Off the Market

Friday evening Wifey and I had our house taken off the market. So if you were looking for a 3 bedroom 1 bathroom house in the South Clintonville neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio between the prices of $180 and $190k you ain’t buying ours. You are too late we are off the market. Deal with it. You will just have to choose one of the other 44 houses for sale in that price range. Stupid buyers market!

2 years ago I would not have thought that I would not have been able to sell my house for 2 years in a row. That, sadly, is the case. I am surprised that we were not able to sell. Last year we went into contract rather quickly, but the 3 layers of shingles forced us out. We made that repair this year, getting ready to be on the market, and no bites what so ever. It is amazing how much change a year makes. We are going to re-finance and lower our payments, which will “force” us to stay for a few more years.

The great thing about the house is that it is still a good house. It is still in good condition, even though we have been occupying it for 5 years. The issues that we have with it are the reasons that no one bought it this time around. We would like it to have a real 3rd bedroom instead of the glorified landing for the attic access and a 1st floor half bath would be really nice. Those are really the only 2 drawbacks about the house, and honestly, they are not that terrible of drawbacks.

We are chalking up this experience to learning how to keep the house fairly clean for only minimal amounts of nightly effort (for the record, not “knightly effort” and definitely not a "Kiera Knightly" effort). This is a very good lesson to learn, if we can only keep it in practice. I am inherently lazy, so it really is only a matter of time before I cause these good habits to fall to the wayside.

To recap:
House is off the market
That means it is only a matter of time before it looks like a whirlwind hit the inside of it
I go on vacation with Wifey sans Little Man on Friday
It will be our first real vacation without the wee beastie since we went to London for our 5th anniversary so long ago…
A lifetime ago in fact
Little Man’s lifetime
20 Questions Tuesday coming up tomorrow
Spaghetti happening for dinner

Ivy

I mentioned yesterday that I have a couple of small patches of poison ivy on my forearms. Well, I feel it might be good of me to elaborate further. ( I mean, who doesn’t want to hear about my poison ivy? Anyone? Anyone?) I have two patches of the rash on my left arm and a couple of dots on my right forearm. I think I got them from weeding the area around the air conditioner – yet another completely useless task I have been doing to sell my house.

Anyway… I have had poison ivy before. I have had it bad enough that I needed a super steroid shot to help clear it up. It was bad, bad, bad. This time, things are really bizarre. I did the weeding on Saturday and the rash did not show up until Monday morning. Maybe it was a mutant strain of poison ivy that I was dealing with. One that has a rash dormancy period. Natural selection would do this, right? Any biologists out there that can confirm this? Dermatologists? Anyone?

The really bad thing about getting poison ivy after not having had it for at least 12 years is that you really forget how itchy it is.

To Recap:
The space between the deck and the house looks really well-groomed now
House still hasn’t sold
But my forearms are rather itchy
Meeting with Super Realtor Traci tonight to discuss
Catherine the Great’s first name was really Sofia
While cooking bread in your house is supposed to make it sell better, cooking cabbage doesn’t seem to help
Stupid poison ivy
Not “le stupid poisson ivre”
Different meaning entirely
Ivy-Dry works great, by the way
But I think they should update their photos of the family hiking
Number 1: All of them have external frame packs
Number 2: All of them are wearing cotton
Number 3: Their sleeping bags are huge
This pic is from the late 80’s, I mean look at the kids glasses

I had something better

Usually during the weekend, whilst the my humdrum life boils along, 2 or 3 things happen that make me think, “Wow, now I have a topic to blog about.” Then Monday rolls around and I completely forget what the heck I had thought was so “blogworthy.” That is definitely the case for this fine Monday.

I think there were at least 3 topics this weekend that lodged in the labyrinthine passages of my noggin, only to be forgotten. I am sure, had I had a paper and pen, and I had remembered to write down the idea during their conception, you, dear reader, would be reading something inherently more amusing than this post about forgetting post topics. As it is, I must make do with the limited mental faculties I possess and post about something.

Here it goes.

The main issue with having one’s house on the market is that one’s weekends are not relaxing. Especially if one has an open house sometime during that weekend. On Saturday we had a showing during the prime I-want-to-be-at-home-on-my-couch time of the day. Then on Sunday I had to watch the World Cup Final on a not-as-nice-as-mine TV. Not that I really missed any spectacular soccer there. Crappy World Cup ending in PK’s. That just sucks. Anyway… my point is that when one’s house is on the market, one typically has to not be at home on the weekends because that is when all the working folk who are looking for houses are out looking.

Okay, I need to start writing stuff down. That was pitiful. Just plain pitiful. We are going straight to the recap.

To Recap:
I really am curious as to what was said to Zidane
Are rib-cages supposed to take that kind of a beating?
Work was a really tiring folly today
I had to get in stupid early to finish something for this afternoon
Now, I am rather tired and more than a little cranky
Zidane, a headbutt, really?!!?
It is not relaxing at all to maintain a high level of cleanliness with a near 3-yr old in the house
That doesn’t even take into effect how abjectly lazy I am
Last night, for dinner I mad Little Man a hamburger, reheated some turkey chili, some chicken tenders, and some pasta with sauce
He asked for each meal in succession
He only ate the pasta and sauce
It is the equivalent of him saying “Dance, Monkey, Dance!”
No one really expects the headbutt as a lead off
We went hiking on both Saturday and Sunday
Saturday was just Wifey and I
Sunday was all three of us
Saturday was 5.2 miles (8.37 km for my metric loving readers)
Sunday was 2.7 miles (4.35 km for my metric loving readers, again)
I am not sure what we are having for dinner tonight
But I do know it takes tomatoes
I promise, tomorrow will be a better post
I promise