May 05, 2007

I'm Ready to Get Off the Roller Coaster, Please

I started the day by learning that a friend I'd made on a message board has died. She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma several years ago. She was a wife, and mother to two kids, ages 17 and 12. She was 40 years old. Her name is Paula and she lived in Round Rock, Texas.

My dear friend Dixie wrote a beautiful post about her a few months ago, and today she wrote an even more beautiful eulogy for our friend. Please go read them.

My other friend PKB (I have a lot of friends. Have you noticed? I am so, so, so lucky and I hope I'm always able to do right by them.) broke the news to me. I broke the news to Dixie. It was the first time I'd heard her voice in over five years. Dixie lives in Germany, and the last time I heard that sweet Mississippi drawl of hers was in March, 2001, when we were both in Memphis. I've never had to tell someone that she's lost someone dear to her, until today when I did via trans-Atlantic phone call. I can't imagine it feels any better or worse breaking such news in person. It's the kind of news that just sucks all around.

Since I tend towards pessimism/panic/reality, I generally expect phone calls from people who don't normally call me to be bad news. I was hoping Dixie would be the same, but she's not. She sounded excited to hear from me. I hated raising her up just to bring her crashing down.

Dixie wrote about this today, and she did it much better than I can at this point. We cried together, but eventually we were telling each other funny stories and reliving our favorites stories. I think she started it by suddenly bringing up my nut story, which somehow led to her telling this story about a dog shitting in her dad's face, and I'm telling you this as a way of goading Dixie into telling that story on he own blog because my God, it is the funniest, most disgusting story you will ever know.

I don't know if this is a regional thing with southerners and border-staters with Ozarkian tendancies like myself, but we always have the big family get-together after a funeral. Everyone winds up talking, telling stories, laughing, and having a great time, then feeling guilty that we just put someone in the ground and here we are, telling poop and nut stories. Dixie and I had that moment today and agreed that Paula would most certainly approve. She loved her friends. She loved to laugh. We hoped that her spirit was laughing with us.

Clara Jane and I spent the day with PKB, trying to go about as normally as we could. Lunch and coffee, a trip to the yarn shop, painting Clara Jane's fingernails, all interspersed with tiny bits of grief.

My brain and my heart are trying to sort through Paula's death, and how these online friendships can leave such an impact. If she'd simply quit the message board, that would be one thing. Her words would be absent, but I'd know she was in the world, somewhere, even if she wasn't in my life. Now, her words are absent, and I wish I could just pretend that she's in the world, living her life with her husband, son and daughter. And yet, I can't do that and I don't understand why.

As I typed that last sentence, it came to me. This is why I write - it's the only way I can sort through the jumble in my head and figure out anything. The perfect example of why I can't simply pretend is just a few paragraphs up. Dixie. We were on two message boards together. I quit one. A year or two later, she quit the other. We didn't keep in touch, but I knew she was there. She and PKB were still on the board I'd left, so I'd get my Dixie updates on a regular basis.

Then, a little over two years ago, I learned that Dixie had started blogging. We started reading and commenting on each others' blogs. We talked knitting. We found ourselves on another message board together, emailing each other, and partaking in the squirreliest sock-knitting scheme ever.

The point is, I went years without Dixie's words, but I knew she was still there and there was a chance I'd have her in my life again. That's not the case with Paula.

In the midst of all this, we got the best news possible: our bid on the house was accepted. Come June, we'll be out of this horrible neighborhood, living in a beautiful little house in a lovely neighborhood. The kind of place I've always dreamed of living.

I don't think I've cried, laughed, laughed until I've cried, or cried until I've laughed as much in my life has I have in the past 12 hours. Such is life, and I feel a bit like I've lived all the emotions of one in a single day.

Posted by Robin at 08:45 PM | Comments (38)

May 03, 2007

Real Estate 101: How to Sell and Buy Houses

I was going to do a cheeky little run-down of the past five months and the lunacy of the home buying and selling process but fact is, I'm too damn tired and my brain has trickled out of my ears like undercooked oatmeal.

So I'm picking up where I left off, wherever that was.

When we last left our heroine, she was slamming her head against the floor because - oh, the irony! - the same day her crapshack finally sold, the house she wanted had been usurped from under her! Homeless! We're going to be homeless because our buyers want to close at the end of this month and there isn't a single solitary suitable house in all the land! Homeless!

Some melodrama ensued. It wasn't pretty, so I'll spare you.

We did take the offer on our house. Of course, we would have been stupid not to. We made one wee little change to the contract, and we're waiting to hear if the buyer accepts it. If not, no problem. We'll take what they offered.

Upon realizing my intense malaise and penchant for melodrama yesterday, the dear PKB drug me out of my house and said, "Get yourself east of the Mississippi River and let's find you a house." I really didn't want to, since putting on clothes and brushing my teeth seemed like monumental task in my melodramatic state, what with all the time I was spending weeping bitter little tears and flinging the mosaic tile I took from the house I thought would be ours at the stupid fucking dirt bike riders who zoom up and down my street 24 fucking hours a fucking day. But she made me go.

Good thing, too because guess what. We're buying a house. Well, not PKB and me, although we've discussed having that sort of lifestyle. B. and I will be doing the purchasing and living together and whatnot.

Remember back in January, when we first started looking at houses? I really liked the first house we viewed that day, but it was a weird situation. Our brains were already wrapped around The House. We were meeting our new real estate agent for the first time. And, it didn't help that when we opened the door, we were greeted by a very sickly, very startled young woman. Apparently her real estate agent hadn't told her we were coming. She was four months pregnant, on bedrest, being fed via IV, and completely mortified at the condition of her house.

Come on. She was that sick, with two little girls already. If I were her, I probably would have burned my house down at that point. I'd think I was doing well to not have piles of poo throughout the house. Regardless, we looked very quickly. I saw enough to know I liked the house. B. nixed it.

On Tuesday night, when I was frantically trying to find a new house through the bitter, bitter, bitter tears, that was one of the houses I was trying to find. It didn't appear on any of the real estate websites I checked. Neither did the other two houses we liked.

So, yesterday. PKB and I started at one end of Prettytown and commenced driving up and down every street in search of for sale signs. Lo and behold, where did we see one? The Bedrest House.

Long story short, B. and I took another look today through new eyes. We're making an offer tomorrow. Hopefully, by the end of the weekend, we'll be on our way to calling it home.

Posted by Robin at 04:03 PM | Comments (21)

May 01, 2007

And Not One Single Person's Answering the Damn Phone

In this age of hyper-connectivity, I can count on being able to reach anyone, at any time, within seconds.

So why is it that, at this very moment, I can't get ahold of anyone on the goddamn phone so I can say this outloud...

WE SOLD THE CRAPSHACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by Robin at 08:00 PM | Comments (23)

April 29, 2007

Paint it Neutral

When B. and I bought our house eight years ago, the first thing we did - before we moved any furniture into the house, even - was paint. It wasn't just about freshening up the new place; it was eradicating our new home of every single bit of eggshell off-white. We hate eggshell off-white. Do I strike you as an eggshell off-white type? Of course not, because I'm not.

If you've ever taken a glance at my Flickr account, you've undoubtedly noticed just how not eggshell off-white our house is. There's the dark purple dining room/office, the kicky red kitchen, the blood-splattered red nightmare bedroom, and my character-filled vintage aquamarine living room. I love it all. Well, except for the blood-splattered bedroom. I got tired of it during the early days of this millinium, but it's a pain to move the bedroom furniture out and repaint.

But alas, it's all coming to an end. Our current real estate agent keeps encouraging us to "neutralize", which sounds a whole lot like "neuter". I swore that I wouldn't be like the idiots on Sell This House who get all, "But I can't remove my collection of 457 moldy old teddy bears from the entryway! Otherwise my house won't communicate who I am as a person!" Shut it and start shoving bears in a Hefty bag, Dumbass. This isn't about self-expression; it's about ditching your mite-filled crapshack. I swore that I wouldn't get sentimental about making changes to this house because it would mean we'd be that much closer to a great new house, where we'd have even more opportunities for self-expression.

And yet, this neutralizing the walls business hurts a bit.

At the start of the day the room looked a bit like this:

Purple walls, black and white photos of the Gateway Arch I took a few years ago, surrounded by gothy candles sconces, all contrasted with bright white woodwork and a wallfull of windows.

I remember the night we painted the dining room Grape Ape Purple. It was Halloween, 2002, back in those pre-parenthood days when two gallons of dark purple paint seems like a reasonable impulse purchase. I was throwing a party two days later and decided I was tired of the monochromatic teals (still visible in the hall at right) and simply must have a purple dining room to make the party really swing. B. and I spent the evening painting the room in a candy-fueled frenzy. And it was worth it. That party was a great one that included a 12-year-old boy kicking the asses of a bunch of drunk engineers at Jenga.

Around 3:30 this afternoon, my Grape Ape walls were transforming into Sugar Wafer:

I didn't cry, although I almost did on Friday when I bought the paint. The guy mixing it asked what I was painting with two gallons of Sugar Wafer. I slobbered all over his counter about how we're trying to sell our house and in doing so I have to sacrifice my beautiful colors that express who I am so well and you might as well just cut off my ponytails, take away my red lipstick, and permanently break my blog while you're violating my rights of self-expression, you imagination-free troglodytes.

By dinnertime, every muscle in my back hurt and I had this:

I don't think "Sugar Wafer" aptly describes this shade of non-color. I think a better name would be "Drunk Tank Cream". I mean, just look at it. If this color was on cinder block walls, it would scream, "government-run institution!".

I know it actually looks decent. It's got that fresh paint clean thing working for it. And I'll admit, we were long overdue for a new coat. That little hallway hasn't been painted since we moved in and I've never been happy with it. But this is just one small hallway and part of a room. If all goes according to plan, the rest of the dining room, our bedroom, and the living room will be Drunk Tank Cream by the end of the week. The red kitchen stays.

$40 in paint, hours of sweat equity, and damage to my psyche. This better do the trick.

Posted by Robin at 08:31 PM | Comments (11)

March 20, 2007

Welcome to the Neighborhood! Here's Your Fine

As many of you know, I don't live in St. Louis City proper. I live in St. Louis County, which is comprised of hundreds of wee little municipalities, all with their own government, police forces, and rules. It's a great way to combine all the downfalls of city life - traffic, noise, pollution, overcrowding, and crime - with all the downfalls of suburban/small-town life - busybodies, petty bureaucracy, and Barney Fife wandering the streets with his bullet in his pocket.

My municipality's population hovers around 4000. While we have plenty of big-city problems, like the illegal, unlicensed tattoo shop across the street, it seems that the insignificant small-town issues take precidence.

Yesterday afternoon I sat in my dining room with a super-secret craft project spread all over the table, when the phone rang. It was my real estate agent, once again proving that he's not exactly as competant as we had hoped. Seems that he had called and left a message yesterday morning that some people wanted to look at our house. Unfortunately, he didn't call our phone number - any of the four phone numbers he has for us. Instead, he called another client and left them a message. So, somewhere, another client was doing the House Prep Panic Dance while I sat on my happy crafting ass in total oblivion of the real estate agent and potential buyer outside my house.

At least they had the forsight to call my agent and tell him that I was home, instead of just busting open the lock box and coming right in, thus giving me a scare that there isn't enough Klonopin in the world to undo. My agent then called me and told me the situation. No problem! I went outside, told the showing agent and potential buyers that all was well. Ignore the clutter; I've been packing, and there's a big project cluttering the table. I'll be in the backyard with my dogs. Take your time. Buy my house. Please? Please please please please please please please?

Five minutes after I settled into my Adirondack chair in the yard, the agent hollered, "We're finished!". Now, my house is only 970 square feet plus basement, but there's no way people can view it in that short amount of time. Thanks for interrupting my day.

A few minutes later, B. arrived home from work. Since our neighbor, the plumber, was outside, B. came in just long enough to tell me he was going back outside to ask the plumber for some advice on fixing our leaky bathtub drain. That's where he also got the skinny on why the potential buyers made such a hasty exit.

Seems that, during their mere five minutes in our neighborhood, a member of our fine, illustrious police force opted to give them a parking ticket.

Um, yeah. Remember last week when the garbage truck couldn't get down our street because the dunebuggy builders had 4927 cars parked on the street? Oh, but these were strangers! They must be punished!

I would understand if they'd, say, perpendicular parked across my street. Or perhaps if they had a live crack whore for a hood ornament. But a ticket for a car parked slightly illegally for five minutes? It's a good thing Sgt. Fife's bullet was in his pocket, otherwise we'd all be dead for such a horrid offense.

Something tells me that these potential buyers won't be making us a sweet offer today. Just a hunch.

Posted by Robin at 09:22 AM | Comments (4)

March 04, 2007

How the Weekend Really Went

Due to much screaming in the night on Friday from a fevered, ill child, the fabric-shopping didn't happen. I don't doubt that Clara Jane was sick. Believe me, a person who's well doesn't sweat that much. Or scream that much, for that matter. B. made a midnight run to Walgreens to buy a new thermometer. We're such good parents that we no longer had one.

According to the new $30 thermometer, Clara Jane's temperature was 96.3 degrees. That would have concerned me, except my temperature registered the same as hers and I felt fine. Despite that, I thought it best to cancel the fabricing and the thrifting to prevent our younger shopping partner from getting sick.

This meant that, while B. worked in the yard, I was in the house with Clara Jane, doing everything in my power to prevent her from destroying the house before the 12 - 2:00 lookers arrived.

The bad news: As evidenced by Clara Jane's declaration that mushrooms make her sick (they don't), she's discovered the power of illness. "I'm sick. I need _______________________ (orange juice, cookies, a set of monkey wrenches, my own wheels, world domination, whatever you're having) to make me feel better." That's what I've heard all weekend.

Does this child look sick to you?

I didn't think so. That was recorded on Saturday morning, when I could have been shopping with Beqi instead of frantically trying to protect the sanctity of my clean, tidy house.

(For the record, Clara Jane's become a YouTube junkie. This dance was inspired by watching the damn kitty cat video eight bazillion times.)

This time the people had the manners to actually come inside and look at the house. Whether they buy it or not, we don't know. They'd better, because we spent an hour at our new house today and let me tell you, I didn't want to leave. I took a lot of pictures. Like this one:

My dear, darling, wonderful pal PKB joined us, along with her 7-year-old son, who Clara Jane believes was sent from the heavens above to be her personal entertainment center. Luckily, Lil' B. adores Clara Jane, and my oh-so-sick child spent the time playing football.

B., ever the pragmatist, noticed all the imperfections we missed last time we saw the house. Things like a leaky toilet, and ... I can't remember. I sort of tuned him out and thought about all the new things I noticed: the amber glass doorknobs throughout the house, the entryway light fixture that looks like boobies, the ceramic tile floor in the downstairs bathroom ...

PKB and I spent a great deal of our time leaning against walls and talking. Not just about the house, but about the stuff we always talk about, all while the kids ran through the house, laughing and playing.

It feels like home. Unlike our current house. B. finally got the last of the storm debris under control yesterday. Today, he went to the roof to clear off some branches. Seems that one of the branches, possibly flung down, dagger-style, by the hand of God Almighty, had broken several laws of physics and impaled our roof. For awhile it was looking like we were going to get eight years out of this house without making an insurance claim. Guess not.

Maybe tht's why those people didn't view our house on Friday. Perhaps from the street, they could see that our roof had a giant stake through it. "We would prefer to not live in a housecicle. Let's move on."

Before B. made this discover, I stood in the backyard at the new house with PKB, flung out my arms and said, "Look! No trees to fall down!" I never thought I'd consider that a selling point in a house but let me tell you, I've officially had enough of these sorry leafy-assed motherfuckers.

Oh, I'll plant trees at the next house. I'm going to plant those teeny-tiny little Japanese maples that will forever remain smaller than me. Perhaps I'll occasionally punch them in their teensy little tree necks.

Posted by Robin at 09:16 PM | Comments (6)

February 04, 2007

Real Estate! No, really!

It's taken over my life. I'm sorry.

By this time tomorrow, we'll know if the house - what has become our dream house - will be ours.

Our house has been shown once a day, every day, since it went on the market Thursday morning. It's a weird sense of limbo, always waiting for the phone call, telling us we've got an hour to get our crap together. We're getting better at it. If nothing else, this experience has taught us a lot about clean house maintenance. Instead of cleaning once a month when the clutter gets so bad I start having panic attacks, we're trying this new thing. It's called "straightening up every night". It's a wonderful technique. I highly recommend it.

We had to be out by 11 this morning for today's showing. I spent yesterday afternoon making a Mardi Gras tutu for Clara Jane to wear to the Mardi Gras Children's Art Fair. The plan: we'd drop off the dogs, grab lunch, and head down to the festivities.

The reality: Clara Jane ate tacos in her tutu at our favorite Mexican joint. We picked up the dogs and some ice cream, and went home at the first possible moment, where I promptly zonked out for two hours.

I'm tired of not being home, and that's saying a lot, because I never want to be home. I love to be out. When even I'm wanting to be a homebody, it's severe. I'm not complaining, though. Not even a little. I'm thrilled that our agent is so motivated and is working so hard for us. It's worth being vagabonds, although I'm sure my dogs would disagree.

At least the tutu didn't go to waste. We simply told her that she's a part of the Grande Shaque de Crappe Cleanup Krewe and put her to work:

Later, dancing was involved. Lesson learned: no more Hurricanes for the baby.

When we're not fleeing the house so people can look at it, we're doing one of two things: 1) making it more presentable, and 2) setting boobie traps to make sure the house is being shown and we're not running around like fugitives for nothing.

Our house is in pretty good shape, crapshack jokes aside. It could be better, but I think that being completely fed up with the house and neighborhood for two years blinded us to the perks of our house. Yesterday, our buyer's agent, who's been in this business nearly as long as I've been alive, raved about our beautiful hardwood floors. He asked if they were new. No, they're the originals, which we never refinished after ripping out the carpet.

When B. and I look at the hardwood floors, we don't see how pretty they are. We see the rows and rows and rows of staples and screws placed in the floors by the previous owner, who surely suffered through the days before viable treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorders became readily available and didn't involved taking a few volts to the noggin.

Last night I took a little tour through the house and photographed some of the things we might consider changing to improve our chances of a speedy sale.

Remove the dinner plate from the cookbook shelves in the hallway, far from where the plates are stored.

Remove reminders of Tequilafest '07.

One toddler's mural masterpiece, which extends the length of the long hallway wall, is a potential buyer's red nightmare.

Truth in advertising is the ethical way to go. Despite the presence of a toilet and Pottypalooza in our single bathroom, this doesn't give us the right to claim more than one bath.

A wine recommendation, written on an advertisement for a popular prescription antidepressant and prominently stuck to the breadbox tells potential buyers that the current owners are drunk, crazy, and will almost certainly forget they've moved. You'll find them curled up in the backyard, sleeping under the clothes dryer vent sooner or later.

Posted by Robin at 08:07 PM | Comments (3)

February 01, 2007

The Serendipity House

Remember how, yesterday, I said that I talk about four things? Scratch that. We're down to one thing. Real estate. All day, all night, all the time.

Let's recap the Saga of the House We Love in Prettytown:

October: I found a house for sale in the neighborhood I like. Despite house being slightly out of our price range, I fall head over heels solely because the chimney has a crescent moon and star in the masonry.

November: Seller drops price of house by $14,000, putting it directly into our price range. B. makes appointment to view house, even though our house is nowhere near market-ready. "Either we'll love the house and it'll motivate us to sell, or we'll hate it and can stop obsessing," was his logic. No matter. Someone put a contract on the house two days before our appointment. We stop obsessing.

One Thursday in January: Okay, so maybe I didn't completely stop obsessing. I drove by the house and the "for sale" sign was back. B. and I discussed how we really need to get our house listed.

I spent that night at a hotel. My goof, I intended to book for the following night, but screwed up.

Or did I? Desk clerk at the hotel is a real estate agent, the son of the owner of a very well-established local agency. By the end of the night I had comparative reports for my neighborhood slid under my door, and appointments to view four houses the following Saturday, including that house we love.

That Saturday: We view four house and have to be forceably removed from that one we love. We really love it.

Two days later: We start paperwork to get our house listed.

The day after that: I went to the house's website to get property tax info for our mortgage guy. House is no longer listed. Let the self-medicating commence!

In the three weeks that have followed, we've thrown ourselves into getting our house ready to sell, keeping our options open. We keep looking at other houses in Prettytown and have found two we love. Not as much as the first house, but we love them enough to consider purchasing them when our house sells.

Three days ago: We buried St. Joe in the front yard and I keep telling Joe that I believe in him. I do. I'm believing as hard as I can over here.

Last night we got a call from our agent. The owners of that house we really love have decided to not rent it, as they'd originally said when they took it off the market. But they don't want to relist. They don't know what the hell they want to do, so they told their former agent to call our agent, as well as the people who had the contract fall through in December.

About an hour ago, we officially made an offer on that house we really, really love.

Oh, but that's not all! Today's the first day our house is officially on the market and available for strangers to tramp through it while I'm not home to control what they touch. Like I said, we've been hard at work, but there was stuff still to be done. Like, a good, thorough cleaning. No biggie. The housing market sucks right now, so it's not like someone's going to look at our house the first day it's available.

This morning I took Clara Jane to daycare, then stopped by my coffeehouse of choice. I'd just settled into a comfy chair with a gigantic cappucino and my knitting. The guys sitting next to me struck up a conversation regarding sock-knitting. One of them asked, "So, uh, are you going to knit two, or just the one?" I refrained from saying, "No, just one. I knit for amputees." As my reward, my cell phone rang.

Now, it's 10:00. My house has officially been on the market for an hour. And here's my agent on the phone, telling me that another agent's going to bring people over to see the house at 1:30.

I think I threw my half-knitted sock at those guys in my rush to take my coffee to the counter, transfer it to a go-cup, and get my ass home. Suddenly, all the work we've been doing to the house was woefully inadequate. I made a mental list as I rushed home of everything I needed to do in three and a half hours:

1. Shovel snow off front steps.
2. Finishing painting bathroom woodwork.
3. Build second bathroom.
4. Replace nasty shower curtain.
5. Sweep every room.
6. Find a place to store my hounds.
7. Wash dishes.
8. Scrub toilet.
9. Remove large fallen branches from roof.
10. Clean gutters.
11. Remove old carpet from sunroom and replace with new carpet that's been in basement for six months.
12. Organize the equivilent of a blown-the-hell-up Toys R Us.
13. Remove all poop from boxes, cans, and secret corners where animals sometimes do dirty, dirty things.
14. Grow grass.
15. Clean up the two melted frozen yogurt pops I accidentally left on the counter this morning.
16. Make a Prozac smoothie for extra sustainance.
17. Remove all bourbon from the house. Best place to store bourbon: down my gullet.

I managed to complete most of the items on my list. Well, the important ones, anyway.

The dogs made a trip to the dog groomer. We love our dog groomer. Really. This woman is a saint to all dogs, and possibly rats and chirpy little birds that make me nervous. Whatever. She loves my dogs and took them in today at no charge, just to hang out. She insists that we do this whenever our house is shown, and we don't even have to call her first.

Of course, there was a slight problem when Murphy walked in and found herself nose-to-crate-to-nose with a St. Bernard. I mean, that's like fifty weiner dogs all in one! She got over it. Or maybe she didn't. It's Murphy, and you never can tell with her.

Anyway, Clara Jane and I are home, and I have no idea if they actually showed the house. The agent didn't sign in, but I'm pretty sure I saw new footprints in the snow. Also, I'm pretty sure I left the basement door open. When we got home, it was closed and my cat was having a breakdown because she was trapped! In the basement! With her food and water! And litterbox! And several of her favorite beds! Unfortunately, she's not telling what transpired in my absence.

After cleaning the house, I had two hours before picking up Clara Jane. I figured I had two options: 1) drink heavily, or 2) go to Wild Oats for a salad and 10-minute chair massage. I went with #2, because I'm obviously a health nut.

Let's hope this house sells fast. I don't do well in stressful situations. Many more days like today, and I'll spend our entire down payment on hooch and public rub-downs by hippies.

Posted by Robin at 03:51 PM | Comments (8)

January 22, 2007

Write This Ad! Sell This House!

Today, Clara Jane and I were on our way to our now-usual Monday outing at Hartford (three weeks in a row constitutes usual, in case you didn't know), when I got a call from our real estate agent. We're on the verge of having our house ready to show, and he's preparing the web site and flyers. Apparently, they like it when the "woman who lives in the house" writes a description of the house, as we gals tend to be more accurate, yet flattering.

Writing? Sure! People used to give me money to do that!

We went to Hartford. She played. I drank three gallons of coffee and visited with a delightful mom while I practiced my awesome new sock-knitting skills, confindent that I would have no problems composing a description of my house.

Heh. Right. I have been unable to come up with a description of the house I've lived in for nearly eight years.

It has ... uh ... walls? And floor, I think.

Doors! It has a bunch of doors that open and close! Well, mostly. I've never actually opened that one in the back of the basement, but I've heard rumor that it opens.

Somehow, I don't think such witty prose is going to sell my house. Since I was also bitching about not having anything to blog about, B. suggested that I combine my house description assignment with my desire to blog. I apologize in advance.

Old Classic bungalow in noisy neighborhood riddled with dune buggy-building drunken idiots active, interesting neighborhood! This house is full of endless headaches caused by the previous owners' lack of home repair and decorating skills character, including never-ending drafts loads of windows, floors covered with random nails and staples in perfect alignment, installed during an OCD emergency rustic hardwood floors, neighbor dogs birthing puppies under the back steps friendly neighbors, a sunroom which is actually more of a rainroom, thanks to the leaky ceiling, lots of shade until the 100+ year-old oak in the front yard decides to fall the fuck over, like all the other trees have done in the past few months, and a lovely backyard that completely lacks grass, but has a six-inch deep ditch around its perimeter from where our dogs run. We call it the Doggie Groove, and it's banked like Daytona International Speedway. Gardening shed along with half a tree that's been on its roof for six weeks and extra storage room which is really spooky and houses a toilet that our UPS man likes to use as a package perch.

New appliances include a GE Profile gas range and oven (1999) which replaced the 1960 rust-brown one-burner monstrosity that leaked not only gas, but radiation from one of the first microwave ovens ever made, gas water heater (1999) which replaced the one that was so old the entire bottom rusted out, and energy-efficient gas furnace (2000) which replaced the inefficient furnace that had a giant hole in its heat exchanger, which happens to be a very important part of the furnace to remain hole-free.

House is clean and move-in ready. You won't experience the horror of washing a 1970s amber-colored frosted window, only to discover that it's really a clear window with 30 years of accumulated fried-food residue and old cigarette smoke on it. You also won't vaccum enough blue fuzz out of the back bedroom to make a replica of the 93-year-old man who inhabited the room.

Potential buyers whose last name begins with the letter B will be given preference, as the previous owners installed a letter B in bright red carpet within the turd-brown shag on the basement stairs. We got a bargain on this place because, after a year in the market, we were the only clueless neophyte idiots people with a B-name who made an offer.
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You know, I've made some bad job choices in my time. Tonight, I can honestly say that the best job decision I've ever made was the choice to remain out of the real estate field.

Posted by Robin at 08:26 PM | Comments (7)

January 10, 2007

I Wish a Bite Plate

You know how easy it is to latch onto a line from a TV show, movie, book, etc, and find places to use it in your everyday life, I'm sure. Many of our lines come from "King of the Hill", and one of our favorites involves main character Hank getting a colonoscopy and the proctologist asking, "Do you wish a bite plate?" before inserting, well, whatever they insert during that particular test.

I have never wished a bite plate so badly in my life. My teeth and jaws are killing me. I'm a grinder. Always have been. The grinding increases with emotional intensity, which means my current state of real estate-induced mania/happiness/excitement/fear/disappointment/panic/joy is taking its toll. By the end of this week, my pretty teeth are going to look like tiny corn kernals. I'm pretty sure one of yesterday's grinding session impacted the top of my left incisor into my frontal lobe.

Yes, poppymom.com is now solely a real estate blog. Feel free to drop dead from boredom at your earliest convenience. I'm sorry. Really, I am.

As of Monday night, we have an official for sale sign in our front yard. We haven't started the freak parade of home viewers, nor have we decided on a selling price. Basically, we have a sign, an agent, and a pile of intimidating papers that need to be faxed to the agent. I'm placing a higher priority on getting a St. Joseph statue buried in the yard than I am on returning the paperwork. I almost stopped at a Catholic supply store the other day, but I couldn't remember which saint I was supposed to bury. It seemed crass to go in and say, "Yeah, can I borrow your religion for a month or two? Thanks."

All was going well until Tuesday afternoon. B. was putting together paperwork for our new mortgage broker and asked if I remembered the property tax amount for the new house. I didn't, so I went to the house's listing.

And it was gone.

If there was any doubt regarding how much we want this house and this move, it was vanquished when we made this discovery. While B. started the frantic phone calls to agents and such, I borrowed just about every religion I could think of, short of doing the naked Pagan real estate dance in my backyard, as 1) it's cold, and 2) that dance lowers the property value of the entire neighborhood.

The seller, tired of being stuck with a non-selling house, decided to take it off the market and lease it. This could work in our favor, if someone hasn't signed a lease already. In a perfect world ....

Okay, sorry. I had to roll around in hysterics on the floor upon using that phrase.

What I'd like to see happen: We offer to buy her house on contingency of ours selling, with a provision that she can rent it so long as the renters are gone when it's time for us to take possession. Sound reasonable? I don't know. I know nothing about real estate other than I don't want the real estate I currently have, and I want the real estate she's wanting to unload. In those terms, I think my idea allows everyone to win a little bit.

I'd also like to add a provision that the seller will purchase denture for me, because I'll surely be toothless by then.

Posted by Robin at 03:31 PM | Comments (7)