The Post Our Reader Has Been Waiting For

When last we spoke, dear reader, we were remodeling and tooling around about basement digging and melodious elves and the hyperjump an aardvark can make from the fire to the frying pan, which is we understand terribly different than the leap from the sinking boat into the shark-infested waters.

Shark!! Shark!! you’d say, if you made that leap, whereas with a frying pan jump, you would not. Say Shark!! Shark!!, we mean. Because there maybe probably wouldn’t also be a shark in the frying pan with you because if there maybe probably was that would essentially constitute double indemnity which is illegal in most of the literate states.

So, naturally, this got us to thinking about the non-literate states, such as Texas for a leading example, and what maybe non-literate states might have to do with the planned hydraulic expansion we are looking forward to here in the pbjroom. We say “are” and yet, as you might be interested in knowing, we mean “were.”

We had plan “A,” the one where we remodeled the kitchen, the master bath, added a basement and threw in some really cool hydraulics for such necessary things as drop-down shelving, roof-raising and the future ability to convert the entire house into a Winnebago. Now we have plan “B,” the one where we do not remodel the kitchen or the master bath, where we do not add a basement and where we do emphatically not install some really cool hydraulics for any necessity at all. Plan “B” was born on the 4th of June when our municipality held a public hearing on the necessity of buying our house out from under us so they could build a bigger better road to handle all the traffic from all the empty lots that they are buying for the road. In municipality thinking, this makes sense. In fact, they were not, originally (unless we allow our rampant paranoia to run, uhm, rampant), going to buy our house but rather were going to leave us approximately 3 and a half meters from the new four-lane divided minor arterial where German automakers could test their latest propulsion engines. Or so it seems, judging from the non-posted speed limit sign that reads, and we quote, “Whatever.”

So, we developed plan “C,” the one where we do not do anything at all for a couple of weeks, waiting to see if the municipality will listen to reason and buy our house out from under us (as we proposed at the public hearing because we, honestly, do not currently own flak jackets nor do we think they would go all that well with our new spiffy Chucks and/or saddle-oxfords).
Well, dear reader, the second public hearing on the proposal to buy our house has come and gone, and VOILA!!
We are practically homeless. Okay, not “practically” homeless, but more “for all intensive purposes” homeless. Yes, yes, there are topo-surveys to be done, there are fair-market values to be determined, there are civil engineers involved to muck everything up tremendously and to be extraordinarily dry while doing so, there are negotiations to be had, there are plants to be distributed, there are paving stones to be removed, et cetera, et cetera. We should be, if we are calculating correctly, practically homeless in precisely six and three-quarters years from now, if the municipality really gets a fire lit under their municipal behinds. Until then, we are living large on the fat of the zero point 6% principle we will be paying the bank for the privilege of having a non-hydraulic-enhanced roof over our heads.

Oh, by the way, these are exciting times.
We are, as we write, a little over seven and a half days away from the big splashdown, the big eternal bond, the big cheese-ola, the big ham sandwich, the big we forget what we were going to say here but a little over seven and a half days away from the tying of the knot, to put it in gentle legalese terminology.
We have been given a bit of a reprieve in that the he of us has told the she of us that she should use this time wisely to consider her decision, as the he of us is going bald, fat, toothless, blind and deaf quicker than you can say “elephantitis of the syllable.” The he of us also has a bad heart and is prone to chigger bites when he gets within twenty feet of a bush, a shrub, a blade of grass or an electric lawn trimmer. But that’s probably a story for a different time.
The she of us is still cautiously enthusiastic about going forward in a sideways manner with the whole affair, and so, caution to the wind, we will proceed forward in a sideways manner on the 30th of the month of June at precisely or approximately or around 10:30ish a.m. or so, give or take.

Bi-focals, the doctor said, as if that meant anything at all, anything other than “good heavens you are getting old and going blind at an alarming clip.” Hrumph.

We pledge and promise to be more updatative if you, dear reader, promise to keep those cards and letters coming.
PS: the she of us would have us know that “cautiously enthusiastic” does not begin to describe her current and impending feelings, most of which the he of us will not begin to understand although he will make a valiant effort for a while until his memory goes, along with his hair, waistline, molars and canines, sight, hearing and boyish good looks, at which point he will lapse into a power-tool laden workbench or an indecipherable and unimportant spreadsheet to see if he can find his empathetic powers there. She will wait patiently or not, depending on his mumblings.

So it goes.