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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

A New Foe

Limbo living just got a little harder.  Keeping the house in show ready condition has been a challenge and we're not slobs (not too much, anyway).  I've notched my OCD up a couple of levels to have everything pristine all the time.

Now, more fun.

Our home is surrounded by beautiful trees, including a large oak and a small maple in the backyard.



The front yard has a large maple and a cherry tree that provide nice shade in the afternoon.



All this nice shade provides me with the new problem:


Leaves.  And they are just starting to fall.  I hooked up my leaf catcher to my trusty John Deere tractor and cleared up all the leaves and cut the grass.  Within minutes of clearing the leaves, new ones started taking their place.


I used to wait until most all the leaves had dropped before picking them up, but now I'll have to do this a couple of days a week until they've all dropped.  My new foe.

I got all the leaves up and put the tractor away and sat down to have a bit of lunch when the doorbell rang. At the door was a realtor with a couple to view the house.  I never got the call that a showing was coming or I would have beat feet out of here.  So instead I got to show them all around the house in my old ripped and paint splattered clothes.  Oops.  

On the good side, I was able to show off the house much better than the realtor would have been able to.  The couple was also looking in the neighborhood at a short sale house just like ours, but it needed a lot of work.  We've dropped our listing price again for the fourth time to be more competitive with the short sales and the other house the couple was interested in was priced $50K under us.

So it looks like I won't be escaping leaf duties any time soon.

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.


11 comments:

  1. You can probably pick up leaves each day before and after fixing and delivering Marti's lunch for her. You don't want to have nothing to do in your retirement do you? :)

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  2. Funny how every leaf in the yard has to be picked up!!

    But go for a hike and you just love to kick your way along through the leaves;o))

    We're all for kicking and not picking!!!!

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  3. A little birdie must have told you that those leaves needed to be picked up. Maybe that's a good sign -- being caught off guard by the realtor. Besides it takes longer to close a short sale in most cases than a regular sale since it has to be submitted to the bank for their approval of the sales price. And, sometimes those short sale homes are left in terrible, terrible shape. Our fingers and toes are crossed for you. Glad you found something "fun" to do in your retirement.

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  4. Just think one day you'll be able to sit back and watch someone else do that kind of work!!!

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  5. Did you offer them any of your sammich? Fingers crossed...
    Syl

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  6. I live in a forest. I don't clear the leaves off the little bit of grass or in the wild garden. I do run the blower on the driveways however.

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  7. the shortsale may be $50,000 less but your's looks like it is move in ready!..geesh don't people know how much work renos are??

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  8. I think you are up to the battle with this foe. Besides you know you will ultimately win the war.

    Now if those folks would just do the smart thing which I hope your realtor will explain to them in detail, it will be their foe to tackle.

    You've got a lot of fingers crossed for you including mine.

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  9. And once you get rid of the leaves from your own trees, you can start picking up the ones the wind blows over from your neighbors' yards. :-))

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  10. I can sympathize with you. Our last house had a half dozen large trees with ots of leaves. It also seemed that the wind pattern was such that most of our neighbors leaves ended up in our yard.

    One of the criteria for the next house is no trees. I always disliked the raking ritual.

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  11. I know the realtors always say to leave the house for a showing, but only you know the best things to show them. And you would really make it memorable. :-)

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