My So-Called Little House Life

We truly live the Little House on the Prairie lifestyle. Our rented home is smaller than the Ingalls, so we have to sleep in a futon that was once very expensive. Promised to not be like all the other futons, it behaves just the same and breaks our backs. The other night I was having popcorn in bed like Pa used to do, made from scratch the old fashioned way on the one eye that works on our old fashioned stove. I have to cook all my meals and cannot go to restaurants because I have celiac disease and the risk is too great. I feel like I am cooking morning, noon and night and we don't even have kids yet. Prep room in our kitchen is ridiculous. To have a simple snack like popcorn is a major production.

The wind whips rattling the windows, lights flicker for no reason. All our plumbing leaks, the tub feels like it's gonna go through the floor. Our kitchen table has betrayed us as well. At each sitting it wears like a pile of kindling. No matter how hard we fight them, mice sneak in when you least expect it, no matter how clean and organized we are. Old houses can suck major.

So I'm lying there next to my partner in the barren light from our small lamp because the outlets can't handle anything stronger, and I realized I'm living the dream, the simple 'I wish it were like the olden days' ideal so many folks run on. My lovely books are getting the beatdown of a lifetime because they stay in lousy crates (no space ) and my partner's clothing obsession has had to be halted because in Walnut Grove there's no room for more than one set of clothes.

I know the peeps up in NYC complain about cramped quarters, but down here it's tight too. I don't know how Charles and Caroline did it. I know it's selling out well aware the charm will be gone, but our next place has got to be new, with no mice, central heat and air, and maybe if we are good the rental gods will bless us with a stove that works.