One For The Money, Two For The Show

I have half a dozen half-written posts languishing. I've discovered that the surest way to show my house is to sit down to blog! We've had six showings in four days and we had an offer which is now a contract from the second one. YAY!!! The home inspection is Friday afternoon - and with a 30-year old house that part is a bit worrying! However, I am keeping the faith and I know that it will be smooth sailing. It has to be because, quite honestly, I can't handle many more showings.

We have all worked like fiends getting the house ready and keeping it that way - but oi! I charged Chaos to clean the fans - and he did a lovely job - but he left grimy handprints on the ceiling. I had to show Mayhem that it was, indeed, possible to vacuum the carpets without gouging the baseboards. We pressure washed the house only to have the kids water the baby grass and spray dirt and water up onto the clean windows. Wasabi "helped" by brushing his furry butt against new paint and then sitting on the leather couch. I really thought I'd scream. Actually I did scream a little. I was completely exasperated and explained (in an overly loud voice) several things, including (but not limited to) the pointlessness of creating even more work for ourselves, the financial reality that our house being in better shape meant it selling for better money which in turn meant being able to buy a better house in NC - and importantly that spending money on stupid stuff here (e.g. new green paint to cover up the sparkly red "I love you" mark left by window clings that had been adhered to the wall not the window) meant lowering the budget for fun stuff there (e.g. food, clothing, shelter). Mayhem turned to the Princessa and in a funny, mock sad, little voice said, "See what you did? You made the good Mama go away." The other kids held their breath and waited to see whether my head would start whipping around and around on my neck or whether I'd laugh. I laughed. I hugged them each and sent them off to work - and immediately had to call them back for remedial walking down the hall lessons. Who knew that there were five children in the world who could not for love or money walk down the (need I mention newly painted?) hallway without bumping into the walls with some part of their pointy, grungy little bodies?!!!

Once I'd gotten the kids on board I thought things would fall into place. And they did. Light bulbs fell out of sockets into hard to reach places. Wooden slats in the library unglued themselves and fell to the floor. Clearly, somewhere along the way I have managed to piss off a household god (or three). The lamp we'd moved from the library to Bug and Chaos' room ignited and spewed toxic fumes. Unky Dunky (who was babysitting while SH and I were out to dinner with my father) had the boys put it outside and then they all went back to their video games. In the middle of baking a casserole one night, the oven went "Phht" and died. The stove top still works but the oven won't heat. Is this an old oven? Why no, it is not. (The library lamp was ancient in appliance years and perhaps had an excuse for self immolation even if the timing was uncanny - but the oven was only old enough not to be under warranty!!!) To add insult to injury, for a year and a half we had a spare oven in the garage (along with a spare washer and dryer and at one point a semi-dead refrigerator). Our garage - a half way house for appliances. We looked around a few months ago and said to ourselves, "This is silly. The new appliances in the house are fine. We don't need these other ones even if they aren't all that old and they all work. Sure, it would be great to have another washer and dryer available, but there's not room for a second set to be hooked up. It's wasteful to have these perfectly good appliances sitting here benefitting no one. Let's give them all away!" And we did. We gave them to a needy family through a friend's church.

I don't regret that. I do regret having to spend hundreds of dollars either fixing this oven or buying another one. Grrr. I had no idea that selling a house was so expensive! For the first showing, I got a call at about 5 pm asking if the house could be shown between 6:15 and 7:15. As I hadn't started cooking supper, I took the kids out to eat. $75. The next day the house was shown from 1 to 2. I took the kids to the bookstore. $75. The next day we got three calls in the space of 15 minutes scheduling showings for the next two days. I told the kids we could not spend $75 a pop on these showings. They agreed. The next showing we went into town and bought the boys running shoes - which had been in the budget for a couple of weeks even though we hadn't had time to get there . Three pairs of running shoes ($311.85) and ice cream at Maggie Moo's ($19.61) totals $331.46 which (as Mayhem pointed out) is waaaaaaay more than $75.

Here's today's mantra: Contract. Done deal. Closing on July 16th. No need for any more showings! No more spending money! (We'll stick to all that just as soon as we get back from our trip to Wal-Mart to replace bathing suits we had but can't find ANYWHERE!)
Peace.