My Sunday Feeling

My buddy Phil looked beaten unto death.  I was standing in his kitchen as he poured me a glass of amber liquid.  All around us was the detritus of what used to be an orderly home.  He raised his weary eyes to mine as he held out his glass to offer a toast.

"Here's to getting this move over," he muttered.

Clink.

"And to never moving again."

God how I can relate.  It seems amazing to me now, but this time last year the Deacon and I were looking at houses.  We closed on this, the house in the sky, in May.  She and the kids moved in the last weekend in May and I followed a few months later once our union had been solemnized according to the laws of God, or at least the Formerly United Methodist version of same, and the State of Arkansas.  

Someone once told me that the short moves are the worst.  I didn't really believe that until I moved a couple of miles from the F Street Sports Bar to this house.  Between May and August every day I carried carloads of crap either to the new house or to the Goodwill store.  Some of the crap I hauled over here was rejected by the Deacon and so back to Goodwill I would limp.  

It was simply just about the worst summer I can remember.

Phil and Karen are making a short move to a development on the river in North Little Rock.    They are not content merely with the sheer awfulness that is moving.  They are building their new house.  They have to be out of their old house by the first of the month.  If they play their cards right their home might be ready to move in by then.  The progress reports from their contractor tend to differ on this score, at least to my ears, on a daily basis.  This would drive me crazy.  As flat out horrible as the buying and selling real estate and moving processes were, I at least knew where I was going to land once it was over.

And now that I have landed, nothing short of a goddamn court order or my eventual demise, whichever comes first, will cause me to ever leave.  

I wouldn't have left the F Street Sports Bar if I had not entered into matrimony and acquired 3 people in the transaction.  I don't know why Phil and Karen are moving except that Karen has always had bees in her britches for some reason.  For as long as they have lived up on Rosewood Circle she has had her eye out for real estate.  

There was absolutely nothing wrong with their house except that it is situated on a hill which is impassable during snow and ice storms.  Phil offered to sell it to me and this was one of the reasons I didn't want it.  

So I went and bought a house east of him on the same hill which will be equally impassable in the inevitable event of an ice storm.  Shrewd huh?

I mainly wasn't interested in his house because in my mind it would always be his house.  Perhaps that's why the Deacon wanted a new house.  The other one would always be my house and associated always with the bad juju that had built up there over the years.  Juju being in the eye of the beholder of course.  I think I managed to impart some pretty good if not hilarious juju there.  But I get her larger point.  And I know how to pick my shots.

Still, in retrospect, I don't know why people would willingly enter in to the soul crushing experience of dealing in real estate and moving unless they did so in contemplation of old age or downsizing   Or because of a goddamn court order.  

So I don't much understand why my friends are putting themselves through this misery.  Then again, it ain't none of my bidness.  And while I am no model for right living, I do tend to mind my own bidness.  

As for me, I am content to stay put.  I am happy to be down to one real estate mortgage and to have no debt except my house and my car again.  Solvency is a good thing.  

And I look forward to seeing their new house.  I just hope they are able to occupy it after they hand over the keys to the old place.

At least I managed to get that part right.