Sweet Relief

For the first time ever, 'sweet relief' does not relate to my daily intake - and inhalation - of chocolate.

Instead, two days before Christmas, someone made an offer for our house that we accepted with a swirling combination of relief, sadness, resentment and joy.

Bearing in mind that our previous buyers 'cooled off' on the day of LC's mother's funeral, it didn't feel as though we'd actually sold the place until the official ending of said cooling off period - midnight on Christmas Eve. I experienced the same tummy flutterings, hot-scratchy-pillow insomnia and pounding heart as I'd done earlier in the year before running a workshop. This time, however, a fair bit more was at stake - crippling interest rates, frightening levels of bridging finance and the sickening thought of having to resort to 'working' the Docklands in a strikingly less socially-acceptable manner than Love Chunks at the weather bureau.

Had the buyers ripped us off, were they laughing at us and our desperation, mocking our efforst to present our home as well as we were able?

Either genuinely or expertly, our agent eased our fears when she described the family who'd be moving in. Dad was helping his daughter and son-in-law land "the place of their dreams" and their two five-year-old boys have enrolled at Sapphire's school. The agent arrived at the father's house (only a street away from this one) with the contracts to find the entire extended family there along with strong syrupy coffee, baklava and Greek custard pastries. One lawyer son read the documents thoroughly, the other interrogated her regarding the intracies of conveyancing and settlement and the daughter asked if we'd be prepared to leave our three chickens there for them. Too right!

Interestingly, the new owners have a goat. Yes, a goat that they also want to bring over from Glynde to Trinity Gardens. Thankfully, being single, he (or she) won't be prone to acting out rather grotesque and rapid sex scenes when they're startled, but is still likely to churn through the lawn, ring-bark the fruit trees and get drunk on the wild plums. Not to mention their natural naughtiness, piercingly loud bleating and highly evolved capacity to escape and wreak havoc in the neighbourhood......

Oh well, it's no longer my problem. A day earlier, we put an advertisement in the Trading Post for our gym equipment, including my trusty treadmill. A perky young couple promptly bought the lot, resolving to each other that 2009 was to be their year of fitness and strength - especially apt considering that they were planning to hoik the treadie (which weighs roughly the equivalent of three 'Biggest Loser' contestants) up the stairs of their West Lakes townhouse.

As such, I'm back on the streets. Running, of course. Back to looking over my shoulder for passing cars, trucks hooning around corners and elderly Italian men out power walking with umbrellas as anti-mugging devices. Back to percussive farting that is embarrassingly audible to pensioners giving their lawns an early-morning spray and to tubby drivers of white delivery vans. Back to heaving up Magill Road as eager, whippet-thin cyclists rapidly churn on all the way up to Norton Summit. Back to believing I've got the form of a sprinting goddess until my lumpy physique is revealed in the reflective window of Anastasia's pink-themed beauty parlour next to Home Hardware.

Whatever: I'm still out there, still running, still keeping on, still looking forward. Happy New Year to youse all.

Blunk Drogging

Sapphire's at her friend's 10th birthday sleepover party and Love Chunks left a few hours ago for Melbourne leaving me as the only human being at home for the second time since Sapphire entered this world purply-blue, too exhausted to cry and with a slight red mark across her face due to the doctor's rather rough and ready use of the forceps.

It's a lovely summer night here in South Australia. Calm, quiet, warm and the ants - bless their busy little bodies - have finally stopped working and gone to bed.

I figured this out because, as the lone human in the house tonight, I sat outside on our lush green lawn* drinking our leftover Rose and trying to soak in the peaceful atmosphere despite being bitten on the earlobe by a mischievious mosquito. No ants came to attack my glass or my person which is unusual here - normally they're all over the dog's crunchies before I've finished placing her dish on the pavers.

Milly is gnawing away on a lamb bone; the one with the weird circular knob at the end which presumably means it's a thigh that fits into a hip bone. Skipper the rabbit is nibbling at the grass and occasionally standing on his back legs to dramatically sniff the air and the chooks (Hermoine, Luna and Ginny) are gleefully pecking at the fresh handfuls of grapevine leaves I've thrown into their coop.

The Rose tastes especially fruity and sweet this evening and I have another. I lie back, spilling a bit down my front but who cares I'm not out to impress anyone with my table manners, smoking hot body or witty banter this evening, and I look up at the sky. No stars out yet, just a few streaks left from some stray Qantas carriers and some tardy rosellas heading back to the hills, squawking their version of the days' events to each other.

I sit up awkwardly to keep sipping the wine. No house sale yet, just three interested buyers who are either:

a) trying to figure out if they can lose our clothesline, vege beds and chook house and put an in-ground pool in there instead;

b) still grappling with the bank to work out how they can arrange finance between themselves and their grown son who will live here; and

c) nervously awaiting a contract of offer on their own house and for the two days 'cooling off' period to have been and gone before doing anything about ours.

Did I say already how truly excellent, really excellent this stuff is to drink? No? Well it is, believe me, I'll find out the brand and maker and get back to you. Anyhow, as for the house sale, I'll believe it all when I see some names on a goodamn contract and the completion of the stupid cooling off days...... Bugger, my ear is really starting to itch and it's hard to do so with these pesky gold hoops in.

I might jusht go inshide and get another glassh of thish wonderful roshe.....

Oops, dropped the glassh. It'ss out here shomewhere...... Maybe I'll jusht go back inshide and shtart doing that inventory thingy that the removalishts want ush to do. It'sh the perfect time and I feel jusht ssssho alert and organished for shuch a reshponshible tashk......

*Calm down: it's watered by an underground dripper system via the rainwater tanks.

UPDATE - there's an upside to being old, at home alone and a ridiculously cheap drunk - the 'hangover' was over and done with way before my 10:30pm bedtime!

Come on then, I'm bent over and ready for whatever you want to deliver...!*

As for the house....well, the week ended on just as crappy a note as it began. The brilliant 'buyers' didn't come back with a new contract of sale by Thursday and we asked our agent to contact them to advise that if we hadn't heard from them by 4pm on Friday, the deal was off and our home was back on the open market.

In the meantime, we focussed our attention on the bank meeting - could we please have two sets of paperwork prepared in case we do sell our house before the Melbourne settlement date or in case we don't and therefore need another, oh, the entire treasury of a tiny African nation (no, not those pesky Nigerians) to cover another house, our existing Adelaide house mortgage, real estate agent fees, Victorian stamp duty and the obligatory paper shuffling and conveyancing fees. Sure, the interest alone is more than our actual income but I did note that Flemington has numerous tram shelters that I could perhaps perform some sexual favours in - between school hours only of course......

By 4pm our meeting at the bank was over - both scenarios were approved, and we glumly headed home assuming that the bonza 'buyers' had finally cooled off and were already looking at houses in other postcodes. Love Chunks felt OK enough to get his chest x-ray done and sent to his GP and we hope that his next appointment will kick off with a more positive question than, "So have you been working with asbestos?"

At 7pm I was out in the shed pounding merry hell out of the treadmill and Love Chunks took a call from our agent. She said that the 'buyers' were prepared to offer us another contract of sale, but this time for $15,000 less than agreed previously.

To say that we were disappointed at such a low act - and for stringing us along all week - is an understatement. We felt utterly betrayed and shocked - it seemed as though delaying signing the contract of sale until Saturday morning (instead of the day we accepted it, which was Thursday), gave them the weekend and two further days to work out a scheme that effectively made our week just that little bit harder to deal with.

Not only were these bastard 'buyers' aware that LC's mother's funeral was on Tuesday - the day they formally cooled off - but they still insisted that the SA Water, Murray's Pest Control and a Building Inspector arrive that same afternoon to examine our house and provide them with three separate reports. The agent unwittingly added to strength of their scheme by informing the blatantly bad 'buyers' that we'd bought a house in Melbourne over the weekend and were a mite keen to get the contract situation sorted out quick smartish. Instead, the oh-so empathetic 'buyers' then decided to leave us dangling for another three days (now effectively extending their offer to buy, and then cool off period from the legal two to nine) and hope that by dragging things out to 7pm on Friday we'd be so desperate to sell that we'd accept a lower price.

Then, just to make us sweat even further they faxed - rather than phone and speak directly - our agent with the info that they'd give us until close of business Monday (today) to accept their offer and then had their mobile phones turned off so that she couldn't inform them that their actions were unconscionable or try to convince them to play fair. How they must have rubbed their hands in glee - not only had they screwed us out of $35,000 last week, but they were going to add another $15,000 because of a family death, dodgy delays and a cooling off period - what fun!

The agent phoned us this morning to say how mortified she was and how she'd said to them all last week, over and over again, that we were trustworthy people who loved the house and had not left anything undone or hidden that would be of concern to them - and none of the reports came back with anything negative either. We asked her to not call the blowfly 'buyers' back - we no longer want to deal with them.

In fact, LC still had the beezlebub 'buyers' email address after having to sort out their previous queries re the SA Water backflow device (they need one legally, we have TWO) and this is what he sent to them as our response:

Dear Dr _____ and Dr _______,

We received your adjusted offer. Just wanted to let you know: we won't be accepting it.

We've lived here 8 years, we know this property and we know real estate in this area. We have renovated this house extensively and have undertaken any major and minor form of repair it has needed as well as added other features that have made it into a beautiful home we're very proud of.

We know we had offered you a very good deal - better than we should have at the time.

We are honest and decent people - the type to honour a deal and a commitment. It may well be that we sell the house at a lower value than your offer, if that is what the market dictates - but it will not be to you.

LC Lockett

******

Or, in my own personal draft that was rejected:

Dear Drs __ and ____,

May every foul crap that you agonisingly squeeze out of your cracked and bleeding arseholes be born with personalities of their own that allow them to clamber out of the bowl, up your snakelike spines and attempt to strangle you with their slimy, disease-ridden, shit-stinking hands. Or wedge themselves into your left nostrils; whichever is most painful and inconvenient option.

Love, Kath Lockett

******

So it's back to open inspections, hiding the dirty dishes and de-dog-hairing the place.

*Alternative title - To Whom It May Concern - I don't want to be an adult anymore. Please return all this paperwork, cellulite and Crows Feet and give me back my Gnid Blytons, Mad Magazines and Abba records thank you. 1976 would be great, thanks.

Poo-Bum-Bugger-Shit-Fart.

Be thankful, cautious reader, because my original (and preferred title) was Fuckity Fuck Fuckity Fucking Fuckingly FUCK fuckers but I thought that it might have come across as slightly too self-pitying and maybe - just maybe - a tad aggressive.

It's been a helluva few days since my last post. Dean's mother died at 5:40am on Friday morning and he was there with her during her final hours and last breath. She was already a tiny little bag of bones when I'd visited her two days earlier and Dean noted that after death, her body was even smaller and her face almost unrecognisable when life was gone from it.

We spent most of the day with his family planning her funeral. Hugs, sniffles and awkward attempts at jokes, unhealthy snacks and dodgy instant coffee were the mainstays of the day and I tried to keep my migraine at bay by drugging up, inhaling any caffeine headed in my direction and by being unnaturally unchatty. It had the added bonus of making me seem mature, steady, a 'rock' and I foolishly offered to read the eulogy if no-one else was up to it. Dammit, no-one was.

By 8:30pm that same evening, Love Chunks and I were winging our way to Melbourne; my folks already at our place spending the weekend looking after Sapphire (or vice versa really, seeing as they didn't know which of our three remote controls switched on the tv, how much food the chooks, rabbit and dog needed or where Sapph's tennis session was) and we were reading through my patchy, hand-scrawled notes (done in the wee hours when LC was with his Mum) on properties we thought we worth seeing.

It may seem a bit cold-hearted to be heading interstate on the day of a parent's passing, but it was planned - very reluctantly - a few days earlier, thinking that it was best to go sooner rather than a later weekend when his mother would be even less well and more at risk of 'going' when LC couldn't be there. Oh. Ah well, the funeral arrangements were sorted; my parents had the extremely rare free couple of days to babysit and we'd just accepted an offer on our house with a settlement date of 12th January. It was time to look forward - finding our new home in our new city.

Saturday morning saw us huddled and shivering under a tree in order to stop the golden retriever left on the porch of the house we wanted to inspect from barking incessantly. We also didn't want the family living there to notice us as they dashed outside and into their car. The rain poured down, and a kindly lady from across the road gestured over at me: "Come inside! You'll get wet, come in!" I explained to her that we were waiting for the land agent to show us inside the house and that while LC was moving the hire car to the now-vacated spot in front of the house, we didn't want to get the neighbours off-side by annoying the dog.

"Ah yes," she nodded vigorously, a petite little Vietnamese lady with a kindly face. "He barks alla time. So you could be my neighbour, eh? That's good, that's good."

"Hmmmm" I shook my wet head, pretending to hesitate, "The bad news is that we have a dog too."

"No worries, so do I", she said.

"What sort do you have?" I asked, looking behind her for a glimpse of a small, fluffy thing, perhaps lurking behind the lacy curtains.

"A pitbull."

"Oh."

Said house was a OHS nightmare lacking at least a quarter of its weatherboards, cracks surrounding the fireplaces that conveniently provided a half decent view from the living room into the main boudoir and a bathroom's 'floor' of some wood veneer-patterned contact stuck haphazardly - bubbles and all - over the rotting floorboards and bordered with silver gaffer tape.

Defeated, we sat in the Flemington Maccas, drinking coffee and pondering the other houses on my list and those in Domain. Ascot Vale had an auction at 12:30pm and was the property above all others that appealed to us the most via the many viewings we'd had on the internet. "But that's two hours away. What about this little joint in Bignell Street? It's up for auction at 11am, but why don't we check it out?"

The Welcome To Melbourne weather continued as we ran to the car, me struggling with the $5 umbrella we'd just purchased from the handyman shop that already decided to blow itself inside out and having my mouth fill up with hailstones before I could complain about getting what I paid for.

Five minutes later, and we two Locketts felt that familiar feeling. That peculiar sense that, after only two minutes since walking through the front door, this house was soon going to be our house. And so it came to pass. Bought at auction by the Locketts. No cooling down period, no drive way or car park, but slap-bang in the middle of Phlegm(ington) with Smegma(European) appliances, a great primary school literally around the corner, a good dog walking park and a clear view of the big yellow cheesestick on City Link from our front doorstep.

My brother Rob and wife Wah Chin were taken to see it. The owners had gone out, so we snuck around the back and got them to scrunch their noses up against the glass doors and gained the comment we soooo wanted to hear from people who live in, love and know Melbourne better than we do: "This is GREAT. You've done well."

Fast forward to Monday, back in Adelaide, and Love Chunks was in fever - sweating one minute, shivering the next. Some whimpering echoed in the bathroom and a limp back to bed indicated that maybe there was also a bladder infection to add to the mix and the funeral of his mother the following day.

Tuesday morning at 10am found the three of us at Centennial Park, Sapphire and I waiting outside as LC was the one required to view the body before the service. I somehow got through reading the eulogy and found myself more emotional than I thought I would be, yet also realising that it wasn't a workshop, or a seminar or an occasion where I had to be confident or all-knowing; I was merely the voice for LC and his sibling's words.

We got home a few hours later to find Ann, our real estate agent, on our doorstep with a bunch of flowers in her hands. "I've got some bad news. Your buyers have cooled off."

Fuckity Fuck Fuckity Fucking Fuckingly FUCK fuckers! Just as Ann was explaining that the 'buyers' (the term is now used very loosely and very optimistically) hadn't managed to arrange a building inspection before the cool off date which was midnight that night. Try and picture the scene - Love Chunks, Sapphire and myself, standing anxiously in our own home, still dressed in our sombre funeral clothes as the real estate agent sat on a bar stool and a bloke arrived to tap our skirting boards, flash his torch up the hallway's man hole and check out the drip watering system.

Several minutes later and another white minivan arrived with the Murray's Pest Control chap there to check our place for termites. He'd already been to do just that for us back in July but the 'buyers' needed more assurance. Then the SA Water bloke was encouraged, rather passionately and energetically, shall we say, by an irate Love Chunks to ring Mrs 'Buyer' in Melbourne and explain in non-Anal and non-Cardigan terms just what their encumbrance was and why it was considered utterly bureaucratic and pointless by two plumbers, the entire staff at Tank World and the watering installers at Akers Lawn and why it endangered no-one living or visiting our home or using any of our water supply.

Mrs 'Buyer' managed to inform our agent that, in between the responsibility of doing several crown installations and root canal operations on her patients, she'd be able to review the reports and make a decision on whether to heat up again by putting together another contract of sale by lunch time today. Love Chunks went to the doctor and found that yes, he had a bladder infection, along with a too-fast heartbeat and some fibroids on his lungs from the bronchitis he had in September that can't be re-x-rayed until he's over his fever and infection. To be asked, "So, have you ever worked with asbestos?" by the doctor but not being able to get another photo of your lungs for a fortnight is about as much as enduring a cooling off period on a *&^&%ing housesale multiplied by oh, I don't know, sixtyeleventyseventieth.

It's now (looks at watch) 8:27pm and no contract, no assurances, no news. Poo-Bum-Bugger-Shit-Fart.

It won't heppen overnight but it wull heppen.

Multi-tasking whilst starkers can be a bit of a challenge and a rather thrilling (yet private) way to 'live life on the edge' when such a thing is needed. And thrills of any kind are definitely needed when trying to sell a house that you still live in.

Take this morning for instance. Waiting for the conditioner to work its magic, I grabbed the scourer and bent down to have a good clean of the shower's floor tiles, hoping that no stray Jif was going to find its way up my party pooper or towards the still-oozing injury under my left boob.

As Seinfeld once noted, no-one looks good crouching in the nude and judging from the reflection in our now always-clear glass shower screen, no-one looks good bent over vigorously scrubbing either. I saw moore jiggling and swaying than all the navy sailors' hammocks on the good ship Trafalgar.

Even clothed, the multi-tasking continues to an almost obsessive compulsive level. Holding the electric toothbrush firmly in my cakehole with my left hand the right is carefully wiping down the stray gobs of paste and spit that dot the mirrors and re-aligning the towels on the chrome rack to make sure they're all at right angles.

All dirty clothes are immediately placed into the washing machine or hidden, neatly folded, at the bottom of the wardrobe and the every day flotsam and jetsam of bills, car keys, partially-useful junk mail, rubber bands and two dollar coins are placed inside one of three small cane baskets shaped like ducks.

The bed is made with hospital corners and the quilt cover is more tightly pulled than Madonna - all ready and waiting for that much-dreamed of impromptu inspection by a buyer with long arms, short pockets and an ability to fall in love with a home whose toilet directly looks out towards the front door.

Even my beloved laptop is now closed down instead of merely on 'hibernate' and folded up underneath the desktop; out of sight and with no suggestion of needless clutter. Milly's bed is carelessly flung into the shed despite her puzzled, limpid-eyed appeals and the rabbit's hutch is taken from under the pergola (too many stray 'bunny beans' to sweep up) and artfully placed under the bottle brush tree with additional shade provided by an old golf umbrella.

Doing any form of 'real' writing has been impossible when, out of the corner of my twitching eye, I can see fluff bunnies lurking by the skirting boards (but I only vacuumed yesterday), finger prints on the coffee table and a film of dust on the telly screen.

"But Kath, buyers aren't noticing that sort of thing, they're looking at the room sizes and hoping that 1976 mission brown and burnt orange isn't your internal colour scheme," is what I've heard too many times. Maybe yes and maybe no - it's also important to keep everything clean because it is the grime that they do notice that reminds them, "Oh, there's leaves everywhere: clearly this garden is hard work," or, "Hmmm, by taking out the carpets and polishing the floorboards, they now have a three inch gap under their doors that cats can limbo dance under and the wind can blow McDonald's thickshake containers through," or, perhaps even more worryingly, "Is it just their shoes under the bed or does this house smell like wet flatulent dog?"

And I'm not alone in this kind of fanatical fetish - a friend in Melbourne tells me that she hid the dry cat food bowl in the dishwasher before every Open House and another mate admitted to spraying rose toilet spray on her flowers in order to make them more authentic and cottage gardeny. We (blush blush) are using our clothes dryer because the trampoline is wedged up under our outside clothesline to hide it and not interrupt the space and lines of our lawn. As such, what isn't allowed in the dryer is pegged onto two tiny clotheshorses ferreted down the side of the house by the taps and fuse box.

Most of us know that there's no point shoving all the unattractive clutter into cupboards because the bloody buyers open them up as they walk through each room: "Oh, so that's where they've hidden the second couch and the breeding parrot aviary." Our plumber told me that he turns on every tap to see how they work and another veteran investor literally shifts stuff like shelves, bed heads and dodgy art works to check for hidden cracks.

Crikey. At least most of those are on my face and not on our walls.