“It’s a crisp little block home,” my husband chortles.

He is repeating the brokerage blurb we read together the day before, laughing. At the moment, I don’t feel like laughing. We are buying a house. No, we are talking about buying a house. And I am feeling the weight of adulthood and its enjoining twin, responsibility.

“Crisp. As in corn flakes.” I attempt lightheartedness. “Or a cracker. But a house should not be crisp.”

He takes my hand as we walk over the soggy, uneven stretch of grass between our car and the tiny 480-square-foot house. There is an attractively potted palm just right of the door. Cute, really. In the way that palm trees at Christmastime are cute.

It is wintertime, 2007. There are tenants in the block home and, since the seller is in Mexico, they have to be there to let us in. So at six o’clock on a Thursday evening we are standing inside the house looking around, feeling awkward because the tenant is lingering by the kitchen sink watching us. Are we supposed to engage him? I wonder. Instead, after a brief introduction, I try to pretend he’s not there. It takes concentration to imagine myself living here. My fifteen month-old daughter is squealing and has taken off after one of his cats, which gives me a moment to look around.

The walls are white, textured, and the plaster around each window has been rounded. This last detail gives both rooms of the bungalow a soft aspect. And it is warm inside. Sometimes cinder block structures leak heat like a sieve, but in this home they are insulating. Which encourages me, because efficient heating will counterbalance replacing the cigarette laden, ivy-colored carpet that will undoubtedly mean another chip out of our liquid assets.

“Nicer than I thought it would be,” says our realtor to me in a low tone reminiscent of sharing a secret. I must look stressed out, because he clarifies his statement. “More ample, I mean, for such a small space.”