A dirty old mattress pad ended up in my front yard last week. Only half was in my yard at first, the other half laid across the sidewalk and into the street. A conscientious passerby decided it was an unsafe obstruction, and instead of moving the entire thing into the street, they moved the entire thing into my yard.
My house sold, so it shouldn’t be my problem, but as a will of good customer service, I plan to put on plastic gloves and a garbage bag poncho and stuff it into my dilapidated garbage bin for pick up tomorrow.
The month long process of the sale going through had some stressors, the most major being where we’re going to move. I have two weeks to figure that out. I’ve been putting in offers on new houses, but with this market, I’m hardly competitive. I think I’m grossly overpaying with a 2.5% over asking price bid, but some lunatic comes in 10% over asking with a fruit basket.
On the first bid, I tried the friendly personal letter accompaniment. It wasn’t mandatory, and must be a liability for discrimination. I’m not doing it again because writing an over the top emotional plea for someone’s house made me feel like a moron, only because it didn’t work. Tell me my offer is tied for first candidate though, and I will write the most ass-kissing letter needed with a picture of my kids and me looking like the current landscape of the American Dream.
When my house went into contract, my little sister said, “Oh how exciting! You’ll probably loose five pounds and constantly clean out your house.”
I have the opposite problems with deadlines, they make my appetite insatiable, and napping seems like the most appropriate action. We did some thinning out, and dropped off a couple garbage bags at the Goodwill. As I pulled the old sewing machine from the trunk Geoffrey ran over and begged me not to give it away. I whispered in his ear, “It’s broken.”
I think one of the workers heard me, the less serious one. The other guy, kept running inside to check with his manager that my old shit was acceptable for the tax write-off slip.
We have a problem with holding on to things, and Marie Kondo’s techniques don’t work. I get joy from an old water-damaged notebook scribbled in when my kid was 3 years old, I love the moment of deliberation in the morning when I pick from my twenty different coffee mugs, and I can’t part with the candy dish full of Chinese fortune cookie fortunes that sits on my kitchen counter.
My realtor said, “Bring the kids along!” And I’m at a point where I will have to. My kids come at new people with similar interrogation techniques as a nosy Grandma. Kiki needs to establish marital status and Geoffrey likes to know annual income. He doesn’t have context for cost of living, but like Kevin O’Leary, he could make a millionaire feel they weren’t living up to their potential.
Kids are always going to be inquisitive, and man are they drawn to people with differences. They’re past the point of asking the transitioning Target checker their gender, or running up to a little person thinking they’re a playmate. Little kids hone in on people who look different purely out of curiosity. It really is an act of celebrating differences to ask questions. Adults, on the other hand, prefer casual obliviousness, “Oh, I didn’t notice half your face was melted off from a fire, and your right arm ends at the elbow and has what looks like a chicken claw at the end… But now that you mention it.”
It will be nice to have their hyper critical eyes examine the properties because I’m starting to waiver in my expectations, and they’ll give an unfiltered impression, like Mr. Wonderful, “It’s a shit hole, take it behind the barn and shoot it.”
My parents call me every morning, one then the other, to ask me how things are moving along in the process, and I keep repeating, “I’ll know more in three days.”
They demand answers about future plans, and I’m considering yelling into the phone, “Stop loving me so much! I’m going with the flow!”
They don’t know what “go with the flow” means. My dad called this morning, panicked, “Call your mom. She is canceling our trip to Monterey so we can move you out of your house!”
I said, “Dad, me, you and mom cannot possibly move my entire house next weekend. I am hiring movers… Unless you think Grandma will be able to jump in.”
I can picture the four of us trying to move. I’d have to light the house on fire so no one felt the need to admit we cannot move my king size memory foam mattress. I better get used to them pointing out everything that can go wrong because we have to satellite from their house for July.
All our stuff will go into storage and I’ll be working remotely. The goals will be to find a house and not watch more than four hours of TV a day. The kids are growing up, and I’m looking forward to a home that fits us all. The other day I shed a tear when I realized Geoffrey doesn’t call breakfast “breakfrist” anymore. And when we were watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Aiden came on the screen as the love interest, Kiki gave a grimace and said, “That is not what a guy I would like looks like.”
I asked her if it was his long flowing silky hair, or ridiculously thin scarf, and she said it was definitely his hair.
With speech impediments disappearing and TV crushes blossoming, I’m back in touch with early child parenting because of our new puppy; getting up all night and waking up at 5:30am. I worried Max might be Chuck Berry reincarnate, intentionally pissing all over the place, but he has too much interest in dirty panties to be such a dominate. The first few days the dog had accidents in the house, and like a natural dog mom, I already think he might be the smartest dog in the world because he hasn’t had an accident in the last three days.
Just like the mattress pad, that isn’t going to take care of itself and blow down the street, I have to clean out the house, pack up boxes and hire movers to get our stuff into storage. My window shrunk to the smallest it can possibly be allowing for going with the flow. So here’s to procrastination, making changes, and Chuck Berry on the receiving end of an eternal golden shower.
