untitledlife

Hallelujah, we have sold our house. And not only did we sell it, but we sold it ourselves. We actually had two offers on the plate, so we had to do a little wheeling and dealing, as untitleddad used to say. I will spare you the mind-numbing marathon phone conversations, which at one point had untitledhusband at home, holding his mobile phone to our landline speaker phone, so I could discuss details with the dude on the other end. I really didn’t even hear what was being said, I just kept repeating our terms like Rainman.

Since this is a journey that we all eventually go on, I thought I’d share some things we learned along the way.

Your home will sell faster if you drop $200 on new Egyptian cotton bathroom rugs at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Not sure I can scientifically prove this one. But I am quite confident that the white rubber backing that was flaking off our old rugs in mammoth chunks might have been construed for eight-balls, or worse yet, dandruff. And since we didn’t list the meth lab on our home specifications, that would be false advertising.

De-clutter. In other words, get rid of all the shit you keep in that box in your closet, the stuff you only bring out when family visits. We consigned hundred of dollars of what I loosely call merchandise, including an oak quilt rack with heart-shaped designs on it and an oak rocking chair that was so tiny, not even skinny untitledhusband could fit his ass on it without threat of deep vein thrombosis. Turns out untitledmother commissioned said quilt rack and chair from a convicted child molester (she didn’t know he was a molester at the time). Who knew Michael Jackson was hiding out in the Midwest, whittling wood products and such. Shimon!

Remove all signs of pets. If people know a pet is in the house, they will be on the hunt for pet stains and pet stank – and may even find them when they don’t exist. What, like that steaming pile of duke in the spare bedroom isn’t a dead giveaway? I originally had this fear that untitleddog would take it upon himself to sabotage our home selling efforts by planting landmines in clandestine locations. He’s spent years brewing a custom blend of Agent Orange in his urinary tract, a potion that has proven most effective at killing all vegetation in his wake. Now that his deforestation project is almost complete, the last thing he wants is a new patch of sod sneering at him.

This whole ordeal is far from complete, so I’m sure I’ll have more gems to share in a few months’ time. But until then… we got our HOUSE sold, we got our HOUSE sold…

So I’m looking out the sliders the other day, watching untitleddog pinch off a fatty on the grass I’d just pooper scooped, when what do I see? The neighborlady. In her backyard. Holding a giant mirror. And scissors.

Oh, the treachery. She was cutting her hair, errr, her MULLET, in her backyard with what looked like a pair of hedge trimmers.

Now, may I take this chance to remind you that this here is the suburbs. And here in the burbs, we got us some standards. We only park two jet skis in the driveway at any given time. We refrain from letting our kids pee in the daylillies, no matter how many PBR’s they’ve had. And godblessit, we limit the number of NASCAR flags to no more than three per residence (with an exception, of couse, on the day the racing died). Surely there is something in our covenant about convening a barber shop in your backyard.

Now I’ve seen some twisted shit out my back door, including a boy dressed as a collegiate cheerleader beating down another boy dressed as Darth Maul, a man pouring drums of Round Up on his lawn, and a lady showing her new titty piercing to her neighbor. But this here was crossing all lines of decency and decorum.

As she stood there, grooming her surly locks in front of all tarnation, I tried to look away. But damn it all if I didn’t have a primal need to see this storyline through to the end. I wondered if she was going to give herself a Dorothy Hamill. Sporting a mullet of that thickness and fortitude, I hypothesized on the possibility of her ability to carry off the greatest haircut of all — the Gumby.

It would be an understatement to say I was disappointed upon seeing that alas, she was only giving herself a trim. But she upped the weirdness quotient in the end, gathering her shearings in a mixing bowl and scattering them around her flowers and shrubs in what appeared to be some sort of Wiccan sacrifice. In a conversation a few weeks later, a much less romantic plot was revealed. Turns out that she was simply trying to deter rabbits from her garden.

I considered putting a Cost Cutters gift certificate and a bottle of rabbit repellant in her mailbox. Anything to prevent the image of future cuttings from burning untitledson’s developing corneas. I would’ve documented the carnage, if only my bastard camera hadn’t been broken ($300 I’ll never get back, thanks to the thieving jackals at Best Buy). But the summer’s just getting started, people. The rabbits have only begun to multiply. And one of these days, momma’s going to need a new do.