Productive Day...

Slowly but surely, I whipping this house into shape. Today's project was to clean off the plant shelves of their 17 years of dust. No easy task. First, the shelves are about 12 feet high in the living room with the vaulted ceilings. I laid in bed last night plotting my plan. One of the best investments I've made in my life was my 6 HP industrial shop-vac. I think it cost about a hundred dollars, but has paid for itself many times over. Here is how it paid it's weight in gold today. This shop vac has a hose that's about 6 or 7 feet long. I have another old shop vac that I found in a car I bought once that I use for small or extra dirty jobs. I had a hose that was also about 6 feet long. I duct taped the 2 together, brought 2 card table chairs into the house from the garage and rested the shop vac on top of those chairs. I now could reach the 12 foot shelves with the vacuum and had about 3 or 4 feet of play. The I got my 6 foot folding old wooden ladder out of the garage and tested it for sturdiness. Seemed okay until I climbed up. There I was standing on top of this wobbly ladder holding onto the shelves for dear life. I was okay at that point, but realizing that wood dries out, worried me. Now I had to climb down with this thing as wobbly as riding a bull. Remember my chest is held together by bailing wire after that heart surgery and I'm not sure it can take a hit. I safely made it to the floor and felt pretty good about feeling it under my feet. I go out to the backyard and get my extension ladder, but need to prepare it for leaning against the white paint. I climb back up and push the ladder away from the wall, while standing on it, to put 2 kitchen towels under it to protect the paint. Now it's time to climb back down to get my shop-vac hose and ascend once more. I've attached a nozzle that I found in my garage and believe it or not, I got the job handled. I'm tell me they don't have those plant shelves in the new homes........................good!

I had 2 potential buyers show up with their agents after calling. I'm thrilled to be getting this much attention on a weekday. The first lady showed up and I recognized her from years of sending out fliers and calenders with her picture on it. Why didn't I remember her when I was listing it. She seemed polite and very businesslike as we chatted while awaiting her client. The client arrived, a woman about 45 and they stayed for over 45 minutes. At some point I thought they had left, they were so quiet. They were upstairs really checking things out. They came down and asked some pretty intelligent questions. The kind of questions that REAL buyers might ask. when they finally left, they stayed out front for about another 10 minutes chatting. I wouldn't be surprised if they showed up again with the husband.

My second group was a family of people from the Middle east. A husband, wife, 3 children, the agent and a guy that I couldn't account for. Maybe the brother of the wife or possibly just a hitchhiker along for the ride. He didn't win any favor with me as he obviously hated the heat, but didn't want to miss any of the conversation while the family was outside inspecting my lush landscaping. So his answer to his dilemma was to hold my back door open to be part of everything while my perfect 78 degrees inside quickly rose to 79 or 80. He must have held that door open for 5 full minutes. I was seething and wanted to yell, "Hey, what are you trying to do, cool off Arizona"? I said nothing!

As they left I told them how nice it was to meet them and with a house this big, they could have at least 3 more children. That caused a roar of laughter and a rebuttal in a language I did not understand. They also spent 15 minutes in front of my house, talking. We'll see....