For me, walking into a house was always an emotional experience. My fascination with lookilooing went back to lonely car rides at night with my mom. “Do you want to drive around the nice neighborhoods?” she’d ask. This was a special thing for us, a treat. We’d slip into the car and head south up Baseline Road to the luxury community called The Lakes. It was the most exclusive neighborhood in Tempe, bordering a man-made lake. Most of the homes had their own docks, although there were little more than wooden rowboats moored to them. Up and down the culs-de-sac we would cruise. We always had to take U-turns slowly because our ’77 Chevy had a shitty turning radius. Also, the muffler was a little loud, and occasionally drapes would move aside as the owners checked to see who was idling in front of their house at 11 PM.

“Imagine how nice your life would be if you lived here,” my mom would say. “They must be pretty happy—these homes cost a hundred thousand dollars.”

This was while my parents were still together. The drive home would be time for her monologue, which always started with, “If only your father made better money. . . .”

Even more than my mother, I was very specific about my dream home, and this Outpost listing had huge curb appeal. My dream home would be classic California Spanish and built in the ’20s or ’30s (the best decades for Spanish), with hardwood floors and two fireplaces, a media room, and renovated bathrooms and kitchen. I would need four bedrooms: one master suite for me, one for an office, one for a guest room (for whom, I had no idea), and one for the baby (who would one day come). I wanted the house’s character to be intact, but with all the modern amenities of a home built in this millennium, complete with Viking range and Sub-Zero.

I didn’t make eye contact with the Realtor. I wanted to convey that I had every reason to be here and that her pesky questions were just getting in the way of my browsing. Figuring my usual combined-income math in my head, I calculated that we could just make the payments on this place if we were buying it together.