The Tour

Okay, I'm back. I had to clean my house for a virtual tour.

That's right, the landlords that have begged us to stay for the very specific time frame of 3 years announced 3 weeks before Christmas that they are putting the house on the market. They assured me in their email that they wouldn't show the house on Christmas Eve or Day, so as not to inconvenience me and I assured them that they wouldn't be in all that week, thanks to their general bad timing and the virtual tour that we're agreeing to. So, I've been cleaning and going through the Ashley stages of grief: Hysterics, Self-pity, Anger, Action. We may be nearing acceptance soon, but there's no telling for sure.

So far the action plan has included:

A.) Deciding that if we ever win the lottery, we are buying the house up North that my landlords are renting just to torture them near Christmas time.

B.) Driving up and down every street in this and the neighboring subdivision and scouring Craigslist and MLS for rentals--and found 2. In all. Only 1 in my price range. I know I have a while to look but that had me back to stage one (hysterics).

C.) Tracking down the owner of the house 3 doors down, which is nearly identical to ours but has a pool. It was for rent right after we moved in for the same price, so I looked up the owner's address in public records and sent him a letter apologizing for being a semi-creepy weirdo but explaining my desire to stay in the area for years, hopefully in his house if his tenants moved out. He called Mr. Ashley asking if we were for real and they totally hit it off. The people living there signed a 6 month lease and are month to month now, are unmarried and wishy-washy according to him. So he was going to see what their plans were and call us back.

Soooooo, I need them to decide to move out. I think our best options are to get them to decide to purchase a house, to break them up, or to drive them from the area. I am sure the whole neighborhood wonders why I drive to the end of the cul-de-sac 2 to 3 times a day and stare in that direction while I get my mail, but I'm trying to come up with an action plan and hoping, wishing, praying that they decide to move. Because moving 3 doors down to a nearly identical house with a pool would be ideal.

I suggested that one of us have an affair with one of them to break them up but we keep arguing over who gets to. I also think poop bombing may be a good idea since it definitely had us rethinking the neighborhood when it happened to us. Or I need to convince them to buy this house and let us move into that one.

I'd still like to stay in this house. The realtor said he doubted it would sell quickly (we have until April regardless) and that he mostly dealt with investors who would be happy to buy the house with a nice family already in place--but the owner of the other house inherited it and his parents built it so he wants to keep it forever, but doesn't want to live there. And it has a pool (with an alarm to deter little kid.)

So we'll see what happens. My house has never been cleaner. I'm not happy about it.

(but may end up being happy if I get a pool.)