Pulling My Hair

While a review of my blog shows I haven’t added to it since July – a clear demonstration of my increasing tendency toward retirement laziness – this significant time gap is not only due to my growing lassitude but also to an admonition from my realtor shortly after my last entry when he revealed that a prospective buyer for my house found his (her?) way through Google to my blog and because of what he (she?) read here, decided not to make an offer. “Be careful what you write, “he said. “You never know who’s reading it.” Although this is obviously good advice in general, I think these specific circumstances odd since the only Phil Cooper I’ve found on Google (yes; I’ve looked for myself there, but then, who hasn’t?) owns a trailer manufacturing business in Texas, about as far, both geographically and characteristically, as one can get from this Phil Cooper on Linden Green. And even if I were on Google, how could one find his (her?) way from there to my blog, an illogical connection my realtor could not explain. But there it was, obviously the result of a search by a buyer young enough to have been born with those genes so essential to successfully disentangling cloud formations in electronic space, and I want to sell my house so I’ve followed my realtor’s advice. Now, looking back, I can’t imagine that anything I might write here would deter a legitimate buyer from at least making an offer. So, at the risk of another distress call from my realtor, here I am, back at my word processor, bringing you up to date.

Although traffic through my house has been heavy enough to re-soil the carpets I so carefully had professionally cleaned in May, that traffic has not produced any offers. The Sharon/Karen possibility fizzled out along with the enthusiasm of the young couple who still have to sell their condo. The older couple who had once moved to the country and now want to move back to the city disappeared, as did all those many who were “just at the beginning of their search.” The open houses have generated a few lookers but no takers. The big ad I insisted be placed in the local gay paper has not produced that gay couple, which might be just the “right” people to appreciate and want to live in what has been called “a very special environment.”

Through all of this, I’ve lived as if on stage where, with very short notice before the curtain must go up on yet another showing, I rush to remove the items essential to my daily routine – the toothpaste and the pills, the paper towels and soap dish, the pile of unpaid bills, my calendar, my cell phone charger, the salt box and the pepper grinder, the crock that holds my wooden spoons and whisks, the drinking glass, the dishtowel and apron hanging from the oven handle – and clean and fluff and dust and sweep and rake so a prospective buyer can visualize how he (or she) might live in my space. And then I leave so that my personality can neither influence nor inhibit a free discussion between buyer and agent about the merits of 1306 Linden Green. When I return, I turn off all the lights, left on to make the spaces seem larger, close the closet doors, rearrange the kitchen and move the turkey gravy box that holds my essential bathroom items from its hiding place in the cabinet below the sink to the counter up on top. The flaps on the carton are now bent and frayed and I fear they won’t hold the weight of the giant Costco mouthwash bottle very much longer.

The fact that my house has not yet sold (notice I say “not yet,” for my hope does spring eternal) is not due in any way to lack of effort by my agent, who has been incredibly diligent on my behalf, giving up personal plans and encouraging, I’m sure, even those with only mild interest in a “3 Br, 3 ½ B, brick townhouse hidden on a lovely terraced courtyard” to at least take a look. It’s just a very bad time in real estate. And maybe the statue of poor St. Joseph, kindly donated by a friend and so faithfully and traditionally planted upside-down in my garden for good luck, just doesn’t like it there among my tulip bulbs.

Meanwhile, The Fitzgerald has been incredibly cooperative, understanding my dilemma and continuing to extend the hold on my apartment there. But they’re ability to keep prime real estate out of inventory is limited, so as of November 1 – I’ve just received formal notice of the return of my deposit – they’ve had to put #532 back on the list of available apartments, with the understanding that when/if anyone shows serious interest in it, they will call me before letting it go. I can’t ask for more than that.

So time marches on and, as you can see, I’m pulling my hair.

Stay tuned.

Sharon and Karen, The Agent, and A Dilemma

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a lesbian couple – I’ll call them Sharon and Karen – lived in a small house just a block away from Linden Green with their two adopted sons. After many years together, Karen met someone new – I’ll call her Marion – and she ended her relationship with Sharon and moved into Marion’s apartment some considerable distance away, leaving Sharon and the boys, now 7 and 9, behind. While Sharon and the boys were not happy about this when it happened, Sharon and Karen ultimately arrived at an amicable arrangement. Sharon bought Karen’s interest in the little house and the two of them agreed to joint custody of 7 and 9. But when 7 and 9 traveled to visit their other Mommie, the distance and logistics became troublesome to all. Sharon urged Karen to invest her share of the equity in the little house in a larger one nearby so 7 and 9 could visit more easily, a house with enough bedrooms so that each boy, now sharing a room, could have his own. This plan especially appealed to Karen when she and Marian, new to their relationship, were having interpersonal problems. But when things were going well, Karen was ambivalent about Sharon’s entreaties.

Enter Phil and his house on Linden Green, just a block away from the little house where Sharon and the boys lived and large enough for 7 and 9 to each have his own room. Enter also, Phil’s real estate agent – whom I’ll call Agent – who was friendly with both Sharon and Karen and recommended Phil’s house as the perfect answer to Sharon’s (and, as it turned out, to a lesser extent, to Karen’s) quest. Agent urged Karen to take a look at the house on Linden Green but Karen, who owned her own business, was scheduled to go out of town and couldn’t squeeze a visit to Linden Green into her busy schedule. By way of encouraging Phil who was beginning to feel that his house was never going to sell, Agent told Phil about the Mommies and their dilemma, suggesting to Phil, and to the Mommies, that his house was the perfect solution. While Karen was away – according to Agent’s description of events to Phil – she asked Sharon to take a look at the house on Linden Green to see if it was satisfactory. Sharon came to the house with 7 and they fell in love with it. Agent was pleased. So was Phil. But when Karen returned from her business trip, she didn’t rush to see Phil’s house herself. Phil was not pleased – this delay did not auger well - and by way of explanation, Agent told him of the facts recounted here. Still, after what seemed like sufficient time for Karen to signal her ambivalence about the plan, she came to the house on Linden Green and liked it. However, Agent reported to Phil that Karen wasn’t at all sure she wanted to buy now. Her relationship with Marion seemed to have improved. Perhaps it’s true that even a short separation does make the heart grow fonder. Or perhaps Karen had invested her equity in the little house in her business.

Meanwhile, Phil is scheduled to move into his new apartment in The Fitzgerald in the middle of August, by now obviously impossible. Without a sale – or even a contract for sale – Phil doesn’t feel comfortable obligating himself for the new apartment. This is what we call A Dilemma. Phil called Agent for advice and was urged to lower the price of the house on Linden Green by $10,000.00 in order to bring the listing into a lesser category on real estate search engines. Everything else, Agent said, had already been done to promote the house and there were no takers: only the African-American doctor with a child and nanny who had found the ceilings of the house too low, and who had (strangely) bought another house just like Phil’s in the same community; and the young couple who loved the house but had to sell their condo first. Phil hesitated. $10,000.00 less was his absolute low number, which left no room for negotiation at a time and in a psychological environment where everyone wants to tell their friends they got A Deal.

Phil called The Fitzgerald and asked for an extension of his occupancy date to the end of September, hoping that Agent was correct in suggesting that although August was hot and no one was buying, September might bring a bump in the market, or the couple would sell their condo, or Karen might fight with Marion and want to move out. Any of these could solve The Dilemma. The property manager at The Fitzgerald answered Phil’s request by saying she had the authority to extend an occupancy date for two weeks but not for six. She would have to go higher up for her answer.

In reserve, the owner of Agent’s agency, a friend of Phil’s, is also a friend of the builder of The Fitzgerald and should the Property Manager’s answer be negative, he has offered to call the builder on Phil’s behalf to plead Phil’s case for the delay.

The story of Sharon and Karen, The Agent and The Dilemma will be continued. Stay tuned.

Wating, Waiting

When I put my house on the market in mid-May, everyone – my real estate team, my friends and neighbors, even I – expected the house to sell quickly. “Your house shows so well. And it has great curb appeal,” one agent proclaimed. “It’s the beautiful, mature garden that will sell this house,” prophesied another. “Be careful what you wish for,” said their manager. “This house will go immediately. You’re planning to move in mid-August? That’s not soon enough. We only need 60 days for settlement.” Also anticipating a quick sale, several of my neighbors told me how sorry they were to see me go – “your house is so gorgeous,” they said, as though my leaving would somehow diminish the value of their own property. One of the officers of our association even called me a “traitor,” for abandoning him. And as for me, I’d already talked myself into my new apartment, readying myself to leave a house I’ve loved for 20 years, willing to give up my fireplace and some of my beloved art, begun picturing myself living in a smaller, newer, less complicated space. It’ll change my life, I thought, and give me new direction, not a bad thing as I approach my 75th birthday.

A professional photographer came to document the spaces in my house with an extreme wide-angle lens that helped produce a beautiful brochure that made the rooms seem huge. My agent scheduled an open house for other real estate firms, and a day when home-seekers themselves could inspect (or curious neighbors see how I live). I put away all the objects that proclaimed my house “mine,” so that prospective buyers could imagine making their own memories in their new rooms. I had the carpets cleaned, the windows washed, planted new flowers in the pots in the garden. But after an initial mostly desultory response – only one agent came to the agents’ open house and no prospective buyers flocked to the Sunday my house was open to all, the carpet-cleaner guy who seemed enthusiastic about owning the house couldn’t raise the necessary cash, the single lady doctor with a child and a live-in nanny thought the house too dark and the ceilings too low, the mixed-race couple frowned and passed, the young couple who want the house have to sell their condo first – the interest and action so optimistically predicted has trickled to a halt, like water from the end of a hose that’s recently been turned off. The timing hasn’t helped: first it was Memorial Day, then Father’s Day, then the Fourth of July. And the weather here, breaking records at over 100 degrees for each of the last ten days, is not conducive to house-hunting. Even our mayor, in daily phone calls, is urging everyone to stay at home.

While I’m not yet desperate, I am discouraged. A house across the street, similar to mine but smaller and listed for slightly less, sold after only 30 days on the market. A house in my own complex, built exactly like mine but with some interior alterations and listed a week after mine for $15,000.00 more, sold in three days. Odd that It was purchased by the doctor who found my ceilings too low. And two townhouses in a complex just south of mine sold immediately, one in the same day it was listed. So I know there’s activity. And I’m convinced there’s someone out there in the world just dying to live in my house; we just have to find him, which brings me back to my agent, whose job it is, I feel, to rustle up that person. But the agent is back-peddling, giving me all the reasons why “this is a bad time, a tough market, a very particular house, needing a very particular buyer.” I’ve suggested that I send a personal email to all the real estate agents – some of them friends of mine – listed in the back pages of the gay paper. Maybe I could feed them lunch, or dinner? No; not a good idea, says my agent. Well how about a sign outside advertising my house for sale, even though our association bylaws prohibit that? You wouldn’t want to upset your neighbors, my agent tells me. I’ve even schlepped to the Catholic book store in Towson, parking illegally while I purchased a St. Joseph medal to plant upside down in my garden. But so far, none of these efforts has paid off.

At the beginning of this quest to sell my house I talked myself into moving, imagined living in a new space, looked forward to a major change in my life. How odd it now seems that I find myself moving in the opposite direction, preparing myself for the now possible letdown of remaining exactly where (and how), at nearly 75, I already am.

Stay tuned.

Half Full? Or Half Empty?

A couple of years ago, I enrolled in The Osteoarthritis Initiative, a joint research study (no pun intended) between the Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland, hospitals. Twice a year I starve myself for 24 hours and then am pricked and prodded and probed and MRI’d to reveal how my knees look and perform in this visit as opposed to the last one. It’s a little inconvenient – going without food is not my strong suit – but I feel good about making the contribution. When the study began, there was no compensation for involvement, but I guess somebody came up with some money from somewhere and the principal investigator decided at least some of us might be motivated to remain for the five-year-duration of the study if there was a little monetary carrot to balance the stick of a sharp needle in a tender arm. So some months later, when it comes as a complete surprise – not a bad thing – I now receive a nice check for $75.00.
On the way to my bank to deposit the last check, I first stopped at The Fitzgerald to confirm some measurements. A filled-out deposit slip and the check, endorsed “for deposit,” were paper clipped to the front of a file folder that held my furniture layouts. Going up the many stairs with one of the sales staff – the elevators are not yet working – I must have brushed the check and deposit slip against my leg for they fell off unnoticed on the steps. Fortunately, a workman coming up behind said, “Hey, you dropped some papers,” and he retrieved the check and gave it back to me. I went on to take my measurements and in the process stopped at the model apartment, a completed apartment in my stack and the still unfinished space where I will actually live. Satisfied, I returned to the garage, dropped the sales lady off at her office and went on to the bank. When I got there, the check and deposit slip were missing. I looked through the file folder several times, thinking that because the check had come off the front once, I must have put it more inside, where it would be more secure. But alas; no check. I searched the car, thinking it might have fallen off the folder and gotten down on the floor. But no check. I went through all my pockets, both on my shirt and in my trousers, but no check. I went home in some degree of frustration and guilt. Losing a check. How stupid! I should have been more careful.
Now, 75 bucks won’t change my life. But I hate to pour that much bread down the drain. So I called Meghan at The Fitzgerald office and told her what had happened. She said they’d check the route taken on my tour and let me know if they found anything. She’d also alert the construction crew: many men, mostly Hispanic, in hard hats and work boots, shuffling through the construction debris. But no check. I decided to just let it go. But a week later, the stingy Puritan in me, and my managerial perseverance, insisted I do more. So I called the study office but there was no answer. I guess they only work certain days of the week. I left a message for them to return my call but, now that my quest to recover the $75.00 had begun, I wanted action. So I stumbled through the hospital bureaucracy until I finally found the pay office for the project. Carol was very nice to me but she couldn’t stop payment on the old check nor issue a new one without the authorization of the study office. Back to ground zero. I waited for the OAI office – so much of our lives is now expressed in initials – to call me back. When, a few days later, they did, I faced more bureaucracy. Robin would have to consult with the manager of the study and they would probably have to have a signed affidavit from me explaining the circumstances of losing the check (if that’s what had happened) before they could stop payment on the original and issue me a new one. She would get back to me.
A day or so later, I was working on my bank reconciliation statement and was very surprised to find that it included, on the day after I had lost the check, a deposit of the missing $75.00. My first reaction was to wonder if my memory had failed so much that I had actually made the deposit and just didn’t remember. No. I’m very careful about putting the receipts for deposits in my check book. I had definitely lost the check. So how had it been deposited in my account? Some workman must have found the check, with the deposit slip, and gone to the bank for me. What a great guy! (There are no women on the construction crew.) And what a lift! Not only had I retrieved my 75 bucks, but my view of humanity had improved dramatically. I called The Fitzgerald and explained to Meghan that the check had been found and deposited. She was very pleased. I expressed my hope that she would tell the construction manager so he could complement whoever this Good Samaritan was.
But at the same time that I was reveling in my good fortune and in the cozy warmth of man’s humanity to man, I must admit that another less positive scenario occurred to me. If, knowing from his boss that a check had been lost, wouldn’t a workman who found it, return it to the office? Wouldn’t he know that this good deed would naturally redound to his benefit, get him some points? So suppose, instead, that the workman actually went to the bank and tried to cash the check. Had the bank clerk been sufficiently astute to ask for identification to verify that this Hispanic man at the window in front of her was actually Phil Cooper? Or had she simply seized the check because it was endorsed for deposit? Would an employee of PNC Bank be that aggressive?
Life is full of conundrums. I try to look at it through a glass half full instead of giving in to the half-empty cynicism that so easily seeps into life at my age. But that’s not always so easy. So maybe I shouldn’t choose. Maybe I should be less Western in my thinking and in a more Eastern point of view, just hold both possibilities in my mind at the same time. After all, I’ll never know the truth. And both alternatives are equally valid. Anyway, my $75.00 made its way to my bank account and for that I’m grateful. 75 bucks will buy almost a month’s rent on my new parking space in The Fitzgerald’s garage.



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Plans

One of my strongest suits is logistics. I love planning. So when I decided to move to The Fitzgerald, I visited the site many times, first to pick out the specific apartment and then several more times to measure the spaces. From those dimensions, I drew a plan view and played with placement of my furniture, also carefully measured, until I decided where everything would go. As anticipated, there was a lot of furniture left over. This went on a list of things I must dispose of, one way or another. I called an auctioneer who was willing to come to see if he was interested in carting it all away for sale. I told him I’d get back to him once I had a contract on the house.

In addition to excess furniture, there were other problems. While I love my art, I have a lot of it, too much, in fact, to fit the wall space in the apartment. After I’d placed all the furniture in my mind, I went back to the building to measure wall space and planned where the art I couldn’t live without might live. Sadly some of my collection would also have to go. Naturally, I made a list, and would the auctioneer take that too, after I had a contract on the house? Further, since there are no bookshelves in the new apartment and I have lots of books – as well as other things that should go on shelves, like boxes of photographic disks and negatives and albums – I made several trips to Ikea to find a system that might solve that problem. I played with those possibilities until I had designed one whole wall of bookshelves for the master bedroom. Maybe, when that time came, I could get Eric to put it all together? Yes; he’d be interested, when I have a contract on the house. Next was the lighting. I bugged the construction manager until he sent me a lighting plan from the building’s blueprints so I could determine which switches controlled which fixtures, and where both the switches and the outlets were located. With my own lighting plan in hand – I decided I have to put up lots of track to light the spaces the way I want them lit – I went back to the building to confirm that the track would not interfere with the air-conditioning ducts. Then I went to my friend, Bob Jones, for advice on the lighting. David, Bob’s assistant, sent me a quotation covering our decisions, but I won’t be buying it, David, until I have a contract on the house. With this issue settled, I went back to my realtor to clarify which fixtures would not go with the house but would move with me to the new apartment (once I have a contract on the house). Having always coveted the Eames chair and ottoman made by Herman Miller, I visited American Office Furniture, the Herman Miller dealer in Baltimore, where Mandy gave me a quotation for them. Would that be in cherry frame with black, or brown, leather? I could decide that later, I said, when I have a contract on the house.

And so it goes. I’ve planned as much as I can, going as far as I can until… well, you know.

Stay tuned.

Living in a Stage Set

Once I put my house on the market, it had to be properly staged for viewing. I was told, nicely but firmly, that prospective buyers need to see a house not as you live in it, but as they might want to live in it. This means removing most of the things that make this house my home. Avendui, my agent, said there were too many tschotches on the cocktail tables in the living room, too many gadgets on the kitchen counters, too much fuss in my den, far too many cookbooks, sweaters on the shelf in the closet, shoes. So I went to work putting things away. The kitchen got the most extensive treatment. Gone are the coffee maker and blender from the counter in the kitchen; gone the container of wooden spoons, the whisks, the pancake turners, the spatula. Gone are the dish towels from the handle of the oven door. Gone from the side of the refrigerator are the magnets that once held cards for the appliance repair man, the handy man and the painter, gone the number for the Salvation Army and the hours of operation for the library in Roland Park, gone the photograph of Rhea and her new (now not so new) grandson and the print of Bert and me at a long-ago party. Banished from the top of the cabinets are the extra rolls of paper towels, the big glass bowl I use occasionally for flowers, the toaster/oven, the Mexican casseroles, the parchment paper for lining cookie sheets. I drew the line at the canisters of sugar and flour and tea, and the tea kettle on the stove. But the rest of the house has suffered as well. Gone from the cocktail table in the living room are the little boxes I’ve collected from all over the world, packed away in unprinted newspaper, not to live again until they reemerge in my new apartment. Gone are the animals on the chest, the framed photographs (especially those; too personal, too distracting) of my family, and the good luck Eye of Turkey in water in the glass vial that Susie somehow, miraculously, got to me without its breaking. Gone are the candlesticks from the dining room credenza, the Kleenex box from the top of the toilet tank in the guest bathroom, the piles of papers on my TV cabinet in the den, the stapler, paper weights, the note pads, the Scotch tape dispenser, the paper clip box and stamp holder from my desk, the books from the table next to my favorite chair, the throw slung over its arm to use when I’m cold. Gone are the sweaters from the shelf in my closet, packed carefully away in hard-to-see-through plastic boxes that “will read as one.” The shoes are now lined up perfectly, scrunched together like peas in a pod. And in the basement, gone are the many framed photographs of friends and family that lined the bookshelves, the photograph albums of my many trips, the little dragon cigarette lighter, the plastic wind-up toy of the monk beating on his drum, the colorful control board from a failed air conditioner from my (once) house at the beach, my photograph of Fred when he was very sick, looking out forlornly from his hospital bed. Gone from the house, in so far as possible, is my personality.

Living in this notable lack of chaos is not easy. Some things just have to come out of hiding for daily use (the dishtowels and the sponge and soap in the kitchen) and when I’m warned that a prospective buyer wants to see the house, go back in again. All the cosmetics I use on a daily basis – pills, lotions, toothpaste, hair gel, deodorant, shaving cream – have been relegated to the space under the sink where, for ease of access, they now reside in a small carton, begged from Eddie’s and which once contained cans of turkey gravy. I leave the carton out until I’m told someone wants to see the house. Then the turkey gravy carton goes back under the sink. Sometimes I forget where I put things or find them in odd locations. Where’s the spoon holder? What’s this dishtowel doing with the frying pans? Why are the wooden spoons in the refrigerator?

Presumably, this rigid military order will help to sell the house. I sure hope so. I’m not used to living in such serene surroundings. It’s like eating meals without any salt and pepper.

Stay tuned.

Giving up the House

Imagining myself living in an apartment was not so difficult – after all, I’ve done it twice before – but picturing myself giving up my house was something altogether different. 1306 Linden Green has truly been my home for almost 20 years and I have endless happy associations with living here (I have some not so happy memories of that, too, but that’s not part of this story), many of them connected with my family and my many friends: birthday parties, dinner parties, benefits and celebrations, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween. The house has also become the amber of my life, frozen with art I’ve collected, each piece with its own history, and the many objects I’ve dragged home from my trips. While some of this is transferable, other parts of the house are not. There’s the small stain on the sisal carpet in the dining room, where Fred, my English cocker spaniel, bless his heart, peed when I didn’t get home in time to take him out. There’s the dent in the living room floor where the little marble table fell over when a date and I got too exuberant doing the samba. Fortunately, the marble didn’t break. There’s the spot in the kitchen floor where a beautiful dish fell out of a too-fully-packed refrigerator, smashing into many pieces and spewing the sauce everywhere at a critical moment when I was about to announce a fancy brunch. There’s the touch-latch door in my den that will never close properly, the wall sconce that has to be coaxed to stay lit, the scorched spot on the laminate counter top in the kitchen and the one under counter light that burns for a while, goes out, and then comes back on. There are the so many things that give my house flavor, personality, uniqueness. Sentimental me; I wondered if I could face giving all that up.

In time, I came to realize that this “stuff” is all associated with my past. So I just decided to let all that go. Focus on the future, I said to myself. Think about a whole new way of living, in a whole new environment. Imagine the possibilities, the excitement, the learning. You’ve grown stale, I said. Stretch! Grow! Become!

When I realized I had begun to speak of 532 as “my apartment” (shown in the lead photograph on the top floor between the glass bridge and the vertical construction pylon), I knew it was going to be okay. I put my house on the market.
Stay tuned.