The Joys of Home Ownership

We haven't moved yet, but we're getting a lot of junk mail from mortgage companies who would be very happy to charge us money to manage our mortgage.

The moving strategy goes something like this:

• Clean the walls
• Prep the walls
• Pick a color to paint the walls that isn't dreary or too Romper Room; something that doesn't make our complexions look blotchy or ghastly and yet doesn't force us to live with an oddly colored trim
• Paint the walls
• Paint the walls with a second coat
• Wonder how to pull up the carpet tacks underneath the space heaters
• Attend my sister's wedding
• Pack everything we own into boxes
• Move
• Wonder where the hell various items are for three or four weeks
• Wish the kitchen had more damn counter space
• Pull up the blackberries living in the yard
• See how much money we have left for things like new window treatments to replace the hanging plastic slats in the living room and to get new bedroom (and kitchen) light fixtures so we can send the current ones back to Tragicistan
• Install shelves that are too high for Arthur to reach
• Raise the shelves that were too high for Arthur to reach when we started...

So far, what we've discovered is that Arthur prevents us from getting anything done unless he's napping, we wear him on our backs, or one of us watches Arthur while the other actually works on the house.

We have managed to clean the walls -- we think the sooty black marks on a wall we were blaming on an old space heater were actually caused by a previous occupant's shrine to some Indian Personage (when we saw the house the first time they had a very large portrait of a middle-aged woman surrounded by many candles and thurables).

The back yard lawn is bothersome. The last folks to mow the lawn didn't mow it so much as mush it down. We've aquired a fabulously antique push mower, but the grass is too tall to mow even at the mower's highest setting. I have managed to create a kind of path which runs from the back patio slab to a couch sized spot of dried yellow grass stubs. We have three rose bushes -- I like the blooms, but Mark doesn't like rose shrubs. We also have two trees, a nice, shady ornimental cherry tree, and a sad, dying, broom-handle of a maple tree. Along the patio slab is an herb garden -- the herbs are slightly withered except for the oregano (which is a thug) and the clover (which is overrunning the sage).

So far our neighbors are friendly. Our neighbor to the east is Dorothy Parker. I guess we'll have to get her books.