Why I Am Slacking

Thank you, loyal readers, for your sticking with me through this difficult time.

 

That sounds like someone died.  They didn’t, at least that isn’t what I meant.  People die all the time but that isn’t the reason I haven’t been able to get you a quality piece in the last couple weeks.  Did I say quality?  How presumptuous of me to believe what I type is quality.  It certainly has a quality and that quality is low. 

The difficult time is a simple business, and rather than beat you over the head with details around why I’m too busy to type something up, I’ll just simply give you some general ideas and let you fill in the rest with your incredibly vivid imaginations.

We put our house on the market at the end of May and within two weeks had an offer on it.  The buyers wanted it to close on July 9^th.  Although it is a very exciting time, and we are happy for the new couple to move in to the house, I’m sure they would appreciate it if we weren’t still living here.  For one thing, the paperwork states that we should be out in time for the new owners to move in and we are making a sad attempt to make this happen. 

That means that we have to empty the house of 11 years of stuff, junk and crap.  Stuff stays with us and goes to storage, junk is donated and crap is tossed.  You would think this is a pretty easy process, and it may be if you are but one mind running the task.  However, a team working together may have different opinions of the classifications of questionable items.  George Carlin was right about other people’s belongings being crap while yours is stuff, but I have a variation all my own.

Often, my stuff is considered crap or junk by my wife.  Because stuff is kept and crap is tossed, this can be a touchy subject.  You can object to your partner’s decisions only so many times before a sit-down meeting needs to occur to cover common ground and create guidelines as to the classification system that all will use to determine the future of every single object we own. 

What doesn’t help is that my wife considers most of her belongings crap and junk too, meaning I cannot leverage her crap for my crap.  If I thought her crap was stuff, and she thought her crap was crap, it doesn’t matter because it is going to get tossed.  That means it looks like I’m trying to hold onto much more junk and crap than she is, making it a harder case for me to prove that my crap is actually stuff.

Can I help it if I get wistful?  There’s a difference between being a hoarder and being nostalgic.  It involves bundles of newspapers and my bundles are nicer than a hoarder’s.  I like things such as pictures, books, magazines, records, tapes, CDs, DVDs and memorabilia.  Do I use them much?  No.  Do I believe they will be collectible?  Not really.  Do I own machines that would make records and tapes work so that the music could be enjoyed by all?  Yes I do…  But they don’t work. 

I have two major appliances sitting in my garage that I have placed on Craig’s List.  Craig’s List has been hit and miss with me on some things.  You can put an appliance up for FREE and nobody will contact you for it because it’s too suspicious.  It means that it probably doesn’t work.  So I put $20 on a refrigerator and then in the ad explain that if they ask me nicely to knock the $20 off, I will do it as long as they just came and got it.  WOW!  That was like I ignited a flare beacon for all the local flakes to email me. 

The ad looked Something like this:

Old refrigerator for sale, $20 OBO

I have an old refrigerator that works fine.  It’s a little smelly but could be cleaned up easily.  Freezer top, frig bottom.  If you have something you need to make colder, this box will do it.  I bet if you ask me to drop the price to free that I will be happy to do it if you just came and got it.  Please come and get it.

That was the ad.  Now here are some of the emails I received about the refrigerator.

“Do you picture of refridg?”  No, I not picture.

“Does the frig work?”  Yes, fine.

“What color is it?” Old, the color is old.

“Is it working? Does it get cold?”  Yes, I stick by the statements in the ad.

“How many bodies will it hold?”  I’m just kidding, I didn’t get that email.

“Can I see some pictures?” I don’t have any, but I assure you that this refrigerator looks like a refrigerator.

“Is it plugged in?” No. “Plug it in and if it is cold when I get there, I’ll pick it up.” Okay, I plugged it in and it’s cold.  “Do you have a picture?” No. “What an ass.”

“Can I have it for free?” Yes. “Does it work?” Yes. (Then nothing)

I still have it in my garage, if any of you want it.  It’s amazing how many people want to haggle over a free item. 

Then I posted our furniture set complete with pictures for $1200.  Right away I got a hit. 

“Are you firm on the price?” No, what do you have in mind?  “My name Mary Anderson and I living in North New York State.  I am 50 year old Deaf mother wanting to buy this for a friend living in your area.  It is surprising for him so I will have movers come pick up from you.  I am to pay you with Paypal, I am hoping this is okay and I pay full amount to you.” 

Now maybe Mary Anderson really is a 50-year-old Deaf mother shopping for second hand furniture sets on the other side of the country, willing to hire movers to surprise a friend with just exactly what they wanted: used furniture. But my Spider-sense started to tingle at the lack of helping verbs and indefinite articles in her email.  Question: Could a 50-year old Deaf woman with access to the internet and a Paypal account have made it that far in life writing the way she did?  Or was this a clever ruse to get my financial information?  In the end, I decided to not sell to “Mary” because of her terrible syntax. 

If having to deal with all this stuff wasn’t enough, the home inspector came through our lovingly cared for home and left us with a report that basically said the only reason our home was still standing was because of habit.  It was amazing to the inspector that humans could spend more than five minutes inside the dwelling without being electrocuted, crushed or filled with deadly chemicals.

It was insulting, yet when I spoke to the buyer’s agent after the inspection she said the house did far better than most new construction inspections go.  That made me feel a little better, but the pictures the inspector took made me feel like a private eye had been taking pictures of me with my shirt off on the treadmill and then dropped more pictures in front of me of myself gorging on Cheetos and ice cream cake the very same day.  They were—invasive.

So to make a long story shorter, the inspector made clear that in order to sell the house we had to complete the eleven years of built-up and put-off household projects we were selling the house to get out of doing.  Oh, and if you want this sale to close on time, it would be great if you could have that done in two weeks. 

But we are getting it done.  Slowly but surely, the house is coming together.  We are excited for a new family to take control of a home that has made our family so happy.  We will be moving all of our stuff to storage and then in a year we will find a new place to live.  Where are we living until then?  Well, that’s another story for another time.

Truth be told, I should have been on a ladder, scraping and painting while I wrote this.  I could have finished digging out the well pipes or organizing the stuff, junk and crap in the attic.  The laundry room has a few boxes of stuff worth collecting too and the storage under the stairs…  I guess now you know that I love you readers more than you really knew, OR that it was too damn hot upstairs to do any of that work so I huddled down in the basement for one of the last bits of typing I’ll ever do in this beautiful old house.  I’m going to miss this old place but I’m not going to miss the responsibility and that’s the Damm truth.