Back when we moved to Indiana, I told you all about my love for HGTV’s House Hunters. Not only do I love peeking into other’s homes on the TV show, I usually* love my own house hunting excursions.
*Have you ever house hunted ALONE with TWO little bitty children and an aloof realtor??? If not, I’d HIGHLY recommend against it to avoid the loss of clumps of hair and at least four years off of your life because OH MY GAWD it’s FRUSTRATING to say the LEAST. Two kids in and out of car seats, waiting on a slow motion realtor, keeping four tiny hands from touching other homeowners’ tchotchkes and yowling cats, and rushing to see just three! more! homes! on the opposite end of town through lunch hour traffic before nap time. It’s not fun, it’s not fun, IT IS NOT FUN.
And we’re back…
So this go round of house hunting was not nearly as fun as normal. Luckily for the sake of something to actually write about on this blog, there was one notable occurrence.
It had already been a long day of house hunting and our realtor suggested we see a lovely ranch with a fully finished walk-out basement on nearly an acre in a neighborhood on the west side of town. Since this fit the description of exactly what we were looking to buy, I begrudgingly agreed to go see it before pleading to take a lunch break. Driving up to the house, I already knew it wasn’t “the one,” but felt like we should at least go in and look since we’d driven all that way.
Walking in the front door, I immediately noticed a very heavy scent of some sort of spice. The odor permeated the air and made it difficult for me to even look at the house. I quickly checked out the upstairs rooms (one was a tiger room (???), complete with a velvet painting of a Bengal tiger…raur!) and headed to the finished basement.
Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, we could hear a TV blaring. My realtor and I looked at each other with a mixture of confusion and fear, as she called out, “hello? is anyone here?” I felt so awkward looking at a house with someone possibly in it! What if they heard me say something unkind about the decor!?!
An elderly couple emerged from the basement bedroom. The gentleman was tall, with a slightly hunched back. He was dressed in a wrinkled suit and his white hair was disheveled. He motioned to us to come in, waving his hand and nodding his head over and over and speaking in a language we didn’t understand. (At least he probably hadn’t heard or understood me making fun of the tiger motif upstairs. Phew.) His wife stood behind him, short and stout. Her silver hair was pulled up in a bun and covered with a scarf and and she wore a navy blue dress that reached her calves. She looked at us hopefully and repeatedly nodded also.
We had suddenly stumbled into the old country.**
**I don’t know WHICH old country, just AN old country.
Since I feel weird looking at houses with the people inside, I wanted to turn right around and run back upstairs, out the door, throw the kids in the car, and squeal my tires as I made my escape from the old country, but the elderly man insisted that I see their bedroom. Across every inch of the floor lay about five handmade blankets of every color of the rainbow. I tiptoed carefully across their blanket floor since they were persistent and really wanted to show me around. There were two twin beds on opposite sides of the room, a bookshelf, and a 13-inch television on a small table in the room. After showing me their closets, they looked at me eagerly, all the while speaking to me in a language that I didn’t understand.
I looked around as quickly as they would let me, apologized for the intrusion, and thanked them for the tour, hoping they’d understand at least something I said. As I tried to escape, they saw that I had a baby and wanted to see her closer.
“Foiled!” I thought to myself. “I just want to get out of here!”
The man pointed at me and pointed at Ella and then at me again while saying things I did not understand. I smiled and nodded politely. He put his head on Ella’s head and said, “God bless you.”
That I understood. Sweet as it was, though, I was still uncomfortable and READY TO GO. They waved to us and repeated “God bless you” to us over and over as we made our way to the stairs.
It was such an odd encounter.
Nothing like this EVER happens on House Hunters.
