But then I had this experience at the pizza place, and had to share it.

Earlier this week, I headed up to Forbes Avenue, to Biketek, and after a wonderful introduction by Frank The Bike Guy and a spin around the parking lot, fell madly enough with this sweet cherry of a commuter bike. She’s a Felt Cafe 8 Deluxe, known as a “European” commuter bike, i.e., comfortable, tricked out with a fender and rack, and cute as a button. And I got her for $100 less that quoted on the site.

How can you say no to that face?

I rode her out of the store an hour after entering, pumped my out-of-shape legs furiously up a grand total of four blocks, and a big downhill later, arrived home, legs trembling. I knew it was bad, but not that bad.

Since my first ride two days ago, I’ve tried riding her as often as I could, and grabbed an opportunity tonight to swing by Aiello’s for dinner. I got her in the door and leaned her against the beer case and, after ordering my antipasto salad and pepperoni rolls, the guy tossing pizzas said, “Nice bike. You know what it reminds me of?”

“What?”

“How old are you?”

“Guess.”

The kid with the pizza board said, “Nineteen.” I laughed.

The guy tossing pizzas said, “36.”

“YES!” I said. “How’d you know?”

He nodded at the bike. “PeeWee Herman.”

My mouth dropped open. I laughed for five minutes. I hadn’t noticed the resemblance, not at all; even though Eliza begs to watch “PeeWee Bicycle” once a week, still, I hadn’t noticed that I’d driven out of BikeTek with the 2012 women’s equivalent of this.

I suddenly really, really want a fully enclosed side basket.

And thus, the Aiello’s pizza guy (who, it turns out, was born in September 1975, a month after me) unintentionally named my bike. I thought about PeeWee, but she’s so obviously all woman. So who could be her namesake but the spunky bike geek with the crush?

Embedding disabled, so click the image for the clip.

I introduce the world to Dottie. Dottie Herman.

P.S. Yes, Dottie: there’s a little bit of you in her, too.

The first thing I did was run for the signature on the cabinets. They’re not St. Charles, but they ARE Geneva cabinets. (I’d show you the signature but it’s blurry.) According to this excellent article at RetroRenovation.com, Genevas were probably the second-most-popular kitchens back in the day, just ahead of the more upscale St. Charles. When the seller’s realtor stopped by, she revealed that her brother had lived in the house, and they repainted the cabinets by–get this–autobody detailers. Apparently that’s the best way to go with steel cabinets, because they’re the only ones good enough to get a high, even sheen. This is an upside to moving into an insular neighborhood: everyone knows everyone, who lived where, and how they painted your vintage cabinets.

Just because I love them so much, here’s another picture. This features three of my favorite cabinets: the drawer under the double ovens, the ventilated cabinet with a pull-out shelf, and the broom closet on the end. Seriously. It’s a broom closet.

Granite countertops, new tile backsplash--and they left the cabinets. Bless!

One of the quirks we noticed in the house is that nearly every wall is wallpapered. We didn’t notice it at first, because almost all of said wallpaper is painted over. Like, with a lot of paint. The entire front hall, steps, and bedroom hallway are all painted-over wallpaper, and when I opened the coat closet, I found the original wallpaper.

Can you see the glitter? It's gilded.

The living area has wallpaper on the walls and the ceiling, and it’s over plaster. Which means we won’t be able to remove the wallpaper, for fear of taking out giant chunks of the wall. As no one is staying in the house on a life sentence for which he’s innocent, that’s not really ideal. One of my colleagues, who’s an architect, suggested we just lay drywall over top of the wall and go with that. Could be!

In the basement, while the inspector was judging the safety of the 21-year-old water heater, I took a closer look at our laundry tub and realize she’s no ordinary laundry tub. She’s a cast iron behemoth. She’ll need a little epoxy along the bottom, but I feel safe just knowing she’s in the house. In case, you know, the bomb ever drops and I need a place to hide the girls.

Mama Tub: 600 pounds of old-fashioned scrubbin'.

We made a load of other decisions as well, of course, and took many notes, most of which I’m sure I’ll be sharing with you. But before you go, a little light to shine on your day. These beauties hang in the front and upstairs hall, and they’re like little fortresses of solitude, lighting up the darkness in a sassy grandma kind of way.

Shine on, crazy light fixture!

But… that’s not to say she’s perfect. I mentioned the leather wallpaper, for instance. I didn’t mention the wall-to-wall carpeting (not sure about the state of the floors underneath), nor did I mention the years of paint globbed over 1950s textured wallpaper. (That’ll be another post.)

The first thing I noticed about the kitchen was: shiny! Second thing: Electric stove. A gas stove is a must for me, and we’ll be spending most of July moving in; at some point during that process, we’ll be getting rid of the glass-topped flat electric cooktop and installing a sweet honey of a gas cooktop. Haven’t selected one yet, but I see continuous grates in my future.

Glass cooktop, no thanks. But double ovens!

We’ll also likely get rid of the breakfast table and replace it with a giant butcher block and garbage hole: all the space and beauty in the world does not make up for how much I miss David’s genius countertop in San Francisco.

See? You chop the food and then just sweep the leftovers into the trash! Beautiful!

But now that we’ve been scouring sites like Retro Renovation for tips and ideas, I’m realizing our beautiful, soft gray steel cabinetry–which flirted and winked at me when I was touring, no lie–might be more than just a cool original feature: they might actually be St. Charles cabinets, a line that came in various colors and was all the rage in the 1950s. (Our house was built in 1953.) Two years ago Frank Sinatra’s Palm Springs house got an updated version of these cabinets (Viking bought the line, although they’re now discontinuing it).

Retro Renovation has a multitude of articles devoted to the St. Charles line, and even this terrific post showcasing their 1957 ad campaign.

Image from Retro Renovation

The St. Charles color palettes are just gorgeous, but I’m happy the previous owners selected and stuck with gray; it’s a pretty, soft, neutral color that will be an excellent backdrop for accents.

Our home inspection is on Tuesday, so I plan to scour the cabinets for any indication of their provenance. In the meantime, a giant thank-you to our sweetheart’s previous owners, for not tearing them out.

Lusciously Pink!

Head on over and try to win that baby!

And then you know what we did? We bought a house.

What the frack, folks. We bought a mother-flippin’ HOUSE. OK, it’s still technically “under agreement” and they’re doing inspections later this week so we’re crossing our fingers that the reason the current owners are leaving isn’t because it’s got radon-infested termites chewing cisterns in the rafters, but it’s totally a house. With a backyard and a view of the river and trees and bedrooms and a new front-loading washer and dryer. Which I totally threw in the bargaining process, they weren’t going to throw it in the mix but I was so badass and all, “Can we get the washer/dryer, too?” and they were all, “Oh, OK” and I was all “Thanks!” so that teaches you to never bargain with me, because I’m tuff.

Everyone says house-shopping is like dating, and I’m going to jump on that bandwagon and say the same thing. We were in a longish relationship with a gorgeous arts-and-crafts that would have required 25% of its cost to replace the roof, paint it, update the kitchen and find out if the basement would still hold it up. But it was really, really beautiful and we just kept seeing other houses that didn’t match up to it. So Friday morning, on our way to seeing two more houses–these being midcentury, not turn-of–I said, “Unless one of these houses really knocks our socks off, let’s just offer $60k below the asking price on the arts-and-crafts, and see where that gets us. Because I don’t think we’re going to be able to move on until we make a decision on that house.”

Our poor, damaged ex.

And then we went to Vegas and eloped with a perky girl-next-door type while our moody arts and crafts rock star just sat at home, looking forward to our next phone call and writing poetry.

The little cheerleader who stole our hearts.

How do you go from a gorgeous fixer-upper to a split-level mid-century? With an open floor plan and updated kitchen with original metal cabinets, that’s how.

Those are original cabinets. And also a breakfast bar. How did I get here?

Or perhaps the private backyard with a patio just waiting for a lanai, overlooking a river, and property that extends down a hillside?

Did I mention the grill is connected to the house's natural gas line?

It’s definitely not the bedroom wallpapered in leather, I can tell you that. But every marriage takes some work.

I'm sure Gillian will grow to love living inside a saddle.

They’re not even apples and oranges, as our real estate agent said. They’re more like “choosing between ice cream and salad.” My parents thought we wanted “older.” His parents tactfully said it’s “not to their taste.” But we walked in and saw the semi-suburban version of the TARDIS: it’s bigger on the inside. Modest on the outside. It’s this close to being done–just needs a gas cooktop and maybe we’ll get around to un-leathering Gilli’s bedroom eventually. But it also has room to grow, long-term; who wouldn’t love an extra sliding glass door to the patio? And it’s in our current neighborhood–a little further from the store than we are now, but did I mention the basement game room?

I think the thing that really got me, though, was the current owner’s DVD selection. First I saw the full collection of Buffys. And then Supernatural. And also Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potters. I had to keep re-alphabetizing the DVDs because Eliza kept pulling them out, saying, “Star Wars! Flying car Harry Potter!” (Harry Potter comes in three movies: Monster Dog, Flying Car and Bus.) They have a little decorative shelf on their wall displaying a butterbeer mug and magic wand.

To quote a friend of mine: “You’re buying a house from yourself?”

Yes, folks: our far-more-outdoorsy, slightly younger version of us bought the house seven years ago, fixed it up to our as-yet-unspoken specifications, and then were kind enough to sell it to the first bidders who came along: us.

They must have known about our new dining room set and starburst clock.

The wall mirrors will have to go. Sorry, darling.

Bought from craigslist for $400 (with delivery!). And he knows a guy who's got a sixth chair!

This one’s a doozy. So who really cares?

Can't wait to start the search for vintage-y upholstery fabric!

On your walls, you have space! You could hang a clean sock.
Or even a George Nelson starbursty clock!

Bought new from Amazon for $115. Same design, same materials, new clock.

In your corner, what’s that? Is that room for a light?
A light with four globes that’s way outta sight?

Bought from a guy in Ellwood City who's getting rid of all his gold stuff, because he's switching to silver. Thanks, Vaughn!

You knew this would happen, you predicted this fact:
That getting more space would result in more crap.
You had all that room, and you filled it with stuff!
But it all looks so pretty. And I waited enough.

They were on Infection Watch. I was on Get This Baby Out Of Me Watch.

I don’t have to go into all the gory details–longtime readers know the whole story–but I’m compelled to share it because every year, my mother calls and tells me where she was and what she was doing 34… 35… 36 years ago. Fortunately for my girls, they have terrifically dramatic stories, so they can compete for Who Almost Died The Most. I hope they have a good time of it, because they’re not getting any more siblings from me.

On to the fun stuff: It’s Pi Day. Also known as March 14, also known as Baby Gilli’s birthday. (That’s a soft G. NOTE: After some discussion we have decided to change the nickname spelling to Gilli-with-an-i. That is all.) Little Gillian James started out as a teeny preemie, with a perfect little face, a full head of spiky hair, and hands still red from the newness of her skin.

Little Grinchy grin.

She was the star of the NICU, remarkably healthy and robust, and would even grant a little grin to whomever would stroke her cheek the right way. That little grin–which my friend calls “Grinchy”–has won her fans everywhere from the hospital to the park to the old ladies on the street, who can’t help but exclaim, “Look at that SMILE!”

It’s good that she’s so charming, too, because she’s also a little like a Cornish pixie. She’s a tiny little thing, with 9-month sleepers fitting her from top to tail but sagging on her like muumuus. But she’s quick. And into everything. And sometimes, I suspect, she has extendable arms, and that possibly there is more than one of her, that when they performed the C-section they found a second baby in there and didn’t bother telling me.

Climbing, climbing, climbing.

A common morning sounds like this:

“Dang it, Gilli! You spilled my coffee. Let me get these paper towels to clean it–wait! How’d get to the top of the steps? Come back here. Now let me finish cleaning–don’t pull the outlet cover out of the wall! OK, now I have to clean the coffee–right, just stay there. Good girl. Why is she so quiet? HOW’D YOU GET TO THE TOP OF THE STEPS SO FAST?”

And she cheerfully grins, and then sticks the outlet cover in her mouth, just to prove that not only is it useless for its original purpose, but it’s a chokable, too.

She has no fear. She bangs her head six times a day, at least, and only cries if it’s a really good knock. She’s like a little mouse, tiny and quick, and you see movement from the corner of your eye, and then ZIP! She’s gone.

She makes up for her mischief, though, in spades. In fact, she could make up for just about everything with what we’ve started calling the Gilli-Kiss. I don’t know when or why started doing it, but if you’re holding her and say, “Gillian, give me a kiss,” she leans forward and very softly touches her forehead to yours. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever experienced and just steals my heart anew every time.

They're on a boat.

Speaking of whom, Gillian’s favorite person is not me or her father, of course, nor is it Pappy or Grammy or anyone else she’s ever met, because it’s all about Eliza. And Eliza, thank heavens, is all about Gillian. (Well, most of the time.) I knew I’d love having two little sisters toddling around, side by side, but I didn’t know how gratifying it would be to watch their relationship deepen and develop. Yesterday, when Eliza saw Gillian’s birthday present wrapped up, she thought it was for her. When she was told it was Gilli’s birthday tomorrow, she promptly began mixing her bowl of granola with a spoon, and told us she was making Gilli’s birthday cake.

Happy birthday, my little pixie-peanut.

In any case, we managed to make a few trips into our new home in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, and take a quick tour of the neighborhood. It felt like home: two coffee shops, a bakery, a dozen or so restaurants ranging from pizza to gluten-free to Chinese to “Asian-style” (we call that “fusion” in Cali) cuisine, a state store with a reasonable selection and even a major grocery store only six blocks away. Best part? A swell playground two blocks up a very Nob-Hill-like promontory.

And the house? Well, left to its own devices, a tennis ball would definitely roll to a corner of the living room. Some of the locks are about as old as my mom, and it needed a good spit-and-polish, care of the fine young ladies at KD’s Klean Ups. But I’m looking forward to getting in there and Rocketing up the joint.

That's a dishwasher in the lower left corner of the image.

One of the kitchen light fixtures.

The soon-to-be playroom (sans the carpet remnant).

The living room. Is the painting of fission, fusion, or identical twins? You make the call!

My attic office has its own bathroom; the basement has a root cellar that belongs in the Marsten House. So it’s got pluses and minuses. But the landlord is kind, the rent is right, the neighborhood’s fantastic, and IT HAS A PLAYROOM. Like a room where the girls can play, and there’s no Murphy bed, and that’s all they do there.

Check ignition, and let God’s love be with us!

Thanks, Falkor!

It seems, at every step of this process, that things have fallen neatly into place, logistics-wise. I wanted to telecommute; my boss was so thrilled with the idea that he told me to hire some staff to start a team in Pittsburgh.It’s not exactly a promotion–my employer doesn’t do promotions like that; it’s more like “Here’s some more responsibility, show us whatcha got.” My first hire was to be a “support specialist.” In other words, get someone smart to take 30% of your workload, so you can focus on the Big Stuff. The second resume we got brought me a woman who we hired within 24 hours of getting her resume.

Job: Check.

So we started the house-hunting process. We knew we wanted to move into a house: with such a big move, to such a different city, David wanted to be sure we were taking advantage of the decreased cost of living. So we hit Trulia and craigslist, and my folks went house-hunting for the first time in 40 years. Fortunately my mom’s a big fan of HGTV, so she was living a dream. The Luck Dragon hopped onboard Grammy and Pappy’s minivan and worked his magic.

The house is located in Squirrel Hill, exactly the neighborhood we wanted, about three blocks from the main business district. It has three bedrooms, a backyard, a driveway, a finished basement and attic, and–get this–three bathrooms. It comes with a washer, dryer, and laundry tub, along with a full-size stove and dishwasher. David and I goggled at the reasonable rent–the same as we’re currently paying!–and realized the worst thing about the place was the fact that we didn’t have ANY furniture. Keep in mind that we’ve spent years installing Elfa units for our dressers, a Murphy bed (that we’re not bringing with us); we have no dressers, a micro-sized breakfast nook table, and we’re leaving our couch with a friend. Mr. Luck Dragon strolled in, though, and it turns out the owner wanted to move into his new home with as little fanfare as possible. So we’re also getting… a dining room set, two dressers, an A/C window unit, dehumidifier, and space heater. In short, all the things we don’t have, but would need in a full-on house. My parents looked at the place, said we were interested, and the landlord promptly cancelled all his other appointments and emailed me a lease.

House: Check.

And then… moving.

OK, not so much with the Moving: Check. A bout of violent stomach flu brought 75% of the Rockets down in a big way. Much as we stay on top of giving stuff away, we’ve still managed to accumulate a LOT. Every time I expect to look at a room and think, “Wow! Look how much we’ve gotten done!” all I see is more boxes. The upside is, because we have a storage space and have been living boat-like for so long, about half of our belongings were already packed up. And we’ve been able to shuttle boxes to the space every few weeks to make more room.

The funny thing is, I keep expecting to feel some sense of nostalgia for this place. We’ve spent so much time and energy making it into a livable place; I mean, I started a frickin’ BLOG to talk about all the modifications we’ve done. A lot of people have thanked me for that, too, on email, in comments and even in person. But we’ve hit the wall. The Murphy bed was, as we suspected, Project Last Stand, and now we’re desperately trying to figure out what to do with it, because we’re sure as heck not taking it with us.

I feel some twinges, of course. Eliza’s grown into a walking, talking kid here, and she’ll have vague, foggy memories of big windows and a bed that came out of the wall. Gillian won’t remember any of it. We’ll send Christmas cards to our superintendent, Thomas. The owners are gutting the kitchen. They’re re-renting the place for a whopping $2000 a month–a price that made every family in the building, everyone who’d been eyeballing our top-floor corner apartment for so long, shake their heads and say,Wha? I just hope the new renter isn’t a complete asshole, that he or she says hello to Zoe, the three-year-old who visits her great-grandmother Bridget across the wall, that he or she doesn’t mind Zaifa’s newborn baby next door. Which, by the way, will be born a few weeks after we move. That also makes me a little sad.

But then, I think of how the flu had us doing four loads of laundry last week, shoving a total of 36 quarters into old machines six floors down. How I got an emergency work phone call at 6 AM yesterday, and I had to whisper because nothing but plywood separated me from my sleeping husband… and another piece of plywood from my sleeping baby. How the babysitter walked six blocks to get Eliza to a playground, how we don’t have a dining room table, how we have to install carseats every time we go anywhere…

They’re total first world problems. Listen to me bitch. But now that we’ve decided to go, I’m gone. I’ll be able to telecommute once a week. I’ll have a sewing room. David and I will be able to have a nice dinner, at a real table, after the girls have gone to sleep. We’ll be able to open the door and let them run outside into the backyard, and if they barf all over their bedsheets at 2 AM, no big deal; the washing machine’s just downstairs.

Most important, though, was this realization last night, while I was talking to my mom. She’s hoping they don’t get any snow days, because she and my dad want to drive to Chicago to visit my sister and her kids over Easter. As I was thinking about what we’d do for Easter, I thought of my grandmother, who’s 87, and who would be staying alone at my folks’ house over Easter, probably with a quick visit from my brother, and realized: Hey… We could go there for Easter! We could drive down on Good Friday, dye eggs on Saturday, go to the church where I grew up on Sunday morning–with my grandmother! And her great-grandbabies!–and she’ll make a ham, and I’ll make peas and scalloped potatoes, and then that evening we’ll be home in time for The Simpsons.

I talk about the lower cost of living and the house and the job opportunity, but really, it’s about being close to our families.

It’s about going home.

See you soon, G.G.!

I could point to a dozen different points that led me to the decision we’ve made recently, but for me, that’s the moment that stands out: there’s no poop on the street. San Francisco is beautiful, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but it has a serious poop problem, at least in my neighborhood. It didn’t bother me until I had a toddler who routinely bends down and pokes the sidewalk. Now it bothers me a lot.

Point #2: a friend of David’s from high school offered me a job. A year out, he said, but if I’m looking to move, he’s got one waiting for me.

Point #3: I really, really, really hate traveling to visit family over the holidays.

Which led us to a four-hour conversation along the National Highway that boiled down to: maybe we ought to move to Pittsburgh.

The Golden Triangle

I grew up about 50 miles outside of Pittsburgh, but my folks are both from the city. (Although, given that they’ve spent two-thirds of their lives in the country, they’re really from there now.) I said for the longest time I didn’t want to live in southwestern PA again, but I always added this caveat: When my grandmother’s generation is too old to vote, Pittsburgh’s going to be THE place to live. Over vacation, as I watched my grandmother crying as she held Gillian, saying she thought she’d never live to see the day, I thought: Hey, that time is now. Even the Washington Post thinks so.

That probably sounds pretty callous. But for a long time, Allegheny County was old–as old as Miami-Dade County in Florida–and often didn’t want to invest in the things that keep a city thriving. Fortunately, Pittsburgh’s businesses did well on their own: the Steelers could well be renamed the Bankers. Or the Doctors. There’s always been great culture there–Andrew Carnegie, robber baron industrialist extraordinaire, had a great sense of noblesse oblige, and built a handful of museums, and the local universities have taken care of the rest.

But I love San Francisco. I like our apartment–we worked so hard at it! But with the arrival of Gillian, priorities began shifting: I would’ve liked to have my mother around for the bedrest and the NICU and all that. We bought a Murphy bed to get back a few square feet of space. Eliza’s almost 2 1/2, which means she wants to run around. We have to think about the cluster-you-know-what of school selection in SF School District. And honestly? We just don’t have the energy to live in a space so small anymore.

There’s no closing the bedroom door to hide an unmade bed. Letting the dishes linger on the counter. Having a room where the kids leave their toys out, willy-nilly. Where a lot of people go into their basements for their Christmas decorations, we get City CarShare, hop on the freeway and go to our storage space. We install carseats every time we go anywhere by car. These are all things you know, especially if you’ve been reading this blog for a long time.

Here’s a confession: part of the reason I started this blog was to feel better about all those things. It’s OK. It’s no big deal. Sure, it’s a few extra steps, but look! We get to live in downtown San Francisco. I feel a little like we’re selling out–all this time we’ve spent talking about how urban small-space living is great, just fine, and what are we doing? Looking for a three-bedroom house with a finished basement and a real kitchen. But we’ve reached a tipping point: the sacrifices we’re making for our current living situation are beginning to outweigh the benefits. And when that happens, it’s time to cut losses.

The good news is, my company is not only amenable to me working from Pittsburgh, but they want me to start my own team there, a career opportunity that’s as huge as it is surprising. We’re looking at rentals for houses–real houses, with porches and garages–for the same amount of rent we’re currently paying. We’re looking at listings for homes for sale, and it’s not just lookie-loo fantasy shopping. The neighborhoods where we’re apartment-hunting are old, with walkable business districts, tree-lined streets and old brick arts-and-crafts homes. We’ll be able to give the girls a greener life. And we won’t have to count quarters every time we want to do laundry.

No, it’s not San Francisco. I’ll miss my friends here. And also the weather, of course–who’s insane enough to move to Pittsburgh in February? But my long dream-vacation in the city by the Bay has come to an end. And honestly, I have no idea what I’ll be blogging about once we no longer need to build a wall of shelves to hide away extra clothes. We’ll see.