Thursday, May 7, 2009

A Tisket, A Tasket

*If you are just now joining us, and wonder what is going on, please refer to this. Then come back and play along!

Upon asking me to marry him, my beloved was thrown into a frenzy of searching for a residence. After all, he couldn't bring his new chick home to roost in the coop-of-a rental (that did not have a kitchen) he called home, now could he? We agreed that the best course of action was home ownership, and since his ring-buying exploits had come in under budget (I like a good-sized diamond, but good grief, I’m not willing to lay down the kind of cash he had in mind on a piece of glorified coal!), and he planned to work 16 hour days for the next two months, my fiance was confident in securing a decent down payment.

Armed with his wad o’cash, my handsome groom-to-be went through the real estate community with a fine-toothed comb. He combed and he combed. He may have even given it a crew cut and highlights, as much as he looked. But the housing market was grim, at least as far as cheap fixer-uppers went. Now get comfy, this story is about to get long.

He did finally find a house for us. The only problem was the renter who lived there. He would not leave. Luckily, our month-long honeymoon left plenty of time for us to ponder where we would live when we returned. We decided that we would just rent a hotel room until we had our home remodeled - a good two weeks or so, at the very most. Ah, to be so innocent. As luck would have it, my brother-in-law agreed, last minute-like (like the day we came back), to move out of the aforementioned chicken hut, and let us love birds have free reign (free range?) of the place. You know, for two weeks or so. Wink, wink. Hotel avoided.

And so it was that we came to live in a tiny house in Grand Ghetto Central, with no kitchen, no telephone, no furniture, surrounded by unsavory neighbors and transients. It was a blast! We dined on such delicacies as Top Ramen (made in our microwave), and washed dishes by floating candlelight in the bathtub. SOoooo romantic. On hot evenings, we would watch channel 3 news (we only had one channel) with our front door open to let in any wisp of a breeze that happened by our easy bake house. It was on just such an occasion that I was first introduced to the lead character of many-a-perplexing moment in my life (more than I am currently able to include, lest this be of novel proportions).

He was a small man. Dark, dirty, barefoot, basket-toting, and gay as the day is long. He sauntered up our steps and into our doorway before we realized anyone was coming. He asked to use our bathroom. It was a tense ten minutes that we shared our home with him (he told my husband that he stabbed his mother, and that he was infected with AIDS, among other things), and then he was gone. I breathed a sigh of relief. And you can, too: we're to the half-way mark.

Later that self-same night, I noticed that my contact case (this was before the miracle of Lasik) was missing, along with the left case lid. Not the right one. Just the left. I searched that bathroom from top to bottom (which took all of ten seconds), but they were nowhere to be found. It was annoying, but we were just grateful to find that all of our wedding cash (which was sitting in plain view on top of our dresser, past which our friendly neighborhood thief would have had to walk) was right where it belonged. Untouched. We laughed and put the incident from our minds.

Is this getting too lengthy? Stop and grab a snack if you like. I’ll wait…

Now, let’s see. Where was I?

Oh yes, I put the incident from my mind. A few weeks passed, and we saw nothing of the vagabond (aside from random glimpses of him skipping barefoot down the highway, swinging his flower-filled basket). Then, one day as I returned home from work, I pulled up alongside the house to see you-know-who jumping up and down on my porch to look through the window in my door! It scared the puddin' out of me, and I peeled out and sped back to the job site to tell The Mr. He just laughed, which put me at ease, but I didn’t go back home without him that night.

When I did, my curling iron was gone.

Stack of twenty-dollar bills: still sitting on dresser. Curling iron: gone.


Needless to say I painted a little faster, and kept my husband company a little more charmingly as we worked to finish our remodel and get the heck out of Dodge (though it took a little more than two weeks).

And we never looked back.

5 comments:

Amber said...

Um, true. Much more so than beating up boy scouts. But I'm just sayin'. And when i find out that that first one is in fact true, well, I will view you in a whole new light. And maybe your dear friend needed a good curling iron for the missus?

Sharlee said...

Scaaaaaary.

Michelle said...

I didn't need to grab a snack, as I was downing a bag of Sourpatch kids. However, I did need time to have Heimlich maneuver done. When I realized that your "friend" stole your curling iron I gasped in shock and a Sourpatch Kid got lodged in my throat. Now was that a lie or the truth?

Jason said...

So sad, but so true!

Christy said...

oh my gosh, scary!! I loved how you described your place, at first I was thinking, "this can't be true!" but I think I heard you talking about this one other time...about the curling iron. Ok, true.

on to the next story! Thanks for giving us time to vote, because it's been a little crazy around our house and I haven't been able to read anyone's blogs!