Today turned out to be a very disappointing day. I was reminded that we can escape loud car stereos, we can escape screaming kids, but barking is the one thing we’re not going to escape no matter where we go. Yeah, talk about a dose of reality to remind me of this sad fact!

Although I had a bad feeling about the house all last night and when I woke up today, I wanted to go into it with as open of a mind as possible and not jump the gun. Well, as it turns out, it’s not the vacant land behind the place that turned me off. It was all the ferocious barking from the mutt in the window of one of the neighboring houses. It was so bad that even being half deaf I could hear it inside the house we were looking at. Not sure, though, if their window was open or not. The house we looked at was closed up, but we could still hear the fucking thing loud and clear.

There wasn’t any car in their carport, so clearly the owners weren’t home at the time as I would think – I would hope – that any decent person would shoo the damn dog out of the window that took a shit fit like that in it. Then again, maybe not. A lotta people don’t mind the racket any more than they mind if their neighbors mind.

I wasn’t surprised, though. And “coincidentally,” Tom never heard any barking the first time he looked at the place, and the realtor, who was visibly upset, said she never had either. I believe it. It’s me the so-called noise curse is aimed at. The empty space in back didn’t seem as worrisome as it does by satellite. Could any barking, music or other sounds be heard from back there? Maybe. But I think whatever you could hear would be pretty insignificant compared to a mutt going apeshit in a window 10’ away from you. It almost sounded like it was tied up outside!

No mutts jumped out at us in the house on the other side, but I’m guessing that’s because the owners were home. You can’t see their carport from that house, so I couldn’t say for sure. To think that every time we went outside the left side of the place and every time the mailman came around or people were walking their mutts or they had company, this thing would go crazy, is really sad. But technically the owners aren’t doing anything wrong. They have every right to allow their dogs to bark out their windows. There’s just no getting away from it. IDK, maybe it’s time to stop running from what I can never escape and just deal with it. I could adapt to the racket for once and for all if only I’d just let myself, and on days it got to be a bit much, well, that’s what sound machines are for, right?

I don’t know if we’re going to take this house or not either way, but knowing that nothing up there would allow us the incredibly ideal location that Newcastle house we saw was in, lack of cable or not, we’re not ruling it out either. I’m trying to just focus on the house itself and the neighborhood. The neighborhood was safe enough, and the house was nice enough. It didn’t take my breath away and make me go, “OMG, this is gorgeous!” But it was adequate enough. I don’t want to continue staying here month after month where our expenses are higher, waiting for what we can never have. We can’t afford a house on a deserted island, or a house in the middle of a 10-acre ranch, but I can’t expect not to hear barking with that many houses that close either. As I asked myself, would you rather that alone? Or to return to the mainstream where you have even more dogs that aren’t allowed indoors, plus screaming kids, plus loud music? Well, I definitely don’t miss the large families, the college kids, or the welfare bums that would make our lives a living hell at the expense of our hard-earned tax dollars. Well, Tom’s if you want to get real technical. It’s just that as a married couple, you’re a team, and so you tend to say “we” and “our” and “us.”

Another thing that sucked was that the electricity was turned off and it was a cloudy day. Therefore, it was hard to really see that much. It was a bit old and big for us, but other than that damn paneling we’d want to paint out and brighten up, I liked many aspects of the place. Those 6-12 barking fits I’d hear each day that’d last 5-10 minutes and add up to over an hour a day may really suck, but I think there’d be a lot more good in it than bad. It can’t possibly be noisy at night. We’d have to see it with better lighting.

Also, closing costs were twice as much as we thought they’d be, and they want to raise the space rent by nearly $100 more than we expected, too. So again, I don’t know if we’ll take this house. I only know that I am getting seriously sick of this shit. It’s frustrating when every place has a problem while every place that has major potential is either too far, too expensive, or gets an offer before we get a chance to make one. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re meant to live in noisy places that are just ok, but at least it would be ours and a few hundred bucks cheaper a month than this place. Besides, nobody’s dog is going to bark 24/7.

So far the only two places I’ve seen in person that really spoke to me and really grabbed my excitement were the Newcastle one and the one with the fucked up roof that was insanely big.

Tom wants to look at a smaller, older doublewide in Newcastle tomorrow. It’s in the same park the ideal one was in only it’s almost right on the lake. Not sure we could see the lake from the house, though, and while it is a corner lot, a road wraps around it and I may actually have more trouble sleeping there than in the barking house. With sound machines going and the bedroom being in the back, I should sleep through all the barking just fine. This one, I’m not so sure of, though. Still… as frustrating and as long as it’s been taking, we keep looking and looking and looking…