Home

There are a lot of sayings that people probably thought were catchy at one point in time, but are in reality pretty stupid.

Home is where your heart is.
Home is where you hang your hat.
There's no place like home.

Perhaps more relevant to the origins of this blog, truck drivers tend to hear a different series of sayings about home.

We'll get you home.
Enjoy excellent home time.
Home every night/week/two weeks...

I saw a sign outside an apartment complex in the Flint area recently.  The sign said, "If you lived here, you would already be home."  I'm almost certain that I've heard this slogan before, so the apartment people weren't breaking any new ground here.  And no, I don't have any desire to call the Flint area my home.  I'm sure the folks up there are swell people and all, but the town hasn't exactly gotten any better since our buddy Michael Moore's initial stab at propaganda.  It did get me thinking though.

The topic of 'already be[ing] home' has been on my mind quite a bit over the past few months.  Plenty of people have a lengthy commute every day and they don't mind it for one reason or another.  As for me, my commute is usually less than a half hour... and it makes me absolutely miserable.  It's not that the process of driving for a half hour is a big deal or anything.  My vocation... well... you get that part.  It's that the commute seems so utterly pointless.

I know a fella who lives in Clarkston and drives an hour to and from Dearborn, where he works, every day.  Why does he do it?  His job in Dearborn is pretty big-time.  His home in Clarkston has a private lake and... well shit, just fill in the blanks from there.  I know a fella who lives in Ohio and drives an hour and a half to and from Wyandotte, where he owns a couple of stores, every day.  Why does he do it?  Well, he does own a couple of stores, so that would explain the need to get to work.  And why live so far away?  Horse stables, kids in school, etc.

So what do we have when we examine the ole Godfather's daily drive?  A decent job on one end.  I won't be buying any horses or lakes any time soon, but I earn a comfortable enough living and my job isn't too tough.  On the other end?  A shitty apartment in a shitty neighborhood, shared with an unemployed buddy who obviously isn't contributing much to lighten the load.  This aspect of the commute comes squarely into focus at 2am when I'm headed home from the gym, hoping like hell that I can get to sleep soon enough to catch a few hours of rest before it's time to head back to work the following morning.  Perhaps even more so, it comes into focus when I have a short shift at work.  The choices aren't very appealing when this happens.  I can go to the gym at 8pm or so and fight the crowds.  Or I can drive all the way home, then try to find the motivation to make a second round-trip late at night.  Or I can try to find some form of distraction out in the northwestern suburbs to kill some time before my workout.  Or I can take a nap in my car.  Not exactly an appealing menu of options, although the naps in the car are pretty nice sometimes.

A convergence of events lately has really gotten me thinking.  My unfortunate lodger was recently in Boston for a series of job interviews.  As far as I know, this was his first serious crack at leaving the ranks of the unemployed since 2007.  He was asked to stay in town for a few follow-up interviews, so maybe there's a chance that he's moving out of town.  My lease is up either at the end of February or the end of March.  I got a free month when I moved in here, so I'm not sure exactly when the official lease year begins.  In either case, it's time to either renew for another year or do something different.  "If you lived here, you would already be home."  That one just seems to make a lot of sense to me.  The "here" tends to be somewhere in or around Livonia, where I work.  My gym is only a few miles away from the trucking terminal and the area is pretty nice, so I started looking around at the lodging options.

Until I'm prepared to drop at least $40-50,000 on a down payment (which is to say - not right now), I don't intend to take on a mortgage.  I've seen too much of the upside-down stuff in Michigan over the past several years.  That ain't my style.  If I'm gonna buy a house, I'll do so with such an arrangement that my equity will never be negative, no matter what.  Perhaps that day will come and perhaps it won't, but it's not here at present.  Real estate prices are relatively low, so it's tempting, but I'm still socking money away for plenty of golf in Ireland during my waning years and such.

So I'm a renter for the time being.  You know about us renters, right?  That class of people who take it in the ass while the politicians try to protect homeowners who are in over their heads.  We get a shitty interest rate on our savings accounts and bonds as a result of Fed manipulation.  Our rents don't fall as market forces should dictate that they would, since there's some kind of vested interest in propping up housing prices.  Yeah, I'm one of those people.  Long story short - there were numerous rental homes available in Livonia, but only a few within my preferred price range.  Only two of them seemed to me that they would be better than an apartment in Northville or Novi (or so forth).  I settled on one... and someone else got it before me.  So I got the other one.  Good enough.  Now, when I leave work or the gym at night, I'll pretty much "already be home."  And that's a good thing.

The funniest part of the deal involves the whole roommate situation.  My buddy seems to think he has a good shot at getting one or two job offers from the Boston excursion, but for now he's still here.  And my youngest brother has apparently signed on to split the rent and the bills for my new house in Livonia.  Just as I thought I would be done with having a roommate, it appears that I'll have two, at least for a while.  The house has three bedrooms and plenty of space, but shit.  Where are the gorgeous women who need a place to rest?  How did I end up with these two?  I don't know, man.  They say that the Lord works in mysterious ways.  We'll see how it goes.