There's the Rub

After months of dealing with the fallout of Hurricane Irene vs. the water table; the aftermath of the freak October snowstorm vs. our trees; and the repercussions of living nowhere near the town sewer line, we are finally, finally, ready to put our house (back) on the market.

Well... maybe "ready" is not the right word. I don't know that we'll ever feel completely ready.  There is always some project to be undertaken or improvement or touch up to be made.  But at some point you just have to stop and be satisfied that you've done the best you can.  Because, really, is that tiny nail hole in the molding going to turn off an otherwise interested buyer?  Is it?!  Should I patch and paint it?!  Sigh.

Back in the days of yore, when I was a young associate forced to sit through agonizingly dull drafting sessions at the printer, there would come a time (usually in the early pre-dawn hours) when the senior partners would say "pencils down,"* meaning: no more back and forth over nonsense, no more changes, the deal is done. 

So I guess the time has come for us to put our pencils down. 

Except... on a whim today I picked up a Magic Eraser.  I know I am super-late to this party but WOW!  It really is magic.  Scuffs on the walls?  Gone.  Mark on the ceiling from an ill-chosen fly swatter?  Gone.  Errant marker lines on the door frame near the craft table? Yup, gone.  Amazing. 

   
Don't think I wasn't tempted to rub that thing on my under-eye circles.


*   Ack! Pencils! I' m dating myself.  It's like when I say Walkman instead of iPod.  Back then we would also fax people things.  And for a while there we even worked in MS-DOS.  "Boy, the way Glenn Miller played....."

Vindication!

We re-did the bathroom and office downstairs. They looked great. I was thrilled. But....

There's always a but, right? (And in a house with a seven year old boy there's always a "butt." The word alone is enough to cause side-clutching guffaws.)

My problem was The Smell. Whenever I would walk through the doorway leading into the parts that had been updated I got a whiff of something between sawdust and body odor.

It should be noted that-- for better or worse-- I have a very good sense of smell. [SIDE NOTE: My brother-in-law literally has no sense of smell. He doesn't mind, he says, because as far as he's observed, most of the time people are complaining that things smell bad. Evidently no one is stopping to smell the roses.]

I attributed The Smell to the newness of the work that had been done.

But weeks passed. And, still, every time I went near the office I would be overcome by The Smell.

I don't know what possessed me, but one day I put my nose against the (new) door into the office. Ew. I had located the source of The Smell.

Repulsed and thrilled, I announced my discovery to my husband. As I recall, he took no notice. On the smelling spectrum, if my brother-in-law is a zero and a bloodhound is a ten, my husband is about a three. To him, The Smell was in my imagination. Or just-- gasp!-- "the way our house smells." He grudgingly sniffed the door and shrugged. Nothing.

Undaunted, I made all my friends smell the door. And good friends they are-- "this smells gross, here, smell it." And they did! And they all agreed. My contractor, on the other hand, couldn't pick up any smell. For a while, it seemed that The Smell was only perceptible to women and children. My husband insinuated that I was leading the witnesses.

The heat of this July had only served to empower The Smell. I constantly re-routed myself to avoid passing through the offending doorway. Something had to go-- me or the door. Not wanting to be too dramatic, I opted for the door. When my contractor finally surfaced, he had his partner in tow.

I restated my desire that they not leave my house without taking the offending door with them. Was that an eyeroll?

Minutes later, a call from downstairs. The partner: "I'm totally with you on the door. It stinks! It's awful! Gaah!"

The door is gone. As is The Smell. Cue the Hallelujah Chorus.

Mortifying Moment #698

We're inching closer and closer to finishing the bathroom.

Today, after being unavailable all week, the plumber came back (a minor miracle).

I was in the hallway of the first grade “wing” at my son’s school with my son, the rest of the kids in his grade, and most of their parents when I got a call from the plumber telling me that the toilet and sink were in. But the connection was bad, so I wasn’t sure if the plumber said that there was a problem-- as there has been every step of the way (which is why I answered the phone)-- or that there were no problems.

Like every lame sitcom character, I decided that the best course of action was to talk louder (only slightly more logical than talking louder to people who don’t speak English). Which brings us to this moment… out in the hall… surrounded by people:

Me: “SO, CAN I USE THE TOILET?!”

How do you think that went over with a bunch of seven year olds?

Bananagate

We’re having some work done on our house. Joe, our carpenter/contractor, is someone I know fairly well and trust. And he’s got good people working for him. This is not the first project we have undertaken at this house, so I’m pretty familiar with Joe’s crew (although not familiar enough to ask whether Sixtoe is the man’s real name or… yeah, that’s why I haven’t asked).

This job involves the basement bathroom. At present there is no toilet in that bathroom so, of course, if the guy who is working down there needs to use the bathroom he’s got to come upstairs. It would be nice if he put the seat down when he was finished, but… whatever, maybe he’s just trying to remind me that he’s using the bathroom too. I’m a little messy.

Now, at some point in the past, a whole crew was doing outside work in the heat of summer and I said that they should feel free to grab drinks from the garage fridge whenever. ‘Whenever’ now includes “to go with whatever lunch you’ve brought from home.” Okay, fine. I made the offer and I stand by it. It would be nice if the empty bottles made it into the recycling bin, but… no biggie.

Here’s where it gets sticky. I went to grab a banana. I had just been to the store and had bought some green bananas knowing that I had one nice yellow one at home. But the ripe banana was nowhere to be found. Was I wrong? Had I already used the ripe banana? Or… No. Impossible. The guy working on my bathroom couldn’t have actually helped himself to a banana off my counter. He couldn’t have, right?

What a pickle. I mean, I would never have denied him a banana. I don’t actually care about the banana. But it just made me feel a little icky. I’m not here all day. What else is he helping himself to?

And then today I came home and he’s having his lunch at my kitchen table with one of my husband’s Diet Sunkists. When I came in he just kept on reading his magazine (or was it mine?!). Make yourself at home, dude. That’s weird, right? I felt so uncomfortable I had to leave. The topper: I turned on the TV tonight and it was on Telemundo. I think I have a problem establishing boundaries. I know this guy does.