Blackbird Learning Associates

Friday, August 18, 2017

More Household "Stuff"

I've been up to my ears getting ready to move from our home of 25 years. Regular job search articles will return in a few weeks. In the meantime, look for lessons in every day life. Like this...

A lesson in perseverance? A haunting? A house that just doesn’t want to let go? Who knows?

After putting our house on the market last year and not getting any bites, we buried a statue of St Joseph in the yard and listed it again this past spring. We dropped the price dramatically, spruced it up and waited for a bite. A buyer came along and we were given 45 days to close. Just before that buyer and right after the offer, things just started to “happen”.

1. A tree limb fell taking a wire with it and causing a power surge. The food in the refrigerator and freezers was lost. The surge took the microwave, the tv cable boxes, radios, lamps and the router.

2. The motor in the spa stopped working.

3. A tree limb fell in the front yard taking the wires to the new router that was ruined the week before.

4. A fox fell into our basement window well and died. No one knew that until it started to smell and the friendly neighborhood maggots moved into the basement.

5. The infant maggots quickly grew into full grown flies. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them.

6. Three inches of rain one day caused the gutters to overflow. The excess water went into a basement window and onto the finished basement.

7. A bat flew into the kitchen one evening as we were cleaning up after one of our yard sales.

8. The garbage disposal stopped running and the kitchen sink wouldn’t drain. Eventually it did but…

9. The clothes washer filled up with dirty water. It turns out that the water was from the kitchen sink that wouldn’t drain.

10. While cleaning out the basement and reaching for a picture on a higher shelf, two dead mice fell to the floor.

We sold the snake to clean the drain at our yard sale for fifty cents and the wrench to open the pipe for a quarter. It’s off to Home Depot again. I can’t seem to find the St. Joseph statue that I planted and will leave it for the new buyers and hope that they don’t have any of this nonsense. We have one more week before the closing. I’m hoping that the hurricane out in the Atlantic doesn’t make a left at New Jersey and decide to throw us a going away party.

Friday, July 7, 2017

When a House is a Home

Today we got an offer on our house. It’s been for sale for a few months and we dropped the price, had a bunch of open houses, staged it like they say to do in the magazines and waited. It finally worked this week and we received an offer. The offer was lower than we wanted but we accepted it anyway. This is the second time that we had our house on the market; it seems not too many people are interested in classic (older) colonial homes with lots of charm (not an open floor plan) and property.

The other day I was walking on the beach and thinking about our house. I was remembering the many places I lived and how some were “home” while others remained in the “house” category. When I think about “home” I think about only a few places. One is the place where I grew up from the 5^th grade until I left for college. I then stayed at home on and off until I moved away for good at 27 years old when I was first married. It was the family home. The second place that I called home was a cozy townhouse that I shared with my toddler little girl when I was divorced. It was special because back then, it was the two of us facing some tough times on our own. My third home is the one we are selling. It’s the place I moved to when I was 38 years old, married for the second time and heavily pregnant with our son. My husband, daughter, son and I made it home for 24 years. It was a place of laughter, arguments, stomach viruses, parties, meetings, work issues, homework, four dogs, two cats and new beginnings. It was the place that comforted me when I lost my parents and my in-laws. It stood tall (and weary) through the teen years. It was the madhouse messy place when the kids prepared for college and then later for a wedding. It was home. It was classic. It was probably a lot like yours.

Two weeks ago the house started playing tricks on us. It was if it didn’t want us to leave and like a pouting child was doing anything it could to make us stay. In the course of a week a few catastrophes popped up. First, a tree limb fell down, knocked out the power and zapped a few appliances. It ruined all the refrigerated and frozen food. Next a fox fell into one of the window wells and died. It stayed there for days before we noticed and by then the flies came. A lot of flies. Next, the riding mower broke and another limb fell and took the cable wires down.

After all this was said and done and everything made whole again, I took a walk throughout the house and weird as it sounds, I talked to it. I told it to let us go, I told it that I was getting too old for this nonsense and that another family needed to move in and love it like we did. The next day was the open house and three day later we got an offer from a couple who went through the open house.

I don’t know if the offer will stick but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. All I know is that one chapter is closing and another is opening. We have another place to move to and soon (hopefully) it will take over the crown of “Home”. That’s because the common denominator with all three homes is that love lived inside the walls.