A quiet weekend in an expensive city...

I read the business section of the paper today and realized that I'm not going anywhere. I might as well get use to my pink kitchen and yellow bathroom, one bedroom in a complex that I can actually afford. I'll appreciate my migrant worker neighbors more and try harder to ignore the alarm clock in the apartment above me that went off at 4:45 a.m. and kept me awake for hours. (I actually ended up pulling an army cot out of the closet and sleeping in the living room for an hour.) The rent is going up and housing prices are more than I could ever afford. I made a joke that I would have to marry 4 or 5 people to gather an income that would be able to handle the mortage. The average house in King County being around $400,000. It's not even close to the mini-maison I would be able to have for that kind of money in Cleveland. Add $25 to my current rent, and I could have half of a duplex in Cleveland. Add $1,300 and I could have that same duplex in Seattle.

There are basically two reasons I would consider buying a house - I love to entertain and a house is much better for that then a small apartment with cardboard walls, (of course, once I have more than 10 friends) and to garden - planting flowers, peas, butterfly bushes, honey suckles, cacti, etc. Hanging up a bird feeder so the kitties can meow at them sitting in the window.

There are many factors contributing to these high prices: the city is so popular with transplants like me; Californians move up here in droves and because they pay $1 million dollars for a small home down there they don't mind paying $800,000 for one here thus driving up the values (let's not blame everything on California though); it basically comes down to the fact that the city his hugely popular, there isn't enough housing and people want to live in the city and are willing to pay the prices with interest rates so low...There are bidding wars and people buying houses for their family members fearing there won't be anything left. So it looks like I'm not going to be owning a house or condo ($208,000 for 600 square feet in Ballard - yikes) any time soon. Instead, I signed up for a P-Patch so that I could at least grow some flowers or maybe a vegetable to two.

Last night I went to locally owned Sonic Boom to hear the band Pretty Girls Make Graves at an "in-store show" (always looking for "free or cheap"). Annika introduced me to the concept and I actually read in the paper (who reads the paper anymore?) they were going to be playing just down the street. It's a great opportunity to listen to a band before buying their CD or just widening your musical experience. It's a short show - 5 songs usually - but they got me hooked which was the point. I walked out into the very chilly evening with two CDs. So much for free or cheap.

I had an Easter Cupcake at my favorite coffee shop Cupcake Royale. Yum. It wasn't any different than any other cupcake, I just justified that I could have it because it was Easter. Other than that, it was a very beautiful and typical Sunday. A hike through Discovery Park, laundry, a cat nap with the kitty friends, an Easter cupcake.