Another good reason to own your home…

If you own your home, you will never receive this call:

Landlord – Hi. How are you? How’s the house?
DL – Oh hello, how are you doing? The house and I are just fine. (Meanwhile, all I can think is why in the world are you calling?? You never call!)
**Uncomfortable pause in conversation**
Landlord – That’s good to hear….so are you free on Friday afternoon?
DL – Umm…my in-laws are visiting and I work, so not really….why, what’s up?
Landlord – Oh...you know, just wanted to do a house inspection, my sister is here from Toronto and wants to see the house….so does Friday work for you?
DL – Not the best day for me….but I guess she’s only here for a few days, so it will have to work, right?
Landlord – Yeah…so we’ll just let ourselves in and I’ll leave a detailed checklist for you.
DL – Oh…OK…thanks?

Once I hung up, a mini panic attack started. HOUSE INSPECTION??! What’s that all about? And I’m not going to be there for the inspection – that’s horrible! I am being forced to allow some woman that I barely know and her sister to go through my home. They have free reign to look through things like my underwear drawer and medicine cabinet while I am at work. I won’t be able to hide the disorganized room that acts as our basement since we don’t have one, the cluttered storage closet, the missing paint from the molding in the master bedroom or the chip in the wall from my bike – everything is just out there in plain sight for her to view! And to top it all off, just this week my husband brought home scads and scads of paper – 6 FULL BOXES – from his office to sort and go through. I won’t be able to explain why it’s reasonable that we have 17 stacks of papers and laugh about how quirky those Hoffmans are!!

So last night I spent my evening cleaning weird things, things that people don’t clean on a regular basis. I cleaned under my kitchen sink, washed some base boards, swept under the stove, cleaned the tracks of my windows in the kitchen and dining room, rinsed out the crisper drawers in my fridge – you know the unimportant stuff that most people rarely care about, unless you’re a landlord! Then I proceeded to walk into every room and pretend that I was the landlord and her sister. I desperately tried to think like they would and have the same reaction they will have once they begin to ‘inspect’ my home. There is only one good thing in all of this; at least my tub is soap scum free. Thank you Scrubbing Bubbles! They really are as good at the bottle proclaims! I may be somewhat disorganized, but at least I am soap scum free – that’s got to be good for something! Right??!

Unimpressed

This morning, it took a tow truck to get me out of bed. It just didn’t seem like it was time to get up when the alarm went off at 6:30 this morning. I was warm and cozy in my bed and there was no sun streaming through the windows. I decided that my clock must be out of sorts, turned off the alarm and went back to sleep. At 7:20, I finally dragged myself out of bed after giving myself, “just 5 more minutes” of sleep. Needless to say, when I finally got up, I was extremely groggy.

Sometimes first thing in the morning I don’t have the smartest thoughts. It must be because all of my synapses are not firing and only my body is awake. This morning, on my way to the shower, I looked out the window and wondered when my neighbors put a white roof on their house. I could have sworn that just yesterday it was black shingles, but I thought that they must have decided to do something crazy in the middle of the night. Once I started to brush my teeth and the fresh mint taste revived me, I realized that God decided to do something crazy in the middle of the night, not my neighbors! I abruptly pulled up the Venetian blinds in the bathroom and realized, to my dismay, that it was SNOWING outside. Yup, that’s right, snow on April 19. Oblivious to the date, the snow was happily coming down, making the world white and chilly once again up here in the arctic.

So far this year, spring has come about four times, each time tricking me in the believing that it is here to stay. Then it pulls some stunt like this! It’s so disheartening to go from riding your bike in the warm spring sun to frantically searching for your scarf and mittens so you don’t freeze while waiting for the bus! I think I have to keep an arctic-proof outfit handy at all times now. You just never know what’s going to happen up here!

Hilarious Comment of the Day

This morning while I was downstairs at Starbucks for my caffeine fix, I heard the most hilarious comment I’ve heard in a long time. A stylish, well-dressed man had obviously been sent to pick up coffees for the office. He put lids on all five beverages and then asked for a drink tray. Now, if the drink trays got any closer to him, they would have bit his head off! The woman who made the drinks patiently pointed out that they were about two inches away from him while giving me a knowing look. He looked at the two of us and spouted, “Well, you put them in the Y chromosome blind spot! What do you expect?” It just struck me funny, and I laughed all the way back to my desk.

Perhaps Y chromosomes do have blind spots...it would explain so much…