LOST A SOCK

Twenty Oh-Nine

First, our Christmas celebrations were good and I hope yours were, too.  We completed all but one item on my list of holiday fun (damn popcorn garland) plus took an unplanned trip to Florida this month.  The day after Christmas KJ came down with the stomach flu, and it then shot through every member of our house like a speeding rocket through some home-made pumpkin pie.  Or is that just what my laundry room looked like in its aftermath?  (Yes.)

I can hardly believe we're already a handful of days into the year 2010 (remember how crazy it was to reach Y2K with the projection of computers spontaneously combusting and scribbling out the 19 on every last page of your checkbook?  That was really ten years ago already?)  Last year, at the end of 2008, I wrote a review post, and going back to read it this morning I was surprised to remember what a difficult road we tread that year.  I had high hopes for 2009 at the time, and shared some of my goals here.  And now on the other side, I am so thankful to call 2009 one of the good ones.

With health a fair worry at the beginning of 2009, I am relieved to say that we made it through pretty smoothly.  Marin had surgery on one of her kidneys, and the other continues to be watched by our trusted specialist.  I was given the thumbs up by my own new doctor as well, to leave all return-tumor worries at her office door.  And while I didn't hit my final weight loss goal this year, I came forty-ish pounds closer, which is nothing to scoff at.  There's always the year ahead for celebrating the finish line, right? 

I gave running a try this year, and made frenemies with Jillian Michaels and her Eighteen Thirty Day Shred.  I also participated in two 5K walks for charity and pushed both a lawn mower and a double stroller a whole lot this year.  I loosened up my former strict relationship with the Weight Watchers points program for a balance with plain old healthy, natural eating, and wonder of wonders, found that consuming fruits and vegetables, and exercising, can help one shed pounds, also.  I accidentally dyed my hair black, and brown and had it short and long(ish.)  I lived in jeans and solid color t-shirts, and oversized hooded sweatshirts.   

This year we kept our noses clean financially, steering clear of credit card debt and paying off the lesser of our vehicles.  We were very honest with what we had to save, spend and give away each month, and though I know where I could have done better in certain situations, I am quite pleased in the end.  I learned a good deal about the stock market this year (as opposed to the Absolute Zero that I comprehended in years previous) and managed good returns as the market made its rebound.  I am forever thankful that we came away from the year with Kevin's job in-tact, unlike so many with different stories of 2009.

 
I fell head over heels in love with my simple laundry line this year, and spent more time than ever outdoors with the kids.  We visited our zoo through all seasons, discovered the walking trail near our home, and took full advantage of many free days for our local Chicago museums.  We also had a blast with Little League and basketball, took swim lessons and gave karate the old college try (read: fail!)  We practically lived at the library this year, heh, when we weren't at the zoo.  Many of those outings were done in the name of our new way of life as a homeschooling family, which I am both proud of myself for taking on this year, and proud of my children for embracing so readily.

 
This year was particularly difficult as we carried my Aunt Kathy to the end of her life, which is still hard to believe, and we participated in the Susan G. Komen walk in her name, to find a cure for a terrible disease.  I have remained overly-critical of myself through the year, still deeply longing to conquer my own fears and awkwardness to say the right thing a given moment instead of blurting out a jumbled mess of not quite what I meant to say as I back out of the room, sheepishly.  And still around and around with a sugar addiction, and eating in the name of comfort and celebration and worry, except for the moments when I managed to overcome it this year.  And there were a few. 

 
In response to 2008's Year of No Travel, we made our way from coast to coast in 09.  Kevin and I took a spring trip to California, just the two of us, and left a little piece of our heart at Big Sur.  We made a 3600 mile road trip as a family early this fall, visiting Mount Rushmore and the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the Texas panhandle and many of the plains states.  I will love and remember that trip forever.  Late in the year we took the kids on their first flight, down to Florida where we spent time with Kevin's Granny on the news of her late-stage cancer.  Marin paid her very first visit to Mickey Mouse, also.

 
KJ learned to ride a bike this year!  Kevin and my dad constructed our backyard swing set!  Sant and Leslie bought a house!  And got engaged!  My major purchase was my Canon Rebel and its lenses, which I love with my whole heart, and we landscaped the front of our house, and carpeted our family room.  We successfully rented out our old house for a second year, and our baby daughter learned to crawl, walk, talk and climb. 

 
This year a new baby began making his/her way into our family, growing in our hearts, rather than in my womb.

This year I learned that personal growth, and change, often do not happen overnight.  Or even in short months or years, sometimes.  I learned the value of solid friends willing to accept you for who you are, forgive you for who you were not but should have been, hold you up when you could barely stand and sincerely pat your back as you giddily make your way down the fast track to happiness.  I learned that making yourself vulnerable has its down-side, but is full of lessons when ridden out to a situation's end.  I saw that there is perfection in life's good and bad, and that opening oneself up to truest sincerity and God's abundance can bring nothing but joy, and even a few surprises. 

2009 was good.

Choose Your Own Adventure

 

You'll remember this little gem, yes?

Okay, so it's been a relatively quiet eleven months and if you've not been reading for much longer you maaaaay not know that when we moved?  Back in 2007?  We never sold this little puppy. 

Yep, that was the point in time that our country was calling this Nightmare Economy a "Buyer's Market" and people still had jobs and retirement accounts and one could score an interest only mortgage for as little as twelve cents down happily paid with a MasterCard and three salted french fries.  No shortage of buyers that visited our little place, for sure, and unfortunately, no shortage of deals gone bad when it came to the not-sale of our little house.

At this time last year the house was just to the point of tossing dirt upon our heads as we lay in our deep financial grave, and we were left with no choice other than to foreclose find renters.  Fast. 

I like to call myself a doggone economy-downturn pioneer.  Bitches.

(I don't know.  The title, it didn't seem complete yet.)

So our renters signed a one year contract with us, and they kindly paid on the first of each and every month for a whole year and as far as we are capable of knowing, they've taken care of the house.  And they're nice, too.

I took the year and worked my ass off to dig us back out of credit card debt for the second time (where credit card debt is to nine months of two house payments as vomiting from your toes is to the stomach flu) and I went to great lengths to begin rebuilding our obliterated savings account.  Oh yeah, and I had a baby, too.

You love happy stories, don't you?

So recently, just as we began talking sophomore contract with our totally fabulous renters, we were alerted to the fact that we unknowingly (wherein accidental landlords probably would not know but eventually came to know) did not remove the mortgage and homestead exemptions on our old house when it became --- now say it with me, and annunciate, in a slow whisper -- when it became an "Investment Property."  (In the "Buyers Market.")  (Haaaaaa hahahahahaha.)  

So apparently our county really likes you to live in a house if you're getting a tax exemption for living there, and therefore they estimated the back-tax bill to be rather extremely large, and in the mail. 

I'd like to say something clever here, but only the phrase Beginning of the End comes to mind.

Because then bad-ass Escrow had to get in on the action, causing the payment on this little non-homestead of ours to increase by a couple hundred bucks a month, nevermind the fact that our rent checks already aren't covering what actually gets paid to the bank every month.  (But hot damn!  We have great credit!  We're honest suckers payers and we didn't foreclose with the rest of the free world.)

Now let us pause for a moment and think about Spring tulips and baby chicks.  It is what I tried to do when I heard this news, and also I placed my fingers in my ears and sang loudly until I realized that I just looked like a damn idiot and needed to start making out the check.

 

Who can forget the Knucklehead Smiths next door, eh? 

So after our uber-fabulous renters accidentally disclosed the fact that they were not only fully committed to signing another year contract with us but also are currently house hunting for something later this fall or early winter (thus leaving us high and dry in the snow, oopsie) we sort of wondered with the couple hundred dollar payment shortage, the tax thing, the new renter search, if we shouldn't just try selling again.  Look, I know the market is still shit, but maybe we'll get lucky, right?

Hrrrrmmm...  Did I mention the Knucklehead Smiths next door did foreclose in the past year? 

Ohhh they did, and now the Banklehead Smith property is on the market for approximately HALF of what the Knuckleheads bought it for, capping our available asking price somewhere around the twenty eight dollar marker.  Why buy ours if you can get the house next door with a garage and an extra bathroom for thousands less, eh?

We tried to strike a deal with our renters to purchase our place, though they respectfully declined (though still looking for a new lease for whatever reason?)  We've talked about hanging on to it for another year and bleeding the couple hundred dollars per month, though lets face it, my husband works in the financial sector and jobs are anything but guaranteed and stable anymore.  Last, we've talked about bare asses to the breeze, listing the empty house again and shelling out an ungodly amount of cash from our recently partial rebuild of an emergency fund to cover the difference between the final sales price and what is actually still owed on the mortgage.  If we can sell it this time.

We've got mere weeks left in the safety of paid-up renters, so we're going to have to figure this one out pretty quick, eh?

Ohhhhh Eight

With having Jack's birthday right there as we ring in each new year, I noticed that I've not ever written a Year In Review post or a Herrrrrre's What's To Come entry on this website -- even though I am actually a mite bit obsessed with a huge fan of reflecting on the past and planning for the future.  So if you'll allow me to drag the new year celebration on for just a bit longer (sure you can drink champagne while you read) we can take a quick look at my year past, and later the one to come.

When I think about 2008, now that we are all of six days into 09, I need a good cry.  Every time.  First I want to weep big crocodile tears of sobby sadness for the hard road that was last year, then some tears of joy and gratitude, and then back for a good long cry of relief.  We made it through 2008.  And frigging hell it was TOUGH.

I think 2007 was one of those years that makes the surrounding ones pale in comparison.  I felt most myself in 2007.  I had a ton of energy and on paper we really accomplished a lot.  We went lots of places and moved to a new house, Kevin took on a new job and I painted and redecorated and just felt healthy in so many ways.  I assumed that 2008 would be a continuation of the year previous and I could spend the rest of my life gleefully hopping around with two kids Enjoying Every Damn Thing (once we sold that pesky house, of course). 

Why hello Morning Sickness, where did you come from?

As can be imagined, I learned a lot this year.  I learned a lot about patience, and grace, and flexibility.  We chucked our plans for selling our old house and rented it out.  We chucked our plans for being a two-child family and opened our hearts to our new baby.  I chucked my plans for finishing my weight loss and for happily vacationing, and we put off every major purchase possible.  Some things really fell to shit, and some of them were rebuilt.  Some things I will never be able to discuss here, but, well, they played a large factor in The Crazy that this year was also.  I'm glad to see the year come to an end.  I'm grateful for all of the opportunities for learning that I was presented with, and I hope I came away understanding everything I needed to.  And my word, I am thankful for my happy sweet-smelling baby that came from this year. 

So here we go - 2008 In Review - In Numbers.

In 2008...

• I mowed zero lawns, dragged garbage cans to the curb only once, and shoveled snow only twice.  Ahh pregnancy, alas I find your perks. 
• We had 2 baby showers, 15 ultrasounds, 1 surgery, 1 tumor removed and 1 reproductive organ lost.  This year my body happily grew 1 beautiful six pound baby and I continued my long-standing career sabbatical to stay home, care for and educate 2 equally wonderful and energetic little boys (and then 1 adorable baby girl).
• In 2008 I consumed 467 pounds of cookie dough followed by a close second, 462.5 pounds of every variety of fresh fruit, canned fruit, fruit flavoring and fruity smelling non-fruit fruit.  I drank only 1/3 as much coffee as I would have, hosted 6 parties in our home, consumed 2 alcoholic beverages and gained 50 pounds (the calories in the alcohol, I tell you!)
• I changed approximately 4000 diapers in 2008, washed at least 1500 loads of laundry, had 2 houses flood, 1 roof leak, and 2 vacuums died.  I painted only 1 room in 2008, hid from 1 tornado, stepped on 984 legos, pinched 1 nerve in my upper back and fell down the stairs once in the middle of the night (and tore the thermostat out of the wall in the process, way to go on doing nothing half-assed.)  I blew my nose 14,982,227 times through the course of 17 colds. 
• In 2008 I ran the dishwasher at least 365 times and washed approximately 4 dishes by hand.
• Major purchases were limited to 1 larger vehicle, 1 winter coat, 1 television and innumerable pink baby sleepers.  This year we purchased 3 DVD's, no CD's, our first video game system as a married couple, and 1 video game.  I purchased 1 pair of shoes this year and no purse.  This year we went to no concerts, no movies, 1 musical, and paid 18 mortgage payments out of our savings veins pocket. 
• Holding strong, we managed to fully fund 1 IRA, rebuild our savings and close out the year without 1 dollar of credit card debt. 
• I read 2 books that influenced me in a major way, meditated at least 100 times and attended church only twice in the middle of an incredible spiritual journey.  I learned 2 very important lessons in 2008, watched my favorite documentary at least 20 times and claimed my personal stake as 1 huge History Channel Dork.
• I learned to love, appreciate and accept this 1 body that serves me whether it is baby-filled, overweight, well cared for or otherwise.  I quietly celebrated my 11th anniversary with Kevin, proud of its fruits, proud of what it took to arrive there.
• In 2008 we took no vacations but made our way into 4 neighboring states, attended no weddings, 1 wake, no funerals, 1 baptism, countless birthday parties.  I helped coordinate 2 classroom parties and rode a school bus 3 times.
• We scheduled 1 vasectomy and cancelled 1 vasectomy, no longer convinced that two 3 is our magic stopping number.  (Possibly I don't mind changing 4000 diapers a year as much as I think?)  I underwent 1 tumor regrowth check to find myself still tumor free and cancer free, hopefully forevermore, at least until February. 
• I kept up with 67 blog feeds, wrote 144 blog entries of my own and took more than 8200 pictures.  I read more than 1000 children's books, (mostly) potty trained 1 little boy, and taught my 2 boys about charity, hands-on, in 3 ways this year.  I made two sets of curtains, six pillows and my first quilt on my gramma's sewing machine.
• I mailed out 72 Christmas cards this year, and excitedly received 46. I was awful about responding to emails.
• In 2008 I sang hundreds of songs, cried more tears than I care to count, smiled thousands of genuine smiles and thanked God hundreds of times for all that we are blessed with.  Even when those blessings are wrapped up in an easy-to-exit year like 2008.

With the raining and the pouring, both literally and figuratively

So it steadily poured rain in our area for something like two and a half or seventeen days recently, and our town received 9.95 inches. 

On Sunday morning we woke up to the sump pump running non-stop, again, but thankfully keeping up with what was coming in, blessing us with a dry crawl space and lower level family room this time around.  Phew.  Unfortunately, we were not so lucky with the kitchen ceiling, again, which happily gave us a taste of what Mother Nature had going on in the out of doors that day.  You know, the claim with our insurance company that I canceled three weeks ago because they wanted to tear my kitchen apart just before I was to deliver a baby, and for sure I thought it was a One Time Deal - a mere mistake - my leaky kitchen ceiling under the almost new roof.  Let's see how State Farm feels about a changed my mind phone call in the coming days, eh?  (Right after they deal with The Other Claim I made yesterday, just wait.)

Later that same morning we received a call from The Renters - the basement had water - not only leaking in through the hundred year old brick basement walls (as always with heavy rains) but also rushing up through the floor drains down there.  Kevin headed over to assess the situation, and after a few hours of craftily utilizing Aquafina bottles to create vacuums in drains, the problem was as under control as one could ask for in that house.

By Monday morning we thought for sure things would calm down and drain down, although we'd heard that there were nearly no open roads through which we could pass.  Luckily my mom and dad made it up to our house on Sunday night so that my mom could stay the week and help me just as she'd been planning, but early Monday morning we found out just how impassible our roads were.  Kevin called at 5am to tell me he'd driven through a puddle and the car stalled out.  (And herein lies The Other Claim.)

A thirty foot long puddle by forever wide by two and a half feet deep, and the car was dead.  In the middle of this...puddle. 

(Really, he called it a puddle on the phone.  I could not figure out, for the life of me, how a puddle could possibly kill a Ford Explorer.  And then it all made sense when I pulled up in our other vehicle, and my husband exited his vehicle, leaving shoes and socks inside, dress slacks rolled thigh-high, laptop bag safely harnessed around his neck to wade out through knee-deep water.  It was a bit more than a puddle.)

It took forever to find a tow company who was even willing to try to get the car out, for no less than the value of my right arm, and now it sits in front of our house waiting to be towed to the site of either its repair or its declaration of doom. 

In spite of the two major expressways around us being shut down (due to flooding, of course) I did manage to get him all the way to work yesterday morning, and he's been commuting via trusty ol' train ever since.

So this is our town, as of late yesterday afternoon.

This is the street we drive up and down forty-seven times a week, and the dark green rectangle-looking thing in the middle of all that water?  Would be the top of an enormous National Guard vehicle who tried to make it through.

This is the rear of our local library, where my mother-in-law works, which has been sandbagged for more protection in spite of the five feet of water that is filling it.  Actually, what you're looking at is the parking lot, and the lake itself normally has a pleasant brick walking path around it, all the way out past the light posts.

These light posts.

And the apartments and businesses nearby, and the roof of another car parked there.

It is safe to assume that the lake in the middle of our downtown area didn't have the room for all the rain that came down, though now things are becoming more serious and all are hoping the dam will hold.  Schools have been closed for two days now, businesses and homes are under water, and it's unbelievable to think that this is where I live, not something I'm seeing on the news from far away.

To add insult to injury, I also spoke with baby Marin's doctor late yesterday.  The obstruction to her kidney is pretty severe, unfortunately, and surgery is in her not-too-distant future.  He would like to give her a few more weeks to grow since she is so tiny, and then in the second week of October she will undergo the MAG-3 test I mentioned in my last entry, followed by another Renal Scan the next day, and then decisions about when to schedule surgery.  More than anything - more than the water, the damn car, the anything else that could possibly plague us, please do keep her in your prayers.

The one that almost started with loud sobs instead of Oreo Cakesters

Hot damn, those Oreo Cakesters?  Fan-friggin-tastic -- with a 20 ounce washdown of Lipton Green Iced Tea To Go (zero calories, you know, to balance out the cakesters of course).  MMMM.  I figured I might as well try them before they are banished to Neverland come September. 

This is possibly how I've gained twenty-five pounds in twenty-two weeks of pregnancy, no?   I'll add that I gained about this much with each of my boys' entire pregnancies (and then I'll go cower in the corner with mah cookies.)

Despite the weight gain, however, I'm so very happy to report that my blood pressure is holding perfectly stable, and I've yet to experience a single contraction in this pregnancy.

Earlier today I was in a stressed-out funk over playing the waiting game with renters.  I was sort of flipping out over that, and the fact that I'm no longer keeping up at home, and needing a break.  Desperately, desperately needing a break.  And I don't mean one of those breaks where I get to read magazines all day while hospitalized with pneumonia.  Though at the time I was taking what I could get.

We had arrived home hours earlier from driving Sant to work (I'm without my car after our accident, and thus keeping her car all day) and my kids were beginning their third episode of Dora the Explorer while I stared blankly at the computer screen wondering how the hell we were going to get out of this mess. 

I decided that, minimally, I was going to have to shower and get out of my oversized Old Navy Dinnerware Sleep Pants for the day, and do something with my children.  If there's one thing I've tried to hold onto through all of this, it is that the last thing I want to happen is for KJ and Jack to reap the ill-effects of The Crazy that has become our reality.  Therefore, trips to the zoo, trips to the park, and making the most of the time we do have as a family.  I may suck at cooking decent dinners lately, the house may look like a war zone, and my poor child might have had to wear too-short pants to school recently because the laundry took a back seat to my eighty-seven renter appointments this week, but by dammit we should continue going to the park. 

(My plans are so brilliant, I know.)

On our way out to a park far, far away, I passed the school where I was long ago a teacher.  Out on the lawn they had a sign advertising the annual Relay for Life car wash - an event I once participated in, late in May 2002 while pregnant with KJ.  I quickly remembered being there at the walk that year, barely making it around the track one time before my contractions started up again.  And then I had to go home, where I spent the majority of the summer on bed rest. 

I'm right about that time, I thought to myself as I drove, and I'm still in the clear.  I compared KJ's September birthday to Baby Marin's September due date, and was relieved to still be perfectly healthy.  And then I realized that KJ's actual due date was October 25th, making it even earlier than I remembered that pregnancy getting bad.  Jack's did exactly the same, I know for sure, only slightly earlier.  First with the premature labor, then with the pre-eclampsia.

I'm hoping to escape both this time around.

And it has to be this way, as sad a fact as it is, because my ability to take care of the house(s) and the kids ninety-seven percent of the time is about all we've got going for us.  Kevin must work long and hard to financially keep up with our current state, and I have to take care of...everything else.  Some day I will look back on these days as the hard times, I'm sure, and I hope I can at least know by then that they were instrumental in teaching me what I might otherwise not have understood.

We arrived at the far away park, I still in my funk, and I noticed a bus pull up just after we parked the car.  It was a bus from the school at which I'd taught, and out of it came a group of kids, followed by a teacher I once worked with.  My first instinct was to pull right back out of the parking space and find another park, rather than drag myself through phony smiles and pretenses of wonderful.  (Because really, who runs into anyone after six years and wants to hear that today's trip to the park was about all they could muster, given the crap they're dealing with at the moment?)

Thankfully, I knew for sure the boys would lose their shit if we left the fantastic playground we were seeing for the first time, and I figured I could do Pretend Pleasant much easier than I could deal with Multiple Meltdown right then. 

After a few minutes I met up with my teacher friend from seemingly ages ago, and we exchanged hugs like it was just yesterday.  We talked about our kids, I introduced her to mine, and she asked me if we'd sold our house yet.  Easy as that, she already knew.  She'd driven by a handful of times over the last year, and she's been wondering, she said. 

I told her it's not been easy and that we're looking for renters, and that it's been a year unlike any other.  What a blessing it was to run into someone exactly like her.  Not fake, not wanting to hear just how perfect everything is, just wanting to reconnect exactly as we are. We talked all about school, and she updated me on everyone I once worked with, and we shared a few good laughs.  We talked through the entire visit, stopping only briefly for me to chase down Jack and for she to corral a few of her students.  And before I knew it I'd forgotten all about my miserable mood, and I forgot to obsess over the possibilities for what's to come.  It was sunny, and chilly and breezy.  My kids were having a great time, and I too was enjoying myself, and I wish I could have frozen the experience in time.

I've been thinking so often about how to get through this, and about what's possibly to come and about what has been, that I had forgotten to forget about it and live in the moment I have.  I've been awful about connecting with my girlfriends lately, and my blogging has been spotty.  I try to focus on the positive when I remember, but boy that's not easy when you're down and the kicks keep coming.  Being so consumed by this one part of my life, which, admittedly does affect many other areas, I've grown tired of talking about it, and I just want it to go away already.  Today helped me to remember that as long as I'm thinking about it all of the time, I am forcing myself to live it all of the time.  Today's break was nice - something I need to recreate again soon.

And then bring on the Cakesters while I still can.  You know, for the baby.

Five hundred twenty five thousand, six hundred phone calls

(You got the reference, yes?)

So let's talk about everyone's favorite subject.  My Real Estate Disaster, eh? 

We've got Buyer Showings still going on, Renter Showings going on, and even Tripping Friends Who Think Their Friends Are Getting The House showings going on.  You name them, they've walked through our house in the last three days.

When I last left you, we had a FOR RENT sign on the front lawn and had received eight phone calls in the first few hours:

And then magically, right around 5pm, the phone calls stopped. 

It was good, I thought, that my cell phone was no longer going crazy that we had a handful of interested renters.  I had made a few appointments with people to see the house, two of whom seemed incredibly interested. 

Then when my phone rang just before 8am Friday morning, I figured it was the rental calls starting up again.

Nope.

It was one of my interested renters calling to ask if the house was still available to rent.  "Of course!  And, why?" I asked.  "Because I drove by on my way to work this morning and noticed you'd taken your sign down."

Grrrr.

Someone had stolen our sign. 

Seriously, friends, can you believe that?

At first I thought she just missed it, but then when I went there myself, looked on both sides of the house and in the back yard, I was sure that it had been swiped.

Now what the hell would someone want with a used FOR RENT sign with my cell phone number on both sides of it?  Also, the fact that I shelled out twelve bucks for the damn thing combined with the fact that we need renters left me one angry pregnant lady.

My phone rang again at three o'clock.  And again at three twenty.  And three twenty-seven. 

I buzzed back past the house? 

Sign returned.

What the hell?

On his way home from work that evening, Kevin was stopping at the house to meet with the favorite of our interested renters.  My phone was still ringing, (and ringing and ringing and ringing,) and I begged him to pull the sign the moment he got there.  I'd taken eighteen phone calls while brushing my teeth, dressing my children and running through Home Depot and the Subway drive-thru, had written no one's name down because I am sooo the first time landlord, and had made seven appointments for showings.

While it was crazy and a little stressful, it was amazing after an entire year of rejections to know that SOMEONE WANTED TO LIVE IN THE HOUSE. 

We showed the place on Thursday night, Friday night, and allllllll afternoon on Saturday.  There was Bad Credit Stella, the punky woman who offered me cash on the spot for a rent to own deal before she'd even made it to the kitchen, as long as she could build a large shed for her motorcycle in the back yard, Perfect Robin, the professional with perfect credit, again who offered money on the spot and who we loved, just looking for something for eighteen months while they build their new house.  Then there was Carol the Desperate who was seven and a half months pregnant with her second child, who had to be out of their rental place in two weeks, my God I'm afraid I'm not going to get the house, let's meet earlier, again and again she called to tell me.  Followed closely by Joe, the man who was divorced five years ago and hasn't owned since, sharing with us (and his girlfriend and her eight year old daughter) that he's spent the better part of the last few years drunk and is currently in an apartment lease, but he could probably break it.  And towards the end there was very, very young Brittany (I'm sorry, I HAVE to use this one's real name) and her boyfriend Kevin who were pregnant with their first baby.  I can only imagine they shall name him Sean Preston.

Somewhere during Saturday afternoon's chaos, right in the middle of my painting break (and my DQ Peanut Buster Parfait, thank you) a very tall, very odd, very shaky man knocked at our door.  I, at that moment, was very thankful my husband was there to field The Crazy.

Not only was he very tall, very odd, very shaky, but he was also very confused, explaining that his friend had made an offer on the house two nights previous (HAHAHA!) and he needed to take a look at the place for her.  Finally we figured out through his slurred speech and terrible mispronunciations that he was a friend of Punky Stella (who'd made the recent newspaper with her bar fight, even!)  He was as high as a kite, nearly walking into walls but making damn sure the furnace was in good working condition. 

That settled that with Stella.

We agreed to make a decision by Sunday night, and we did.  We called Perfect Robin and arranged for her to sign the paperwork at 11:30 today.  And then she called at 9am this morning to say they'd found something cheaper. 

Gah.

Desperate Carol was apparently not desperate enough, practically knocking us and her skeptical-about-a-rock-driveway husband down to secure the house, but then failing to turn in her application and return my voicemail message.

Leaving us with a few others who we weren't particularly crazy about, and the next round of voicemails from interested hopefuls.

Now on the books are Esther the Other Rent-to-Owner who has to talk to her fiance tonight, Dave the guy whose cell phone service plays, "I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill" before connecting the call, Sarah who talks reallyreallysuperfast, and Mark, who I decided not to even bother leaving a return voicemail for after listening to three quarters of the "I'm sorry I'm bad, sorry I'm blue, sorry bout all the things I said to you" song SO HORRIBLY LOUDLY on his voicemail message.  Am guessing he had a recent breakup and is hoping she'll call? 

The house is super clean, and super ready for super renters, whoever they are.  I decided to go with a zero paint on the hardwood floors policy, and therefore spent all Saturday afternoon and evening (before I could begin scrubbing down the kitchen and bathroom and changing smoke alarm batteries, that is) removing the adorable Pottery Barn airplane wallies that I once in 2006 thought to be the cutest idea ever, so that I could paint:

Repeat Note To Self:  Never stick anything to walls, ever.  Even if you think removing it will most certainly be someone else's problem.

Neutral enough, using a mix of leftover paints.

I am trying, though difficult, to keep my emotions out of the entire process.  I've gotten excited when renters were excited and desperate when renters were (even more pregnant than I, and) desperate, but I'm continually reminding myself to keep my brain in the game and realize that we have options, even if the right one doesn't pop up in the first several hours of phone calls.  We're hoping this could actually work out very well, and possibly even turn out to be a positive investment for the long haul.

And wouldn't that be nice?