Today I made the first move to put this house on the market. October 9th, I will have been in this house for 17 years. I never thought I had that kind of staying power to do anything that long, but it was easier to stay put, than to move elsewhere. With the dogs gone, I retain no excuse to remain here in a 3500 sq. Ft. house, alone. I always referred to it as my dream house and it still is, only my dreams have changed and I'm dreaming now of something far more simple and understated.
This place has 5 bedrooms and I check them religiously for the homeless sector. So far, so good! I fear that one day I'll open the door of an unoccupied bedroom and be greeted by a man with a backpack and a "howdy".
Some 10 or 12 months ago, I clicked on a website that promised to give me the current value of my home. It asked for my personal information and me like the fish that I am, offered everything it asked. The phone calls started the next day. "Mr. Jones, I understand you want to sell your home?" Eventually I just stopped answering any call that I didn't recognize. They email me "spam" like it's going out of style. So today, I called the guy that's been harassing me and he had no idea who I was, naturally. I started my phone call with, "Every time you think it's NOT worthwhile, all of the advertising you do, remember this call that came directly from your spam methods". He replied, "huh, who is this?" So this dude is coming over Monday morning to try to list me.
Knowing that I've got a lot of work ahead of me, I decided to start a few things going today. I cleaned up the kitchen and blew up a float for the pool so it looks like someone uses it and sprayed down the driveway. Did I mention it was 114 today here in sunny Scottsdale?
Does anyone out there in blog land have a neighbor that you'd just as soon not run into? They're good for the WAVE, but not a conversation. Today, while trying to drown my driveway, Chris, 2 doors down, drove by in her Nissan, full length cigarette hanging from her lip, cell phone up to her ear. I waved, got nothing and was pleased as punch. Lately Chris, a 58 year old woman, has been stopping to discuss world events and really pissing me off. She is so anti-Obama that she doesn't even make sense.
John McCain, being our home town boy, disappointed a lot of his fellow Republicans by having such a poor campaign and running mate. (Can you tell I'm pro-Obama?) Chris just parrots everything she's heard at the bar about our president and talks about over taxing and Socialism, blah, blah, blah...
So about an hour later, I was finished with the drive and decided to drive down and get the mail. I was within a second of a clean getaway, when Chris pulled up on the wrong side of the street and opened the door of her Nissan Altima. When she opened the door, a cloud of smoke came rushing out of her car and my first reaction was to call 911. With the offending cigarette still hanging off her lip, she walked over to my driver's side of my car and motioned for me to open my window. I really chose not to, but gave in. She took one last drag off what seemed to be the filter and flipped it into some neighbor's front yard. She leaned in and I could actually smell the nicotine on this 114 degree day. First she complimented me on my beard and I mentioned that I'd had it for quite a long time and thank you. She told me it looked classy. I'm pretty sure "classy" is a word that people with class NEVER use.
Chris has always had a nice figure for a woman her age and has always been proud of her bosom. She bought them new in 93, I believe. She's a sun lover and I noticed that her skin had systematically turned to a fine grade of leather, similar to a doe skin. She immediately launched into some story about just getting back from CA where she was visiting her poor gay son, who is in the motion picture business there, but got pushed off a 30 foot cliff, by a guy that thought he was someone else. Still confused, she moved on to her finding the guy that did it and she's going to extort money from him to help pay the $30,000 in medical bills. Then she jumped to the economy and I reiterated that who ever thought being in the car business would ever be so difficult.. That was her opportunity to attack Mr. Obama. She told me that it's all Obama's fault. I looked at her like a dog that heard a high pitched tone, with my head tilted to one side and couldn't believe my ears. All I could say was, "Oh, THAT'S who did it?"
I'm not sure if it was the tone of my voice, or the look on my face, but she immediately switched to, she's late getting home and hopped back into her forest fire of a car and split.
Here's the lesson that I learned from all this. Always pick up your mail at night!
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