solitary confinement.
• Blue houses (a nice blue, or blue and white.  Not the depressing, dull, poverty-grey-blue.)

Things I do not like:

• Grout.
• Having to move at all.
• Having to weigh my safety vs. my privacy vs. hours in the car every day vs. sunlight.
• Grey houses, or brown, or a weird, deranged pastel that is mostly dirt.
• Carpet, especially if/when it is old and disgusting.
• Neighbors with pitbulls.
• Neighbors with un-neutered, uncared-for pets of any kind.
• Being single (so far.  To be fair it has only been three weeks).
• Knowing I will probably get out-maneuvered by counter-offers or cash investors even if it's a property I *don't* love.
• Sitting in traffic for the hours I will end up doing if I get a place I can afford (one hour each way every day).  Achy back, no food, polluting my sweet sweet world.
• Jumping awake in the middle of the night wondering if someone is breaking in (not looking forward!)
• Seeing people on meth or other drugs twitching near the house I'm looking at.
• Condos where there is someone above you, below you, and to either side.
• Small, concrete patios with no sun.
• HOA dues of $300 at least.
• Places that smell or feel like urine, smoke, or anger and hopelessness.
• Looking at my current home with an eye to what’s mine, what’s hers, and what has to go.
• All this, really.  

I am grateful, of course.  Not of course, like it's a given.  I am grateful, simply, punto y final.  I have my health (no cancer!), safety, a clean, safe home while I figure out what is next.  None of that is to be discounted and plenty of women do not have any of those.  And please, say a prayer for those who do not.  (Goddess protect them, those who do not.)

But I still have my own unique experience which is that I. Hate. This.  I did not want it, and I do not like it.  I had built the life I longed for, my co-builder jumped ship, and now I need to cast about and look for the next shore.  (I don't care if that is a mixed metaphor, it works for me).  I can do it, and I will, but I don't have to like it, and I don't.  Now.  On to see the next listing.