Annie Get Your Shotgun

If you really want to torture yourself, keep your email address linked with the house you used to own in a city where real estate is on a rapid upward trajectory. Once a week or so, you’ll get an update that tells you how much the value of your former home has increased, i.e. how…

I’m a homeowner again – as in, fare thee well, all of my dollars. But for a most worthy cause. A few weeks ago, I traded the little sum I got from the sale of the Shotgun in Denver for a 1916 – farmhouse? Bungalow? Victorian? The official style is unclear, since different elements of…

As of tonight, my house is on the market. And given all I have accomplished in the last seven days, I feel like nothing less than a freaking superhero (I call dibs on the name Trixie Firecracker). In addition to holding down my full-time job (three more days!), I have moved 30 boxes, a bookshelf,…

Some seasons can’t be wrapped up into compact little blog posts. So let’s just pretend that I haven’t not written here for a while – at least anything of substance – and catch up free-form. Like a meandering conversation – but with me talking into a megaphone (everyone’s dream). We’ll start with the most important…

Ever had one of those weeks? Last Monday and Tuesday, I got four parking tickets in 24 hours. My license plates had expired at the end of March (news to me!), and before I could find an opening in my work schedule to hit the DMV, Denver’s parking patrol graced me. Four times. I have…

I’m discovering that I’m no DIY-er – which is unfortunate, given that I’m also not made of money. When I first moved into the Shotgun, I painted a few walls – the first and last act of home improvement to be performed by my own hand. The slop-job of color application has bothered me every…

It’s no secret that I’m a perfectionist. I don’t like to admit that I’m a person in process, because I would love for everyone to think that I have it all together 100% of the time. Well, I don’t have everything together 100% of the time. And as if there weren’t already enough hilarious (read:…

Arriving home after work last night, I opened the living room curtains to let in some light. There on the windowpane was a spider, which, obviously, is unacceptable. So I grabbed a flip-flop and swatted the glass. And the entire window shattered. I shattered my living room window with a flip-flop – because if there’s…

I’ve been in the Shotgun for two and a half weeks, and things are coming together. I have all of my furniture, and as of Sunday, a washer and dryer. A few pictures are hung on the walls. I painted the hallway, but gave up halfway through painting the bathroom because the ceilings are too…

Over the weekend, I traded in my dollhouse for a real house: as of Friday, I’m the owner of a shotgun row home. I’ve spent the past few days vacillating between absolute elation and a full-on panic attack – mostly for irrational reasons, like What if it’s built on a sinkhole? and What if I’m…