Totally selling out

When my wife Kara and I first decided to put our house on the market, a co-worker warned me how little fun this process was going to be for us. Having the misfortune to have listed about two weeks after the real estate boom ended, his house sat on the market for longer than it takes some people to earn college degrees. Back in the days when buyers roamed the suburbs in thunderous herds, you could order an ice cream cone and sell your house before it melted. These days, in the time it takes to unload a home, a Twinkie could very well rot.

A distinction must be drawn between selling a house, which sounds like it surely must be heaps of fun, and attempting to sell a house, which ranks somewhere on the fun scale between fender benders and farming accidents. Before we listed our house, we didn’t even own a mop. Now we go through mop heads like they’re U.S. attorneys. Our vacuum hasn’t seen this much action since the Great Ferret Litter Spill of ’04.

We’ve spent most of our recent weekends making the house look pretty for people we’ll most likely never hear from again. Like spurned lovers, we sit by the phone, waiting for the call that doesn’t come, wondering what we should have done differently. Actually, most modern-day spurned lovers probably sit by the computer, waiting for the wink that doesn’t come, but the effect is largely the same; anguish is technology independent.

“Dude, I left my underwear on the magazine rack in the bathroom,” I confessed after our last appointment. “I didn’t realize it until after the people had already come through.”

Despite one’s best intentions, even with hours of preparation and careful double-checking of every room, it can be very tough to bring rogue underpants under control.

“I’d love to know if anyone has ever decided not to buy a house because of underwear in the bathroom,” Kara said.

But who knows? It’s impossible to know what combination of factors comes together to drive buyers to make the most important decisions of their lives. Home buyers are like horses – you never know what’s going to spook them. Underwear in the bathroom is a flash bulb going off. Most horses will act like they don’t even notice, but some might freak out and gallop for the exit.

As frustrating as the process can be, with all of its ups, downs and inherent stress, it’s still not that bad of a gig. It just takes a while to find the right person, somebody who agrees to move in, spruce up your house, fix all the things that break and pay you for the privilege. All you have to do is leave and never come back. That’s a tough deal to beat.

For the past few days, we’ve been working on the house while Kara has been dealing with a terrible cold. Being the good husband that I am, I bring her chicken soup in a squeeze bottle so she doesn’t have to put down the mop.

Getting a cold when you’re an adult isn’t any fun because you’re already allowed to eat candy whenever you want. When you’re a kid, getting sick means you can munch on Luden’s cherry cough drops all day long, which don’t do squat for your cough, but your teacher can’t take them from you. Incidentally, we just discovered that Sudafed is more difficult to purchase than most firearms.

“We have to keep it behind the counter now,” the pharmacist said as he looked Kara’s driver’s license over, entering her information into the computer. “People were using it for other purposes.”

I remembered the story I’d heard a little while back on NPR. “Oh, you can make crystal meth with it,” I said. It wasn’t really necessary to point that out, but I wanted the pharmacist to think I was hip.

You can make Mike Todd an offer he can’t refuse online at mikectodd@gmail.com.