A house apart

Good news: my neighbors are selling their house!
Bad news: my neighbors are selling their house.

I guess my feelings on the subject vacillate. They wouldn't win any kind of "neighbor of the year award," but it kind of scares me to think who might move in next. You may recall that I don't live in the best area of town -- not the worst either, but the house is on a busy street and being offered for the low, low price of $81,000. That amounts to a mortgage payment that some teenagers on the more fashionable side of town, could probably manage with their weekly allowances.

I think the house is being offered at a slightly lower than normal price because the couple in question is getting a divorce. Not that it was a long planned out thing. I don't think they even talked about it. Instead, she waited until he was at work (he works at night), loaded up the entire contents of the house, and left. Huh. I guess she even took the shower curtain.

For a lot of people something like that would be completely shocking. But from them, yeah -- not so much.

There's actually been a series of "interesting" situations going on over there. They had a piano "for sale" in the front yard for three weeks or so. I guess it didn't occur to them that sun, the rain or bug infestation might affect the resale value of an instrument. It was kind of "amusing" to hear chopsticks being played at 3:00 am though.

Then there was the guy they had living in their basement. He'd be there on and off, for long stretches of time. His name was Bobby. I called him Bobby-in-the-basement.

Bobby-in-the-basement could get into my house with a credit card. I found out when I got locked out of my house one day. I had just replaced the door knobs, and had them set to lock when the doors were shut. My friend and I were going out to the garage when he pulled the door shut on the way out. D'oh!

We went next door to borrow a screwdriver to take off a screen. Bobby was the only one home. He couldn't find a screwdriver, but said he could get in with a credit card.

I figured there was no way in h#ll he'd be able to breach the new doorknob lock setup. They weren't cheap after all, besides which, Bobby-in-the-basement had one of his arms in a sling.

I figured I'd let him try since I didn't have a better plan at that point. So my friend gave him a credit card and we started the short trek over to my place. On the way, Bobby got a phone call. He answered it, and continued the conversation while he went to work on the door.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that it took him no more than 2 minutes to get into the house! Seriously. With his arm in a sling, all the while cradling a cell phone. It was unbelievable! I doubt he had a credit card of his own, but to be on the safe side, I put deadbolts in the next day.

Another fun story about Bobby-in-the-basement is the time he put a ladder up against my house in the middle of the night. It was raining, and I guess my gutters were clogged. That caused water to flow over the sides, and into his basement lair. I never heard a thing, and they told me about it the next day. But can you imagine if I would have looked out my window on that stormy night, this would have been my bedroom window by the way, to see someone climbing up a ladder? Good Holy Christmas -- that would have been the end of me!

Apparently, Bobby was making quite a few late-night trips out of the basement. It turns out he was fooling around with his buddy's wife while he was at work. Go figure.

I imagine she and Bobby are staying in someone else's basement now. Crowded in with the contents of an entire house.

Making sweet, sweet love on a shower curtain . . .