Smokey the Magnificent

Yesterday I prepared for moving house by cleaning under the spare bed and donating a bunch of old nappies to the op shop, thus clearing out half my glory box. Today I’m planning to go through clothes and toys in an effort to donate a bunch more stuff; and, following the suggestion of a woman on MDC, start packing some non-seasonal clothes. Which is tricky given the weird weather we’ve been having lately, but I’m sure there’s something I can put in a box. My Eowyn costume, for instance.

…is to do at least one thing every day that will make moving house easier when the fateful day comes. I was thinking of cleaning under the spare bed today, for example: the snortlepig hid a potato under there some weeks ago and I’m curious to see how it’s coming along.

Well, yes, if you count house-hunting as productive. And personally I can think of few things more soul-gratingly fruitless.

What is it, for example, with people who lie about the state of their house on the phone? I’ve taken to being staunch!, direct! and no-nonsense! in an effort to sift the wheat from the chaff, and I’m constantly being sabotaged by optimists. “Tell me about your kitchen,” I say. “We’re looking for a house with a nice big kitchen. We don’t want a house with a small kitchen, and - ” light laugh - “some of the houses I’ve seen have had kitchens with just one small bench. That is too small for us. How big is your kitchen?”

Pause on the other end of the line while the house-owner scratches his nose thoughtfully. After the first three dozen of these calls you can begin to hear the wheels turning in his head. How can I make it sound bigger? he thinks. If I could just get them in the house, maybe the splendor of the seventies carpet would dazzle them and they wouldn’t notice! Maybe if I threw another bucket of water on the bathroom wall it would create an optical illusion and cause the kitchen space to expand! Maybe a few more benches will magically sprout from the floor while they’re driving here! At any rate, I must not let this woman know the size of the kitchen. Because although she thinks she wants a house with a big kitchen, what she really wants is my dank flea-ridden hovel out in the wops with the tetanus-inducing broken railing and the pit bull next door. And if she could only lay her eyes on the glory of the peeling paint and non-functional backyard pool, she would know this. In the meantime, I must protect her from the truth.

“Aww, yeah?” he says hopefully. “It’s not a bad kitchen. We just repainted the bedr-”

“So, one bench, two benches?” I press, inexorably, ruthlessly, like a shark.

“Aww - ” He becomes suddenly vague. Coy, even: as if his native tongue is Swahili and “two benches” translates to some personal question about his charitable giving. “It’s pretty big, yeah.” He gains confidence, possibly remembering a cubit foot of space under the sink. “It’s got - yeah, you’d have to see the layout. Come by and take a look at it.”

“Are you sure?” I say. “Because let me tell you, mister, I have no car and it will take me three hours in total to walk with the pram in the scorching heat to your home, which we nearly passed on in the first place because it was eighteen miles from town at the bottom of a ‘gator-infested bayou. The only reason, in fact, we would consider living next to the sewage plant is if the house itself were impeccable beyond reproach, with - and I stress - a really nice big kitchen. Because that’s what we want. A big kitchen. The sort of kitchen that makes guests walk in and go “Ooh, I like your nice big kitchen”. The sort where if said guests were asked on a game show “Name the size of Smokey the Magnificent’s kitchen”, they wouldn’t hem and haw and call a friend. They’d say “Oh, she has a big kitchen”. That’s the kind of kitchen I expect to find in your house. A big one. A nice one. And if, upon rafting up to your front door with my shoe leather worn down to parchment, I find you skulking about in a kitchen large enough to comfortably make a piece of toast and no more, I will not be held accountable for my actions - and they will be bloody. So in view of this information, is there anything you could like to clarify about the size or state of your kitchen before I hang up the phone?”

I don’t say that, actually. It wouldn’t be seemly. Instead I utter a vaguely threatening “OK, well, that sounds good, see you soon” and hang up meekly. Two hours later, with flies sucking the sweat from my shirt and the snortlepig covered in newts, we show up at the house. And in fact, I do not find the owner of the house skulking in the kitchen. The owner of the house has deemed it to be the better part of valor to scarper, and made off. It doesn’t matter. As I knew upon entering the dank and greasy street ten minutes ago, I didn’t want the house. But for the sake of things I peer through the fly-specked lace curtains and see the kitchen. It is comprised of a single bench, taken up almost entirely by sink, and a small jutting promonotory to one side of a remarkably convenient width for balancing a Saltine. The whole affair is painted sea green, and someone appears to have been sick in the microwave. As I stare glumly at the chaos, the windowsill comes off in my hand.

Repeat until filled with a sick depair admixed with psychopathic rage, and you have a fairly good picture of my week.

Not tooooo bad yesterday. I got inspired by the thought of our imminent chucking-out and cleaned under the bed. Many were the dead hankies that I unearthed, and their countenances grimy. I also took the snortlepig on a long and rambling walk around our area in the hopes of finding “For Rent” signs, but nothing appealed.

And Helpdesk Man isn’t dead keen on 10 Fzzzfphht St (or more accurately, what of 10 Fzzzfphht St he could see through its windows). We’re being shown around again on Friday, but Helpdesk Man thinks we could do better - and knowing that I tend to panic and settle and leap at the first place I see, I feel I should heed his warning. It would be a slight downgrade in niceness for more money, and that’s always depressing.

So having thunk it over for a bit, here are our options, bearing in mind we want to start saving for a house as renting is a Piffle and a Scam:

1. Downgrade in size. The snortlepig doesn’t need her own bedroom just yet, as we’re still cosleeping; so Helpdesk Man could use the other bedroom or the living space, if it was decent-sized, for his study. Thus, we could (hopefully) get a house all to ourselves and still maintain the Style of Living to Which we are Accustomed.

2. Downgrade in quality, ie. rent a smeggy three-bedroom home on the cheap, infested with roaches and with the corpses of rodents decomposing in the hot water cupboard. Then save like mad to scrape together a down payment, spurred on by the fungus on the fridge. Not a v. appealing option, as the quality in homes tends to decline first and most dramatically in the kitchen.

3. Upgrade in quality, renting a nice attractive place, and take on a homestay student to pay the extra rent. This may be the way to go. Neither of us is uber-keen on the idea of sharing a house with a stranger, but it would probably be good for our characters. And the extra income would be more than the difference in rent (assuming we didn’t go for an incredibly fancy place), so we could put it towards Teh Deposit and thus get out from under the thumb of Teh Man sooner. Or something. Plus, the pig likes having people round. And it would force me to become a more organised housewife, which as this blog so amply demonstrates would be no bad thing.

The only trouble with that is if we moved within the next few months, I’m not sure it’s a good season for homestayers. They probably migrate North for the summer once Uni finishes, and I doubt we could afford to pay fancy-house rent for months while waiting for them to return. Although I suppose there’s summer school. But still.

4. Upgrade in quality but find some other way of making extra money to pay for it. Which doesn’t really appeal. Any not-at-home job I could get would be hugely disruptive to the family, and I don’t really fancy in-home childcare. Or drug trafficking. Besides, if we did have extra money I’d want to put it towards the down payment, not the rent.

Any other options I’m missing?

Soooo, apparently we’ve been given 90 days’ notice. Our landlords, bless their entrepreneurial little hearts, want to sell the house. Right out from under the snortlepig, who with typical fortitude is coping with the situation by having the milks.

To the landlords I say: Is it. To the snortlepig I say: Stop thrusting your fingers up my nose while you drink, it isn’t Nice.

Then, being of a calm and sunny nature, I turn tranquilly to TradeMe and start browsing through the houses. Whether I am calm because I’ve never been a fan of this house in the first place, or because the snortlepig thrust too far and lobotomised me, I cannot say. But hoo boy, there are some ugly houses out there.