I don’t live in Amityville, although I have driven through there and I guess I can’t really call it a horror because I haven’t seen any blood dripping off the walls but I swear my house is alive. Alive and really, really ticked off.
Last summer we were looking to move. We had found our dream house. It was on 3/4 of an acre, had a wrap-around porch, a deck out back, a pool, a fireplace… we were just in love. So after living here for 21 years, we decided we’ve had enough and we were going to move. At that point, the housing market hadn’t quite hit rock bottom. The average selling time in our neighborhood was 3-4 months. We figured we were good.
The house had other ideas. It somehow held the power to make the real estate market bottom out. If any of you have been trying to sell a house during the past year, yes it is our fault. My house, in retaliation for us wanting to move, cast some sort of jinx and the average time to sell a house in our neighborhood changed to 12-18 months.
Instead of going into severe debt in order to have our dream house, we decided to stay put for now. Apparently that wasn’t enough. The house is still angry with us and it is trying to make us pay for our disloyalty.
“Oh, you think we’re good now? Well you are very much mistaken. How dare you want to leave after all I have done for you. I have sheltered you for 21 years and you repay me by trying to abandon me? I will make you regret that for the remainder of your days here.”
I can swear those are the whispers I hear when I’m sitting all alone in the house. Then it carried out its threats by breaking things.
“Oh are you enjoying that light fixture? Well ZAP – there, it is now dead. How do you like hot showers? Oh, you do. Well take that! You now have a dead hot water heater. Hey, take a look at the nice little puddle down in your basement. Yeah, that’s right. You now have a cracked pipe.”
The house even went on a murderous rampage, attacked our air conditioner, & killed it. What other explanation can there be for the A/C to suddenly go from a hale and healthy cooling machine to a smoke and fire breathing dragon?
Does anyone have the phone number for Ghostbusters?
Did the house eat you? Where is Tuesday’s blog?
Geez, can’t a person have a life? Okay, I don’t really. Unless you consider my exciting trip to the grocery store as having a life. And then there are the photos I’m working on for next week’s contest. And I’m waiting for the plumber to call and say when he can come to fix the cracked pipe. (& ya’ll thought I was joking about the house!)
I went outside to listen, just to hear what I could hear in case you ever decide that Southern Ohio is the place to be. I hear the pool pump running really quietly. I hear a John Deere tractor somewhere down the road cutting hay and I hear a lot of birds. No kids, no power washers (though if my hubby were home)
One more thing..the housing market around here has fallen big time. There aren’t very many jobs in this area and that isn’t helping. Behind me, secluded in the woods is a nice house. 5 Bedrooms, 3 bathroom large kitchen/family room area. It has been for sale for over a year. When the guy who built it was almost finished with it he and his wife split up and he offered to sell it to my Aunt for 98,000 as is. She didn’t buy it so he put about 5,000 more in it and sold it for 200,000. Now the people who bought it want to go back to Texas and can’t unload a house they paid too much for.
[quote comment="379"]Have you tried Holy Water?[/quote]
You would think, what with being Catholic & all, I’d have thought of that. Except I’d be afraid to sprinkle it down the basement until after the plumber fixes that pipe. There’s already enough water down there. Okay, not like there’s a flood or anything. More like a teeny, tiny leak but you don’t want to know which pipe is leaking.