pause for a station identification

Remember those words from your childhood? Because these days, I don't hear them much. Pause. Exhale. It's time to identify your station. WQXR (ding! guess what that was? c'mon New Yorkers of my generation, what kind of a station was it?), for example.

It's a chance to reflect on what you're listening to and where you are in life.

My recounts of events of this week-of-high-drama (the title of the next popular reality show!) have irked some wise and some foolish people. When I went back with the tail more or less between my legs and asked still others if indeed I had been so annoying as to be insufferable and vile, they were baffled.

But truth is, it takes one wise person to discover that the earth is round. So I must go with the sage and leave the rest rubbing their chins in puzzlement.

I apologize.

To those who thought I was coming down hard against them: I am sorry. [Caveat: I am not sorry for coming down hard against those who in their lives do not treat their past, present or future loved ones with kindness and compassion.]

To those who thought I was batty at the least and about to jump into an abyss of neuro-psychotic illness (is it a disease? it sounds scary, hence the choice of words): I am sorry.

To those who hated the choice of instrument of torture for the home buyer ( a cannonball) --and there were many of you! --I am sorry.

Most of all, to the buyers who came back with a reasonable counter offer just five minutes ago, leading us to contemplate small sums of money instead of big cataclysmic outcomes: I am so so sorry. I know you love the house. Your letter is eloquent and genuine. May you have as many happy memories in this place as I did.

P.S. Yo, you home buyers: did you or did you not read this blog? fess up!

UPDATE: Coincidentally, today a friend sent me this image of an instrument of torture (had it been in my files earlier, I may have bypassed the cannonball idea):

And people are just too much for me to face…

And therefore, placing a particular house-purchasing family in a cannonball and firing it skywards seems just about perfect! [And I do not care if they are reading this. Go ahead, write your lower offer based on an exaggerated defect because, dudes, I am not going to accept it! Think you are so smart – reading my blog perhaps? I am fed up, I no longer want to sell you the house, I even take back my kind offer of the New York Times from this morning. My personal crises notwithstanding, I am not going to be drawn into this nightmare sale by house-buying transactional stubborness!]

…I climb up on the top of the stairs And all my cares Just drift right into space

Like hell they do. Type in correction: none of my cares are drifting into space. They are piling on rapidly and my plate was already full before this week even started. Prognosis: no relief in sight.

On the roof is peaceful as can be And there the world below can’t bother me…

Oh it bothers me plenty. Plenty. Thanks a lot world, for sucking it to me again and again. Thanks for last night as well (sorry, friend, for standing you up for drinks last night; I was quite incapacitated).

When I come home feeling tired and beat I go up where the air is fresh and sweet…

Where would that be? The fresh and sweet air I mean? In the crawlspace that the engineer came to inspect this morning? Is that it? Seemed fine up there. This is a forty year old house, damn it! You want a new property – here I’ll show you some houses farther west. Add a couple hundred thou and you can have all the brand new roof tiles you want!

Oh, did I hear that you registered your child for the local elementary school already? Well forget it! Tell junior mommy and daddy were forced out of the house by VERY ANGRY SELLER! I have no patience, no remorse, no oomph, no stamina left! Go pick on someone else, buttheads.

No more mr. nice-guy from me, ever. I tell you, it doesn’t pay! It DOES NOT PAY!

UPDATE: In case the buyers do not understand blogs, I am compelled to remind all that Ocean is a blog that believes in looking at tense moments with humor. I did modify the text a teeny tiny bit so as to not appear totally wacky. Which I am not.

* lyrics: my commenter was right. Peter belts it out, but Carole King wrote it