The house that wasn't quite as abandoned as we thought

Today we were in Connecticut for a family party: A surprise for my great-uncle who turned 90. He was thrilled. It was a mostly fun party.

Towards the end, however, I was desperate to get out of there. I can only handle so much humanity before I need to excuse myself. We went down in my sister's car so as to be responsible citizens of the world - and also not to arrive by ourselves to a party where most of the people are just this side of strangers. For this reason, we ended up being there longer than we would have been otherwise. This is the price we pay for trying to do right by the earth.

(Aside: Doesn't it feel so silly to carpool to a party when billions upon billions of gallons of oil are pouring into the gulf? Are the couple pounds of CO2 we're saving by driving together making even a tiny difference? I hope so.)

Once we hit the open road, Tesia thought it would be a fine idea for us to take a drive by the old homestead, where we lived until 1987. I was 12 and Tesia was 10 when we moved to Springfield. I generally don't drive by the house because every time I have, I end up crying and carrying on. Not in a nostalgic way, but in a pitiful and sad way. It's totally fucked up and so I try to avoid it.

That said, I did drive Scott by the old house a year or so ago. He had driven me by his old houses when we were in his growing-up areas and I thought maybe seeing my house might be a good step. When we got there, it looked terrible - yard completely overgrown and a mess. We thought the house was abandoned. Even with the Count there, I cried a tiny bit for my growing-up times.

Today, when Tesia suggested we do a drive-by, I was actually interested. I wanted to see how much further dilapidated the house had gotten.

Holy crap. It was way worse. I said to Tesia, "I think I want to peek in the back yard." She admitted she wanted to as well. Scott offered to pretend to be our real estate agent. Because it's important to have a cover when you're scoping out an abandoned house.

So we got out of the car and decided to just play it cool. We whispered to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. We got out to the backyard and the patio my parents had installed themselves was still there, but it was a mess. The little retaining wall had caved in and the pavers had spilled out and over. There were weeds so giant they were pushing some of the pavers up and over.

I started to tell my niece about how Grandma and Pop had built this patio all by themselves. It used to be really nice. Blahblahblah. I start thinking that I wanted to climb up the back stairs and peek into the windows when Scott suddenly stopped and pointed up.

What?

"That air conditioner is running." Zoinks!

"Holy shit, let's get out of here!" I whisper-shouted as my niece and I took off for the car.

Scott and Tesia were laughing so hard they couldn't move.

When we were all back in the car, we couldn't stop laughing. Tesia, in particular, was pretty much beside herself. And I didn't cry one bit.

Lots of bullshit

There's a dangerous amount of bullshit going around right now, and a bunch of it is cancer. I don't mean that metaphorically at all. There are a number of people with cancer around me right now and I'm scared and sad. That's about all I can say about it, since it's not my business. Suffice it to say that I'm having a hard time.

The rest of the stuff in my life pales in comparison and I don't really feel like I have that much else to write about. We're unpacking slowly but surely. Our garden yielded its first cucumbers over the weekend. My dad got my wireless up and working. Regular stuff, you know?

This is totally unrelated, but a hot tip I'd like to give you is that there's a law about grocery store scan systems coming up with the wrong price, or a price different than what is posted. If the scan comes up wrong, you get one of the item for free, and then they refund the difference on the other items.

Tonight, I was buying tofu for our dinner at Stop and Shop. The sticker on it said, "2FOR$4", but it rang up as $2.50 each. I brought my receipt to the courtesy desk and she handed me back $3 without any debate. I think the trick is going to the courtesy desk and not talking to the cashier about it.

Seriously, before you leave the grocery store, always check your receipt for discrepancies.

This message brought to you by Jennifer Myszkowskis for Pretending Like Everything is Fine.

Meanwhile, if you blog about anything to do with Comcast, you will get a phone call from Comcast.

Yeah, I didn't know it either, until I got three phone calls from two different guys offering to help me set up my router. Weird, huh? No matter, because my dad came over on Saturday and fixed me up just right.

Going to bed now.

Unfortunate announcement

We're not buying the house. It turns out that it has an underground oil tank. It's still in use and the seller says it's never given her any trouble, so she sees no reason to take it out of the ground. Which is great.

Hmm. Okay. But that's the thing about contamination - you don't know about it until you have to call in the EPA. Seriously, unless a person is constantly monitoring their oil consumption and tank, they would have no idea - NO IDEA - if they had a little leak.

My research indicates that it's $1,500-$2,500 to take a tank out of the ground if it's not leaking. Certainly not pocket change, but doable over time, sure. But here's the rub: if it's leaking, it's $50,000-$100,000 to abate.

Wanna know how to test it? You dig it up and test all the dirt around it. It costs $1,500-ish. The seller says I'm welcome to test it, but that she's not doing anything about it.

So to sum up: I'd have to spend $1,500 to test the tank - in addition to all the other inspections, etc. - to figure out if I want to buy a property, and if it turns out there's contamination, I'm out a whole bunch of money because I'm not buying it.

According to a source, if you're going to dig it up to test it, you may as well take it out of the ground and get rid of it, since it's only a little bit more to do so.

Argh. Whatever.

My lawyer called me with the news just before lunchtime. At lunch, B, D and I had a frank talk about it. D got her Rumsfeld on in earnest and said something to the effect of, "When you buy a house, there are already a number of unknown unknowns. Why would you walk into something with such a giant known unknown?"

She's right! I had to cry a little bit, right there in the cafeteria.

I've taken her advice and the advice of a number of other people who have been giving it to me (solicited and unsolicited). I'm walking away.

I can't lie. I'm sad. But what can a person do? Something else will come along.

(Aside: my lawyer told me that the seller's lawyer told her that this is the second sale they've lost because of the underground oil tank.)

(Aside: my father had a pal who had a leaking underground oil tank. You know when he found out? When his neighbor found fuel oil in his yard. It's a silent contaminent. They had to take all the dirt out of his yard and his neighbors yard to abate it. Back then, home owner's insurance would cover that kind of thing. Now you have to have a separate policy just for the tank.)

So lonesome

Scott left this morning to go to NY to see his mom before she goes back home to Italy. Also, he's visiting is sister and niece. He's coming back on Thursday. He's got the car. Did you know we're a one-car family?

I worked out rides home from work today and to work on Thursday and I'm working from home on Wednesday. So everything's fine.

But, hell, I'm lonesome - and it's only been one evening! I came home from work, made a crappy dinner for myself (baked sweet potato, a giant pile of green beans and too many cookies), ate it and have been reading Newsweek for the last hour. The excitement is palpable.

If Scott were here, we would still be eating dinner and figuring out if we wanted to read or watch a movie for the evening. Being by myself, I can't think of a compelling reason not to just go to bed.

I desperately didn't want him to go for purely selfish reasons. And I did want him to have some extra one-on-one time with his mom before she hops the pond back home. I just knew I'd be lonely and miss him terribly. His mother was really excited to get a little extra time with him, and Scott was really excited to get some extra time with her, so I guess everyone wins. Even me, since now I'll have time to work in my poetry.*

Isn't it crazy how just two years ago this lonesomeness was my life, but it didn't feel lonesome at all? Sometimes it scares me how emotionally dependent I am on Scott. Or are we interdependent? I don't know. I just really like having him around.



* This is a joke because the only poetry I write is hilarious haiku for entertainment value only, which I then recite in an extremely showy way, much like I do everything else. I make it a point never to read poetry written by anyone I know and want to stay friends with just in case it's terrible and I can no longer look them in the eye. Does this make me bad?