When you own a house (read: when the bank has had your balls in a sling), you get used to certain things. There's the pleasure of coming back to the same place, decorated how you want it (to the best of your budget's abilities). You get used to the creaky stair at the top but one, that you try to step over so as not to disturb the puppy. You get used to the sound of the air conditioning kicking on, to make sure the Vegas summers are mostly liveable. I guess it's mostly about the noise. I'm used to the aforementioned step, and a/c. I'm used to the buzz from the light that the HOA decided, in their infinite wisdom, to mount on the exterior of my bedroom. There's the sliding patio door, the front door, the fridge kicking on, the microwave beep, the dishwasher and washer and dryer.

But then there's the noises you think you hear. My condo is pushing twenty, and it wasn't fantastically built. None of the houses in Vegas are. But it's mine until the bank decides to kick me out or lets me sell it for less than I owe, whichever comes first, and I pay attention to its moods.

The summer I first moved in, I was flush with the excitement of being a first-time homeowner. I'd never planned on buying a house, I saw myself as a more footloose and fancy free type, content to roam the earth like Caine (except without the mysticism and kung fu). Then something snapped inside, and I decided it was time to try being a grown-up. I would accept real responsibilities. I would buy a house! And it was everything I thought, until that summer when I realized what owning a wood-and-plasterboard (I hesitate to use the word) construction meant.

It meant when things broke, I had to fix the damn things or call someone in who could. That summer, my roommate handed me the towel rod from her bathroom. It had fallen out, because the wall was soggy. How the fuck does a wall get soggy? A wall gets soggy when the runoff pipe for your a/c compressor in the attic gets clogged with insulation, causing the water to seep through the ceiling and walls. Not fun, and if it had gone on any longer there would have been major damage. But I spent an hour in the roof, with a saw and a pipe patch kit, and fixed the problem.

Two nights ago (and this is where the noises part comes in), I thought I heard dripping. Jumped out of bed, listened to the wall I thought it was coming from, and panicked. Spent ten minutes in the roof, feeling for water, listening for water, because I was buggered if I was going to let the ceiling collapse this close to moving out. It turned out that nothing was wrong, there was nothing leaking, but owning a house has made me completely paranoid about the slightest little change in noise.

Why am I even writing this? It's a pretty mundane story as far as stories go. It's definitely not as exciting as the train ride through Morocco, or camping out in a Swedish park, or running automation even. I think I'm writing it, because soon I won't be a homeowner. I don't know how long it's going to take, but the condo's on the market, and a lawyer has been hired because the the thing's 'worth' about $140k less than I owe on it. At a time when a lot of my friends are buying houses, starting families, I'm doing the opposite. And I've never written much about owning a house. I've wasted six and a half years of living in my own place and not talked about it as much as I should have. So when I move out and no longer own my own abode, I guess I'll miss the small familiar sounds. I'll miss the first fireplace I tiled myself, and the way I can hear the pigeons that perch on top of the chimney. I'll miss the creaky step, and the buzz of the light. I'll miss the drip of water and the panic of moist drywall.

But I won't miss having to fix the bloody things myself.