Signing on the dotted line

The realtors came by Friday --Amber and Charessa --kind of a tag team effort.

I was still dragging stuff and shoving it out of sight when they pulled up: a piece of outdoor carpet from the porch, a length of water hose that had sat out on the patio since that last time I'd watered the pumpkin patch in October.

A minor selling point. Pumpkins grow like crazy here. Whoever buys this place, if they plant pumpkins and wait out in that pumpkin patch, I feel they have a pretty good chance of meeting The Great Pumpkin, who brings presents to all the good boys and girls.

I tried last year, but I'm sort of an asshole. He passes us by. Sally is still pissed.

Anyway, I probably should have put that up sooner.

"It looks nice," Charessa said. "You've got some flowers and some nice color."

Amber smiled brightly.

I nodded, tried to say something about the roses without mentioning the thorn I'd driven through my knuckle while trimming them back a few days before. I'd had to cut it out of my hand with a Gerber multi-tool that I'd bought myself because I like to believe I have the capacity for self-reliance and a 40 dollar pair of pliers you're supposed to carry everywhere with you is a symbol of that self-reliance.

Of course, I don't carry them everywhere. They look preposterous hanging on my belt, like a bat utility belt starter kit. Carrying them in my pocket is cumbersome and uncomfortable. They tend to drag shorts down and I can't imagine why I'd want them with a pair of swimming trunks.

So, my self-reliance is stored in a drawer, along with the clippers I use to trim my little dog's nails.

Charessa ambled around the property looking for good angles of the house to shoot with her camera. Amber walked me through the contract.

Amber was who sold me the house in the first place. I went with who I knew. She'd seemed honest back when my ed and I had looked at houses to buy, had told us which ones wouldn't qualify for the kind of loan we could get. She'd been positive and friendly and I've been stressed about selling the place for weeks.

It was pretty painless. We went through a little paperwork. I checked little boxes, which was wrong, and then went back and initialed my name next to different statements and declarations concerning my knowledge of the house. I knew about as much as I knew when I got the place --except of course, I'd thought the property was smaller when I bought it.

My next door neighbor explained that much to me about two months into the mowing season during my first Spring.

"Do you know where the property line is?" She asked and I'd pointed to one place.

She'd shaken her head and pointed quite a ways down further and up.

I recall my actual words.

"Oh, shit."

I only have a push mower. 

The upside was that the blueberry bushes were mine --and the birds'.

Amber got me through the paper work, explained that the contract was for six months, told me about how some people try to cheat the realtor out of their commission toward the end of the contract by getting buyers to wait a few weeks after the contract ended.

There was some sort of a clause in the contract that prevented that, not that I was interested in cheating her out of her rate. My goal is only to get out of the house, pay whatever fees and taxes associated with that and move on to some other place that suits me better, costs me less money and time, and doesn't have any personal baggage.

I agreed to list it at $109,000, which basically does just that.

Anyway, we all hoped I'd be out before six months.