HOUSE OBSESSION

Philip and I are officially shopping for our first house. This explains why you may still be waiting on a phone call or e-mail from me, or why I probably haven't seen you in the past few weeks. Every free moment is spent looking at houses online, looking at houses in real life, talking about houses, crunching numbers, getting excited about houses, getting depressed about houses, etc.

By now we've probably been inside 25 properties or more. We should have warned our real-estate agent that we were going to be an endurance challenge. We are careful decision makers, to put it mildly.

I have become deeply interested in the people who live in the houses we look at. It's probably unhealthy. I study their storage solutions, their colors, their decor. I look at their shoes and try to make inferences about their personalities. I note if they have pets or babies. I admire their wedding portraits.

I am especially fascinated with the people who live in the houses we really like and have strongly considered buying. It seems that if we both like this house so much, we must be alike somehow. We have something in common. I wonder about where they were at in life when they bought the house. I want to ask them, "Were you newlyweds like us, looking at your first place? Or were you a little further along in life, maybe 'upgrading'? Did you fear that you might get in over your heads too? Did you think about having a child or two in this place? Why are you moving now? Can't we sit down and have dinner or something? By the looks of your pictures, you seem like nice people we could be friends with."

We've been on the Orange County appraiser's website to see when these folks bought their houses and how much they paid for them, and when you do that, you find out the owners' names. These names have become household terms in our apartment, and one night while we were watching our favorite nightly news program, Philip said, "One of those news anchors is named Chris Egert. Isn't that the name of the guy who owns the house on Dauphin that we like?" We brought up the property on the appraiser's website, and sure enough, there he was, good old Chris.

Knowing exactly who owns the place and what he does for a living — that I see him every night in my living room — doesn't help this weird little obsession of mine. Today I went online to hunt down info on the owners of another house we really like, and I found out they are gay local filmmakers. I'm not sure what that tells me about what we have in common as kindred souls who both found something special in a particular house, but it makes for a good story at any rate.