I promise, these are absolutely, positively the last words I will EVER have to say about real estate. I know that reading about my move to the beach must be on your very last nerve by now, so I’ll make it short: We didn’t settle, we didn’t move, we’re nomads again. Rehoboth Hobos. (That’s Hobo, with a b.)
Do I have the world’s worst real estate karma, or what? Twenty-four hours before moving day we discovered that the builder forgot one teeny tiny detail for the new house—an occupancy permit. That’s his job, for god’s sake. It’s like gay men forgetting hair gel. Or Rehoboth forgetting to install the parking meters. Or me forgetting to eat, god forbid. It doesn’t happen.
But the moving van was on its way from Maryland, renters were heading to the condo and the settlement was off. I had two choices. I could walk into the ocean or laugh.
Ergo, here’s the hyena from hell. Nero fiddled while Rome burned and I just howled while my heroic real estate agent and crackerjack settlement team tried to locate a building inspector. What a hoot!
By 4 p.m. on moving day we got permission to unload the trucks, but we had to swear not to move into the house. Laughed, thought I’d die. Imagine the hilarity when I remembered I’d already arranged for the gas dryer delivery, cable installation, California Closet lady, and mail forwarding. Here’s a hot one: If the phone number is transferred to the new house, but there’s no one there to hear it, does it still ring?
With a mighty guffaw, Bonnie and I did the sensible thing and went to the bar at Blue Moon. “Ha-ha-ha, if we’re too drunk to drive, we’ll take a cab home!”
“Yeah, said my spouse, “What home?”
“Beats me, ha-ha-ha”
Fortunately, friends leaving for vacation offered us refuge for the night. By the next morning, we raced to our 3-bedroom storage unit to meet the closet lady and spend a half hour surveying the walk-in closet, which is the longest I’ve been in the closet since 1978, ha-ha-ha….
And did you hear the one about the farmer’s daughter who married the Jewish Princess and now they’re both homeless because the builder forgot to get an occupancy permit, ha-haha?
By Sunday night we cried with laughter as we packed bags at the house we’d just moved into to go back to the condo we’d just moved out of. Hot on the heels of the departing renters, we brought back much of the same crap we’d moved out forty eight hours before. What a gas!
I thought living out of a suitcase since April was bad, but it was just a chuckle compared to the rip snorter of having our belongings in a whole other house, four miles away. Twice on Sunday night we had to drive up and down the highway to retrieve necessities. Now that was a side-splitter. And speaking of splitting, let me tell you about the kind of headache you can get from all this. Hey, which house has the Tylenol??? A plague on both our houses ha-ha-ha....
Okay, a real estate agent, a mortgage man and a lawyer were all walking up Rehoboth Avenue trying to calm down a hysterical client, when…wait a minute, that’s no joke, that’s my life, ba-daboom.
“It will all work out,” Bonnie said, letting out an enormous guffaw. Or possibly a wail.
To paraphrase Henny Youngman, take my spouse, pleassseee!!!
Or, as Groucho said, “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Dethpicable…” quoth Daffy Duck.
I know! We’ll just click our Reeboks, whisper there’s no place like home and find out we’d been in a tornado. We’ve now been laughing for more than a week. So here are Fay J’s top five reasons why we’re still not in our house:
On Monday the builder said the plumbing inspection would be Tuesday;
On Tuesday the builder said the plumbing inspection would be Wednesday;
On Wednesday they discovered that they’d forgotten to fully insulate the ceiling;
On Thursday they delayed the final inspection until next week;
On Friday my realtor, shocked that I was still laughing, asked me what medication I was taking.
They’re coming to take me away Ha-Ha Ho-Ho Hee-Hee to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time and at least I will have an address for mail forwarding. Ba-da-boom.