House of Pain

One day I was in my apartment flipping through the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens when it occurred to me that did not have a home nor did I have a garden. I had a steaming hot bedroom in the summer time no matter how high the air conditioning was on, and I had a small patch of grass outside that contained all my stray cigarette butts. This then moved me over to the train of thought that perhaps it was time to put on my grown up pants and purchase a house. Now I know this is not an easy process, and when I attempt to do something I take hard and times it by three because generally there is that the Dominique factor that plays into everything that God has put into place in order to drive me stark raving mad.

The best part in mission destroy my self-esteem is the initial part. Finding out how shitty your credit is, trying to explain to everyone that you are a good person now, and then having to talk to debtors that are probably the most vile of human beings on the planet in order to negotiate out a deal to make all good with the credit history dictators. Once that is all over and done with, you still have shitty credit, and you go through the re-talking everyone that you are good enough to own a house process and you promise that you do enjoy having a place to live and would do anything to get said place.

I remember at one point, I was pretty frustrated during this process and I lamented to my dad “You know how come all the people that are on COPS have houses? How the hell did they get a house, I see the cops busting into them all the time, wading through their possessions and catching them in the act of hitting their wife, crack pipe on the floor, yet it is taking me months to get approved?” Well, finally, an approval went through.

Now that above part is starting to sound like the easy part. I don't know if I am a weird shit magnet or what, but I can tell you if my life is a Choose Your Own Adventure book, I want to smack the 12 year old on the head that is reading it and to pick a new one for me!

Why do people put houses up on the market? To sell them correct? then why have I walked into countless amounts of dog piss smelling filthy houses that haven't been cleaned since they were built? My favorite is when the tenant that is renting is not notified that we are coming too. The first time this happened, a very hungover, very unhappy college kid answered the door and told us his roomates were sleeping so we couldn't look in some of the rooms. He then proceeded outside to scream at his landlord. That was comfortable! The second time, some guy came wandering out in his underwear looking sleepy and confused, but at least he was that kind of hungover that is sweet and told us to look everywhere. Still weird creeping around that though, I feel like a burgler! The third time, the poor people didn't speak English and we had them so confused. They had a cute dog I wanted to steal. One house I went into, the guy was cooking breakfast for himself and all 12 of his kids. I was tempted to ask if I could have some.

The next factor in fun is the craaaazy neighbor. Okay, I am kind of grateful about one thing on the crazy neighbor. They are pretty much the same. Hunched over like Golem on the back porch, smoking a cigarette, always having that twitchy look to them like they can't go five minutes without being in anybody's business. This one was no exception. He dove right into how he was keeping his stuff in the vacant house's garage because someone was trying to break into his car and he watches over the property. He then ended it up with "We sure throw a lot of parties around here, they can get out of control so I hope you don't mind." That had me walking out on a house that I was on the fence on to 1000% no way in hell. See why the crazy neighbor always being out back is a good thing? What if he were hiding and then I moved into that. I can't hack anymore crazy neighbors, not after the last batch I went through.

One place we found was nice, but I just couldn't get a feel for the neighborhood, and of course, go figure, the one people next to us had the trashed out house right? That and an unleashed pitbull that was not fenced wandering around. I am terrified of dogs. On second visit to the house it ran up to me to see if it could give me a heart attack and then happily started to lick my toes. I did that nervous giggle, I was happy it was nice, but I could picture it envisioning my toes as hotdogs. I have a chihuahua too, and I don't want him to be another animal's Dorito, so I had to bail on that house. The next one, I was all about, except for the fact that I have no depth perception whatsoever and had to have two people tell me that it was severely crooked. I totally thought you could just easily jack a house up too, I am such an optimist for the wrong things, but it turns out it is a risky procedure.

So at this point, I am about 6 months into looking, and I am beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with me, if there is nothing good on the market, if I need to learn the ways of Home Depot so I can turn partial poo into diamonds, or if, well God hates me. I am probably going to have to go with the God hates me part at this point, sweat away the pounds in my upstairs apartment room, and remember that I am actually agnostic so I will have to change that to the maybe someone might hate me if they exist above me. Until then, I have 12 more houses I am scheduled to look at soon and adventures ahoy hoy!

Wearing A Nicotine Patch Sippin' On Expensive Beer

I totally got to see Snoop at Blazed & Confused.
It was totally awesome.
Totally read about it here.
Totally is the only word I know about now.

I still don't know how to make the link clickable so get some exercise by copying and pasting in your browser for golly's sakes!


http://www.slugmag.com/article.php?id=1791

Michael Dean Damron

First review with Slug!

Read it and weep with joy.

http://www.slugmag.com/article.php?id=1785