Life on a Golf Course

It so happens that we are living on a golf course. This is funny in many ways, the funniest of which being the fact that none of us play golf in any way (except for mini golf. A few of us are very enthusiastic about mini golf. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we are not living on a mini golf course.) Even my MIL, whose house it is, does not play golf--which is a good thing, since, as you may know, golf is not cheap (not even when you live on a course, as it turns out), and living on a course you could not afford to play on would be awfully bitter.

However, there are a lot of things to like about living here. As the entrance gate swings shut behind you and you drive from the clubhouse to your house that is only a LITTLE bit like a dormitory room, the road swings up and over a lovely swell, with a great view to the east and west, over closely-shorn parkway, with a beautiful shaggy willow creek running through the middle. There's a pond, with cattails and ducks. All of the painfully tidy houses open onto green space (even if that green space is only about ten feet wide). It's very tranquil out here. Especially when all of the visiting grandkids have gone home. Ahem. It's very safe. And it's very...how shall I say this?...free from the sorts of aggravations that come with living in other, less regulated places. No loud music. No free-roaming cats. No unleashed dogs or uncleaned poo. No unsightly yards or driveways. The homeowners' regulations, coincidentally, read a bit like a list of somebody's pet peeves (one of the rules says that if you put a non-American flag in your flag-bracket [ALL of the houses have flag brackets], you must also have an American flag up, and the American flag needs to be on top).

So...pretty much the four of us (plus our frequently unleashed dog) stick out like a passel of unwelcome gypsies. Every time the gate closes behind me I glance furtively at the houses on either side and sink a little lower in my seat. Every time I run through the neighborhood on my morning jog I feel like an interloper, like I need to say loudly to everyone who cheerfuly greets me that we are ONLY here for really, a FEW more days, we should be GONE by next weekend, I SWEAR it.

And actually? This might be true. The hardwood is going down in our bedroom as I write. By this weekend we may be moving back in. Still no kitchen, but man. It will be nice to be home.

Misplaced Persons

I stop by the house three or four times a week--I water the plants, I pick tomatoes, I get the mail, I check on the progress of the floor/ framing/ etc. The kids come with me and get stuff from their rooms or they sit in the car and do homework or they hop around in the front yard, peering up and down the street for signs of their friends. I do this a little bit, too. Then I sigh wistfully and think how this was such a great neighborhood when we used to live here.

Then I remember: oh yeah, I still DO live here. Sort of.

After only a week and a half at my MIL's I feel like we've moved out. The house is so gritty and beat down that it is not at all a pleasant place to be (and oh, the yard, it is in a dreadful shape, white and baked and dry). But I miss being able to walk to the library and the store. I miss being five minutes from the kids' school. I miss my running routes. I miss talking to all the neighbors, even the ones who irk me just a little bit.

The house is progressing. The hall and bedrooms have black tarpaper down (I guess this is what they put between the subfloor and the floorboards.) The laundry room has hardiback subfloor, ready for tile. The front room is promisingly filled with bright new yellow lumber. Progress is on the horizon.

But meanwhile I wake every morning in a tidy white duplex on a golf course, go for a run beneath the stars, wave at the active 55s-and-over who wave back ever so slightly accusingly (aren't you and your children what we moved here to get AWAY from? uh, probably so.) I walk Costi on the lush green lawns and when I scoop her poop into the bags, as often as not a little crinkly crabapple leaf sneaks in too. It's starting to be fall, and I long to be home.

Heritage Honkerknockers

Had to get the emission test on the car today, which entailed a tour de suburbs, branching out from my own little suburban enclave...into other people's suburban enclaves. Many of which I was familiar with from our house-hunting extravaganza last spring. And...they are all so overwhelmingly similar it kills me. Yes, I know. Suburbs=samity-same blandness is not exactly an original proposition, or even a very accurate one. And yes, even I can tell the difference between the most contrasting of the suburbs. Heritage Greens, for example, which I had the misfortune to get stuck in once on an inadvertently very long run, has an abundance of spartan, spotless houses and absolutely no footpaths, bikepaths, or pedestrian exits of any sort. Heritage Village has a mind-boggling number of cul-de-sacs, and is also surprisingly hilly. Heritage Heights has fantastic views and is also fantastically close to a high-tension powerline (these were the houses we visited saying things like, "$250K for 3000 square feet? And the house is in nice condition? What's that about--oh" as we saw the three-story power tower in the backyard. Ohhhh.) Palos Verdes has a shabby seventies vibe to it, as well as a large proportion of residents in their seventies. Palos Verdes also has a schizophrenic approach to house style--on one street you might find a spectacular modern house, with 20-degree angles on the corner windows, a flat roof, and dramatic carport architecture. Next door, a Tudor-style house with distressed bricks and authentic-looking beams. Next to that, an adobe house, and next to that, your basic unadorned split-level ranch.

Yet, despite the style-of-the-month feel, none of the houses here really feel different. The same with the hundreds of Heritage This and Hunter's Run That suburbs that make up the densely settled Urban Growth Boundary of southern Denver: they all seem like they present basically the same solution to urban/ suburban living. Over and over and over again: one answer. Not the worst answer--most of these suburbs, with the wretched exception of the hermetic Heritage Greens, are very pedestrian-friendly, with stores, schools, and libraries within walking or biking distance. There are bike paths galore, and a decent light rail system. The various homeowners' associations clearly differ on the importance of bluegrass and lawn water, but thanks to some wicked dry summers, even the golf-course-iest of them at least acknowledge the usefulness of xeriscape. Still--still. One answer.

I'm not even sure what the other answers are, just that I'd like to take a peek at them (and preferably within the Urban Growth Boundary, not outside it). Co-housing, maybe. A development of 50% off-the-grid solar-and-geothermal houses. A development of underground houses. Houses built around community gardens, or of all-native materials, or 100% xeric landscaping. You know?