March 17, 2007

SATURDAY, MARCH 17TH, 2007

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
-Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)

I have a headache. It's either a symptom of the nasty flu I've had for the last few days or a result of staring too closely at the black velvet gangsta paintings that lined the sidewalk in front of a yard sale at a house near the grocery store. I liked the one of Snoop in full "pimp" regalia the best. Very elegant. I found something similar for sale on Ebay. I'm not sure velvet does Fiddy justice.

As I mentioned last post, I have been slogging through the kiddie-oriented Hell that is A Day Out with Thomas for the last few weeks and I'm absolutely exhausted. I work at a railroad museum here in South Florida. Usually all I do is field trips and birthday parties and during last year's Thomas event I sat at a cash register for 10 hours straight each day as the future white-collar criminals, serial-killers and rude Hummer drivers of South Florida were dragged past me kicking and shrieking while their doting mummies and paters dropped hundreds of dollars on Thomas 'stuff' for them. That isn't to say that some of the kids weren't charming and sweet, but those were so few and far between that when one did cross my path, I immediately praised both parent and child for being such a breath of fresh air.

This year, however, my promotion in September resulted in my having to participate in every aspect of the event from start to finish. The only person more tired than I am has to be my co-worker Lori who's relentless drive made me feel like a slacker. She's also the only reason I was able to soldier through this event even when all I really wanted was to curl up into a ball and sleep for a week.

Anyhoo, after nearly a month of 12 to 16 hour days, very little sleep and mountains of junk food and Red Bull, Thomas the Tank Engine was lifted onto his flat-bed (yes, Virginia, he gets around by truck) and we bade him farewell for another year and limped off to get some sleep and reacquaint ourselves with our families and weeks of TiVo'd episodes of Lost and As the World Turns. I promptly came down with the flu and have been teetering around my horribly messy house for the last few days alternately vowing to clean the place and get back on the whole house selling thing and collapsing in bed with the chills coughing my brains out.

This morning I felt well enough to go to the grocery store for five minutes and while I feel well enough, I'm making a list of things I have to get done in the next week to make this house ready to be seen and sold. I'll be starting with a new FOR SALE BY OWNER sign. The last one blew away a week or so ago.

I've decided to begin this process again as if the last 6 months of 2006 had never happened. I'm going to approach this thing with as much blind optimism as I can muster. I'm not going to read anything negative about the housing market. I'm going to have another yard sale and get rid of even more clutter. Next Sunday (Hell, if I'm ready, maybe Saturday too) I'm going to have an open house and bake cookies. Maybe that velvet Snoop painting in the entry-way will entice a buyer?

I'm getting rid of this box soon if it kills me. So: No naysayers, no 'realists', no party-poopers. Put on a smile and tell me you know I'm gonna sell soon. Drink the Kool-Aid, damn-it!