Careful What You Wish For

You know how as soon as you light up a cigarette your bus comes along? (Not that I would know first hand, of course, because I don't smoke and never have. Hi Grandma!) Or how as soon as you get up to go to the bathroom in a restaurant your food arrives? Or when you've finally had it and send a scathing email to someone demanding to know why they haven't done so-and-so at the exact same time an email arrives from them explaining their dog just died?

My last blog about house-hunting was very down-in-the-mouth, I-don't-want-to-play-anymore, because it was written just a couple of days after we fell in love with a house only to find out that mere HOURS before we saw it, someone else had made an offer and was already under contract. The house had been on the market for TEN MONTHS and the day we saw it, someone else made an offer. That is just wrong. So I threw myself a full-blown pity party complete with pointy hats.

Then, the day I posted that last blog, our realtor called to let us know the other buyers pulled out, and were we still interested?

Wood eye, wood eye!*

A flury of action ensued during which all emotional thought processes were shut down in an effort to Get That House before anyone else could. We offered. We shook with anticipation and fear. They counter-offered. We debated. It was about $15,000 more than we said we'd spend. Well, more than we said we'd spend the last time we raised our limit. Technically it was, oh, $42,000 more than we wanted to spend. But why split hairs? The house was so close, so close... so we said yes.

HOLY SHIT.

We just went over-budget to buy the ugliest house on the block. While I understand this is a good position to be in when it comes to real estate value, well, it is the UGLIEST house on the block. But I love it. I love it like we all love E.T. and pugs. In a roomful of Miss USAs it is the woman with a hare lip. But like the hare lip our house was just victim to genetics. The houses around it had the good fortune to be born during the Victorian era with gingerbread touches and wide porches. Our house was born during the architectural short-bus decade: the 1960's.

There are a few other concerns as well. After all, you can't expect to have everything when you go only $42,000 over budget. For example, the driveway is so steep that climbing it could be a new Olympic sport. We can't get the car up it, and getting ourselves up it requires considerable effort. If we are in this house more than ten years we will have to rig some sort of pulley system to deliver our groceries to the front door. We ain't spring chickens anymore, after all.

But that was nothing compared to the issues that came up during inspection. Well, one issue in particular. Well, no, I correct myself again - dozens (hundreds?) of issues: RATS.

When I think of rats, I think of the boat-sized monsters with whom I shared New York City begrudgingly, and only because they were bigger than me and had sharp, nasty teeth. I've seen rats the size of footballs. I can't stand rats and I don't even want to think about them burrowing in my new, really expensive house.

When I was living in New York I had a mouse infestation. At first I thought it was only one mouse and I thought that was sort of cute, and I would hear him rustling around under the sink and enjoyed having what I thought of as a second pet. Knowing me I probably named it, but I don't remember. But then somebody with a sharper intellect than mine explained, "Karen, there is NEVER just one mouse."

This encouraged me to brave foraging under the sink to see just how badly my hospitality had been abused. It had been REALLY abused. Like, beaten to within an inch of its life abused. There were droppings everywhere. They had gotten into the oven and burrowed condominiums into the insulation (typical of a New Yorker, I never used my oven, so they were able to enjoy their home completely unmolested). I called an exterminator in a panic, and he brought even worse news - they were all over the apartment. They had chewed up the mattress in the pull-out couch. The entire place had to be completely taken apart, cleaned, fumigated, plugged up... it was beyond nasty. But the worst part was perching precariously in the middle of the living room (I was too grossed out to sit on the couch) watching TV in the evenings and hear a sudden SNAP. And I knew one of the little mice had just lost its head and, worse, I was going to have to dispense with the bloody mess.

Now, imagine that whole scenario but with a rodent ten times bigger and with red eyes. Yeah, I don't want to, either.

The inspector went on to list for what seemed about two weeks the myriad of other issues with the house that, as Proud Homeowners, were now our problem. I started to break out in a cold sweat; it seemed awfully daunting to me. He assured us this was "perfectly normal" for a house this age but I didn't see how that was any comfort. Let's see, I just offered to pay a crapload of money for the honor of spending every spare moment doing things I hate, like yard work. And things I anticipate I will learn to hate, like unclogging a 45-year-old toilet.

Remind me again why I wanted to be a homeowner? Why is this part of the American Dream? Why wouldn't I just keep renting so that whenever anything goes wrong it's never my problem? Why not - wait, what's that? You say it has a japanese soaking tub in the master bath?

Wood eye, wood eye!

** A man with a wooden eye is unable to get a date. A friend of his encourages him to come along to a dance.

"Nobody will want to dance with me," the man lamented.

"Just find a girl who also has some sort of affliction and ask her to dance. She'll probably be grateful to be asked," the friend suggested.

The man agreed to go to the dance. He looked around the room and saw a woman with a hare lip and got up the courage to approach her.

"Uh, ahem," the man said shyly, "I was wondering if maybe you'd like to dance."

"Would I? WOULD I?" the woman cried happily.

"HARE LIP HARE LIP!" the man yelled.

Thank God It's Monday

Our weekend started off as most of them do; arriving gratefully home on Friday night, leaping into comfy clothes, and meeting on the couch for a relaxing evening of wine and a movie.

Tom had been chastising me lately for my selection of movies. The last two that happened to come up in the queue were Letters from Iwo Jima and Reign on Me, about a man who lost his whole family on September 11th. "The next one better be something with cute computer-generated talking animals," Tom grumbled unhappily after we'd spent another evening weeping. This evening's selection (again, my choice) was Oscar and Lucinda.

About forty-five minutes into it, I couldn't hold back. "Wow," I slurred through a couple glasses of wine, "this is a BAD movie."

But we kept watching, largely because neither of us had the energy to get up and turn it off.

"GOD, this is a bad movie," I mentioned about thirty minutes later.

"It's pretty awful," Tom agreed.

We kept watching.

"This is, like, the worst movie EVER," I commented, about ten minutes before the movie would put us out of our misery.

Saturday we had plans to see Jeff Dunham, creator of the famed and funny Achmed the Dead Terrorist. The show began at the awkward hour of 7pm - too early to get dinner first, but too late to get dinner afterwards. I came up with the grand plan: we would take the bus into town, thus doing our part to save the environment (and, incidentally, avoid the $20 downtown parking fee). We'd get there about one hour before show time, enough time to get a light dinner using the funds we would save by wisely taking public transportation.

So we bundled up and headed out and after fifteen minutes of standing in the freezing cold, realized we had missed the bus. Our luck, it must have come early. So we trundled back to the parking garage and got the car out. No worries - we'd have to pay the astronomical parking fee, but the theater was just five minutes away, still plenty of time to grab some food.

We managed to go about three blocks before making a wrong turn which, in Seattle, pretty much means you can kiss the next three days goodbye. You make one wrong turn downtown and you are plunged into a nightmare of one-way streets that have no pattern or reason to them. We spent the next forty minutes re-routing, then circling for a place to park. We had completely given up on getting a full meal and had resigned ourselves to whatever snacks were sold at the theater, but at this point we were running the risk of missing the show entirely. Finally, Tom said, with not a little venom, "Enough of this, we're parking HERE."

"But we'll be at least three hours and that's-"

"I don't CARE," Tom said. "I'm HUNGRY."

So we parked the car and found our way to the theater where we got in the line for the bar. We go to the theater often enough that it should have come as no surprise that it was cash only. However, neither this nor any of the other things for which the old-fashioned method of payment are required have managed to put us in the habit of keeping any cash on hand. We scrabbled through our wallets and, together, came up with $5. We decided on a water and some M&M's with peanuts. "Protein," I explained to Tom who was starting to look a bit woozy. Neither of us are pretty when we are hungry, and Tom looked like, if he'd had the energy, he'd have leapt over the bar and started gnawing on the bartender.

I thrust the peanut M&M's at Tom and begged him to eat. No matter how many times he tried to offer me some of them, I grandly refused. This was not a selfless act on my part, despite my own hunger. I was strictly saving myself - or so I thought.

After climbing about five flights of stairs we found ourselves in the nosebleed section and squeezed ourselves into the tiny, uncomfortable metal folding chairs that folks of our class were lucky to get. It was like the balcony section of an Elizabethan play, musty with the dust of unwashed bodies. I think some people had even brought their chickens. As it turned out, we were so far up that we couldn't see the stage at all; instead, we had to watch the giant screen where the action was simultaneously projected. In other words, we were watching the guy on TV, which is something I had already done quite a few times but in the privacy and comfort of my own home, with plenty of food right nearby that didn't require cash.

Tom scarfed the peanut M&M's and whispered, "I saved four of them for emergency reserves for you." Because that's the kind of romantic guy he is.

About halfway through, I think my stomach started eating the surrounding organs in my body. I was doubled over in pain. I couldn't think of anything but food and the morbid possibility of fainting and tumbling down all those steep cement steps. Tom howled beside me at Achmed, blissfully unaware, full of peanut M&M's, while I writhed in pain and tried to get comfortable on that punishing metal chair. Finally I clutched at his sleeve. "Need those reserve M&M's." Tom dug them out and I shoved the melted mess down my throat. Nope, that didn't work.

"Don't feel well," I muttered.

"Do we need to leave?" he asked.

I hate even considering such a thing. We paid good money for these tickets. I was bound and determined to watch the whole show. What kind of a wuss was I that I let a few hunger pains keep me from enjoying myself? By God, I was going to -

"Yes," I whined.

In my defense I had been to the gym that afternoon, and hadn't eaten in about eight hours. But even in those circumstances my pain was severe, unprecedented, and certainly unpleasant.

"AAHHYYEEE," I moaned as we climbed back down to sea level and Tom led us the few blocks to the parking deck. I clutched my stomach in agony, doubled over. "AAAAUHHGGG," I wailed pitifully as Tom paid the parking fee ("Huh, it was only $5," I managed to muse even in my misery.)

Tom got us home quickly (we only had to consult the map about five times in the two miles). He was all concern, as well he should have been. I was in agony, white as a sheet, and so light headed I had to concentrate to walk. It was horrible. It was the worst I could remember ever feeling. I was terrified there was something horribly wrong with me. Maybe my appendix burst! Maybe we should have gone straight to the hospital instead of home. But then I had a few cheez-its.

"Hey," I said. "I feel better now."

On Sunday we had reservations for a guided snow-shoe hike up in the Cascades. I was quite excited about this. I'd been wanting to get up and see all the snowfall and I thought snow-shoeing sounded like a sport I might just, on account of the lack of speed, be able to manage. Tom and I got up early, looked up the weather conditions to make sure the roads were passable, got our showers, got dressed, went to the coat closet, and I realized: I had no coat to wear.

How this is possible when our coat closet is so crammed full of coats we can't close the door properly is beyond me. But it was true. I had a cute suede coat and a long, warm wool coat, and a short rain coat, but nothing appropriate for hiking in snow and rain in 30-degree weather. Huh.

"You didn't think about this when we made the reservations?" Tom asked incredulously as we stood staring into the closet, hoping perhaps some suitable women's winter gear would miraculously appear.

"Uh... no," I said.

So we cancelled our reservations and made new ones for a month out, because, naturally, every other weekend was booked, and spent the day at REI trying on extraordinarily unflattering "breathable" clothing. Is there worse torture for a woman than to spend $150 on clothes that do NOT look good on her?

We got home this afternoon, tired and grouchy at the horrible turns our weekend had taken, to be greeted by Theo who, after kissing us each hello, proceeded to drag her ass across the length of the hallway, leaving a blackish greenish streak in her wake.

"Tom, dog needs to go out," I said, as Theo turned and dragged her ass in the other direction, leaving a duplicate streak on the return. "Uh, NOW."

Tom grabbed the dog while I scrubbed at the carpet. Upon their return, Tom announced that Theo's rear-end was completely and thoroughly covered in shit. We spent the next thirty minutes on the bathroom floor painstakingly cleaning our dog's asshole. As much fun as we had, I do believe Theo had the worse time.

"Wow, this is JUST what I was hoping to do this weekend," Tom said, and suddenly we were collapsing in fits of giggles, surrounded by shit-covered paper towels and tufts of stained dog hair.

"Let me tell you," I said, "this is gonna be one CLEAN asshole."

"Our dog's asshole is going to be the cleanest on the whole block!"

"When we're finished here, by God, you could EAT off of -"

"Okay, that's enough," Tom interrupted hastily.

It's going to be hard to top such a nonstop, exhilarating weekend at this. Perhaps next weekend we will rent Where the Fern Grows, flush $100 down the toilet and see if any of the animals at the local zoo need a thorough asshole-cleaning. On the bright side, this is one of the few times in my life when I'm actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow.