Sunday, July 31, 2005

This post is about bras. Too racy or undignified for you? Move on.

A house showing is a big deal. The outcome can set the course for your entire month, year, nay – future. It is imperative that you do all within your power to make the place presentable. Good tips include such things as: eliminate clutter, put out flowers, turn on lights and vacuum carpets. If sellers had done any of these when we were on the market, we would have snatched many a house in moments of great indecision. We’re all shallow beings, easily taken in by fluff.

Sigh, our buying was so long ago…

Wait, return to the topic at hand: bras.

I cut it close with the house cleaning and organizing today (in anticipation of the open showing of the place by the realtor). A couple of hours before the set time I decided that, as a final touch, I’d change all the sheets on all the beds. To give it a crisper look and feel. In case what – you may ask. I mean, only bears try out beds. But still, omit no detail! – was my motto.

And I ran a load of laundry with the sheets, in case someone looked inside the laundry chute. It’s gross seeing a strangers’ soiled stuff lying in a crumpled mass. Omit no detail.

Having over the years shrunk more items of clothing than I would like to admit through the act of machine drying, I tend to hang certain delicate items out on a line in the street-facing, large and airy laundry room.


A sheets load takes certain delicate items that absolutely should not be shrunk and so I threw those in. And then hung them out to dry. A nice parade of dangling straps and cups. Mental note: take them down on way out. Because it’s just so unseemly. Embarrassing, I think, to reveal to prospective buyers what size you wear. They may infer something from it. Too big, too small – who knows, it may reflect somehow on the house. Woman with Hooters’-sized knockers lives here (or, the opposite -- I’m not sayin’).

Oh but you know where this is heading: I forgot to take them down. I dashed out at 1:01 and I forgot.

Crap.

the reason why I am not over-the-edge stressed as weighed against the 100 suggested reasons as to why my house remains, as yet, unsold


First, a sampling of the proffered by others and imagined by me forces that are, almost a month after its entry on the market, keeping this spectacular house… still on the market:

1. There are way too many people out there wanting to shake up their lives and move on and out (thereby glutting the market with “for sale” signs);
2. It’s the dark wood exterior. People like light wood these days;
3. Yes, perennials are nice, but suburban types like marigolds and geraniums and not phlox and coreopsis and campanula, all growing in a crazily mixed up way;
4. Summer is the slow season because people celebrate the Fourth of July for a long long time;
5. It’s like wanting to and not wanting to get pregnant: you’re more likely to have it happen if you do not really want it to happen;
6. It’s Bush’s fault;
7. It’s the economy, stupid;
8. It’s the end of life as we knew it;
9. It’s the weather;
10. It’s weird.

So why am I calm?
No mystery here. I have stopped making lists of things to do. Instead, I am compiling a huge list of things NOT to do, on the theory offered elsewhere on the local blogosphere that one is more likely to not do things than to do things. My list of things that I will not do includes, so far, the following:

1. I will avoid turning on the AC unless there is someone else, other than me, in the house;
2. I will avoid using the aging car (this is helped tremendously by the fact that it now takes quite the number of minutes to get it started and typically only a loud and abusive “damn you!” will shake it into power);
3. I will avoid getting angry at anyone for any reason (this one is the easiest by far, as no one is especially making me angry these days; or maybe it is because I have fallen into a benign indifference to pretty much everything, knowing that once I crack the emotive door, I will be flooded with such violent reactions to even the smallest of annoyances that I will not be able to stop pounding and expounding until forced to do so by people from the local mental health facility);
4. I will not succumb to stress. There you have it – just like that. No more stress. Zip it out, turn it off, flick a finger at it – be gone, you devil!

So there.