Tumbled Words

Heads or Tails normally found at Skittle’s Place was hosted this week by Jen of Tidbits of the Tippets (try saying that as you are typing!). She chose my favorite subject - Part of a house!

The part of our house or apartment that haunts me the most: the room I have never created — but I don’t mourn for it; I just know that someday, I may decide to make it important enough to have.

Strange answer? Well, here is the other one:

I compare a house to this flower, type unknown. Its photo was taken on a breezy day at a small nursery on the Lavender Festival Tour in Sequim, WA, in 2007 either by Leon or I, who knows.

Like the many rooms created by the flower petals here, at home some are more private and closed off from the others and may fall to the wayside — depending on the time of day or stage in its life.

In my real world, my favorite part of a house: any room whose purpose can be changed at my whim - or need. We have, in the past, turned bedrooms into living rooms, bedrooms into den/TV rooms, dining rooms into bedrooms, living rooms into bedrooms or office/grand entry ways, separate living and dining rooms into one large room, and so on and so on… even part of a living room into a walk through closet… Nothing was sacred for re-purposing - except for three:

• the bathroom - for sleeping and eating there did not register well with my brain
• the kitchen - for sleeping in there could prove hazardous to our health while cooking
• the utility room - for sleeping on top of the washer and dryer beneath the laundry detergent and bleach could prove hazardous to our health, and at 6′ feet tall, Leon’s knees would have been shoved up to his throat trying to squeeze in…

I did try to make the latter into the front entrance, though, but they didn’t leave us quite enough room when they built the house and I would have hated for our guests to trip over the washer, but then, they got lost in my maze of walls that seemed to appear and disappear at will.

“Where is the living room now, Marcia?” was often a question asked as they followed me into our house the following month and each one thereafter….

Green with envy, I watch as other houses sell and mine doesn’t. OK, that is a bit of a stretch… not much is selling. As I am typing this I look up at the TV that has been on all day and completely ignored - and see the exact little green shaded bankers style lamp my husband bought me years ago, because I fell in love with it. One would think that would take my mind off the house, but as I look toward my screen to be sure I am typing the letters I think I am, I see the green post it note that says, HOUSE INSURANCE - and I remember the phone call this morning.

Our house is on the market in the Evergreen state, Washington, and we are here in Florida… The market out there caught up somewhat with everyone else’s just as we put it on the market… OK, deal with it… We have.

Our water bill for there, which should have read zero gallons, read 1500. A call revealed that our pipe had broken on our side of the main months ago in a huge and somewhat abnormal freeze out ther and that a neighbor had called the water company and the water company had called our real estate agent… (It gets better.)

The story went that it and one other house in our neighborhood had broken pipes and when the water company went back out there it had been fixed… No problems.

I emailed our Realtor about our excessively high electric bill and tagged on a little note that I heard our water pipe had broken and she had been notified and why had she not told us. (I mean, who paid for it???)

She knew nothing about it… I called back the water company, thinking she had misunderstood my address. It is a small company and they were to go by the house and check it that day and call me back… Uhmmm waiting a couple of days…no call back. But I will try to remember to call them tomorrow.

THEN I finally call to see what insurance will cost since our home owner’s policy was dropped because no one lived in the house. I paid only 500 a year with no earthquake insurance which would have only added about 200 dollars to it. Guess how much GREEN money they want to insure it at one hundred thousand less coverage and many things, ie., vandalism not included?

THREE THOUSAND MORE DOLLARS THAN I PAID FOR FULL COVERAGE INCLUDING CONTENTS….. That is a lot of green and with what I have read about the insurance industry, I now believe even more of what I read than before.

So! Now, I think I may become GREEN in the other way, as in queasy stomach. (OH no, I just looked up at the TV and saw a green colander!) But what has me the queasiest… I am just one of so many out there being taken advantage of….

So, moral to the story. Sell your house and then move to start your dream life… either that or just deal with what is thrown at you.

Heads or Tales on Tuesday. Skittles tossed tails at us this week, a list of seven in one category. I love lists more than anything except food and Leon and poetry and our son and writing and… wait, is this a list? It wasn’t meant to be. May as well go with it. No, I want to list something else… hmmm.

1. F (no,not for that reason) and G
2. Possum
3. shaggy hair that has outgrown it’s stylish cut
4. liver
5. extremely dry or oily skin
6. emotional wasteland of apathy
7. Strong smells of any kind (good or bad)

Yeah, you guessed my list, things I don’t like.

Follow the link to Heads or Tails and see what type of lists others came up with.