Blue-Footed Musings

Yesterday I helped my husband get our swing set back into usable shape for the children. He secured the two corners that had worked their way out of the ground while I clipped away the brush that had grown up around it. The swing set was made well, but decades of use and weathering have taken their toll. It belonged to the house’s previous owners, whose kids had pretty much outgrown it by the time they left. Our children have pretty much outgrown it now, too. That is to say, it’s getting old, and we don’t need it anymore. This autumn will be its last hurrah.

Today I took the kids back up to the top of the rock. The poison ivy leaves have fallen off the vines, because it’s fall. This simplified matters for us. We could no longer see the plant to avoid it, but it was less dangerous, since it didn’t have any leaves on it. There really wasn’t anything to do once we reached the top of the rock, but the kids were still in love with the novelty of being there. Honestly, I’d let them go up there by themselves were it not for three facts: Livia always pushes the limits of what’s safe, the two of them do stupid things when they start fighting, and they always start fighting.

In the evening, we dropped my car off at the mechanic’s so that he could bring it in to Inspections on Friday. The car is almost guaranteed to fail. This is not a good time for buying a car, though, so we hope we’ll be able to put it off (somehow!) for a little longer.

It had been a long time since I last drove the car. Months. I was almost afraid I’d forgotten how to drive. I hadn’t, but driving was nonetheless a little stressful.

But also really good! I miss driving! It was so nice to be driving around as if life were normal again. And it was so nice to see other people out and about, acting just like old times, even though they were acting just like old times and not wearing masks where they should have been!

Our nearest neighbor has put his home on the market for the umpteenth time. He had a crew of realtors/photographers out to take pictures of his property the other day. They used a drone outside to take pictures from above. We were impressed by the affect when we checked his Zillow listing (which of course we did, because we’re nosy). We were also impressed by the new-fangled ways they have of photographing and mapping interior spaces. All the rooms of his house look so much bigger on the listing than they can realistically be. Perspective is an amazing thing!

But we laughed, as we always do, when we saw the interior of his house. He has done a lot of work, and kudos to him. But, our two houses had the same builder, so we recognize many of the things he hasn’t fixed. He’s got the same drafty windows we used to have, the same ill-fitting doors, the same ugly bathroom elements, the same beat-up baseboards, the same utterly inadequate roof supports in the great room. We’ve fixed a lot of these issues, so we know. In the aerial view, you can see how much the roof of the great room sags and how it looks like the wall is bowing out (and probably is). Why he hasn’t fixed the problems is beyond us. He’s had so much more time to do so.

This is at least the third time he has listed his property in the last four years. As someone who has sold property before, I understand how hard selling is. You’ve got to list your home higher than the price you want, but not so high that you turn off potential buyers. And if it doesn’t sell right away, you’ve got to lower your price, even if it hurts. The first offer you get is probably the best you’re going to get, so you’re better off just taking it, even if it’s not close to what you want.

He either did not get offers previously or he decided not to accept him. Unfortunately for him, his Zillow listing now counts against him big-time. Everyone can see how much he paid for the home, as well as how many times he’s listed it, and at what prices. It doesn’t do him any credit that he’s trying to sell for more than four times what he paid or that he listed it previously for less.

Personally, I do not think he’s made wise decisions. He’s paid property taxes for four years on a property he would have preferred to sell. If he’d just dropped his price and sold four years ago, I can nearly guarantee that he would have done better for himself. Now, with the threat of hyperinflation looming, I suspect he’d be better off owning property than having excess cash. I cannot say I hold his financial decisions in high esteem. But I am an admittedly no expert. I’ve made a lot of bad decisions myself.

We hope he sells this time around, though, and as close to the listing price as possible. First, it only does us good for his home to sell at a high price. It makes ours more valuable. Also, his home is large, suitable for a family with children, and if we could get next-door playmates for our children, we’d be thrilled

So good luck, neighbor. You’re going to need it!

• Words “sound” different on a computer screen than they do on paper. Sometimes I write a sentence on the computer, read and reread it, and think it’s great every time. When I print it out, though, I often find that I hate the way it reads on paper. Mistakes are also easier to find on paper. Weird, but that’s the way it is.
• The more I write, the more I want to write, but there is a limit to how much writing I can or should do in one day. Today I wrote a bunch of diatribes (good, but useless) on Facebook, then wrote a bunch of diatribes at work (useful ones, of course), and now I’m writing this post for my blog. That’s too much writing for one day. Writing revs up my brain. Too much writing causes my mind to race uncontrollably. I’ll be lucky to get any sleep tonight. And the writing I did on Facebook was not appreciated, so it was mostly wasted energy (I say “mostly” because of a strange moral dilemma I’m experiencing, which I’ve discussed in another post).
• I can write all day, trying to write clearly, logically, persuasively, sometimes even cleverly, and succeeding (as far as I’m told) in most of those goals, but it’s always the careless throwaway lines that people really like. If I’ve given it zero thought, people love it. I hope this is because the other writing primes my mind for generating zingers, and not because the other writing sucks.