Two Guys and a Truck With No Trailer

While Hick was dealing with the HVAC guy loading our AC with coolant on Thursday, he got a call from Realtor. She said the buyers for the Double Hovel flip house(s) had done their final walk-through, and did not want the furniture Hick had in the buildings. He sent me a text while I was in town, saying that he was going to pick up Old Buddy, so they could move it.

"I have to go to town and get furniture out of houses they had walk threw and all good but want furniture out I'm going to get Old Buddy."

It wasn't a lot of furniture. The main house had a kitchen table with bench seats. The living room had a couple of small tables and a lamp and a recliner. The Beauty Shop had a bed and a dresser with a mirror. Hick had taken these out of the QuickFlip house we bought and sold within a month last summer. You didn't think Hick would ask THAT seller to remove any furniture, did you? It was FREE STUFF!!! The Pony has one of those beds in the second bedroom. As The Pony calls it: "That dead woman's bed." Not that she died in it or anything. She was in a nursing home when she died. Her sons inherited the house and sold it to us.

Anyhoo... Hick and Old Buddy spent about 3 hours moving furniture. The bed and dresser went into Bargain House. The rest Hick put in his third storage unit! I KNOW! Before long, Hick will be the sole resident of that storage lot!

The closing is Monday afternoon for us. Not sure if the buyers will be there before or after, but we're never there at the same time, unless seeing them in passing. Hick has said that he will leave the electricity on until Wednesday, as a convenience for them. Same with the water/trash service. He had considered just letting them switch the name, so they didn't have to put up a deposit with the city, and then decided he wants the deposit back. It's $150. He probably would have let it go, but for the shingles and termite issue on that contract that supposedly had NO CONDITIONS...

Val, the Resident HVAC Expert

Tuesday night, after Hick had gone to bed, I noticed that our thermostat read 75 degrees. That is unusual. It is set to hold at 74. Oh, well. Maybe the house had heated up with the setting sun on the front of the house all evening, and it was getting ready to kick on. But wait. It sounded like the air conditioner WAS on. Yet I didn't feel air coming out the vents. I turned it to HEAT instead of COOL. It went off. After a half hour, I turned it back to COOL.

I sat down to watch TV, with a semi-conscious ear on the air conditioner. An hour passed. Still running. Now it was midnight, and the temp was 74 degrees. But the AC didn't kick off. I had no choice, did I? I woke up Hick.

"I think something might be wrong with the air conditioning. It sounds like it's running, but the blower won't kick off. It was 75. I turned it to heat for about a half hour, so it stopped. Then I turned it back on. It's gone back down to 74 now, but keeps running."

Hick got out of bed and went into the master bathroom. 

"It's blowing cool air. It's probably fine."

"Oh. Well. Sorry for waking you."

When Hick got up Wednesday morning, the first thing he did was go down to the basement to check on the AC. It was 75 degrees. Still running. Hadn't kicked off all night.

"Something's wrong, isn't it? Remember how every couple of years we have to get more coolant. I think they always say it's a slow leak that they can't find?"

"Yeah. It's froze up. It keeps blowing because it can't get no air across the coils. It keeps trying. Probably because it's low on coolant. I turned it off. You can turn it back on in an hour or so and it might work okay. It will have a chance to thaw out, the longer you leave it off. I'll call and see if I can get somebody out here."

Hick was gone to Illinois all day, buying merchandise for his SUS2.5 (Storage Unit Store 2.5). I didn't turn the AC on until 3:30. It was a cloudy rainy day, temps in low 70s outside. It cooled from 77 down to 75, but then quit blowing air out the vents, though it was still running. So I turned it off again.

Hick said he called his AC guy, who said he was just recovering from back surgery. He called his company for Hick, and they said they could have somebody here Thursday evening. Hick said he might look into getting a new unit, since this one is getting pretty old. But his AC guy said he'd wait at least a year, because the industry is switching to a new kind of coolant, and prices are really high right now.

I guess it behooves Hick to have an AC guy. And also to have a wife who knows what is wrong with the air conditioner.

Not the Gathering But the Hunting

Pardon the gender stereotypes, but when you know, you know. Mostly women know. We can't send a man to the store to pick up specific items. You'd think I would have learned my lesson back when I married Hick, and we were living in my $17,000 house. 

I must have been busy with something, or home sick. It was before Genius arrived. Before the era of cell phones, when a mobile phone was cutting-edge, and came in a zippered pouch to keep in the car and plug into the cigarette lighter. My dad had one, but he worked for Southwestern Bell, and had access.

Anyhoo... I gave Hick a list to take to the grocery store. It was still just a grocery store. Walmart Supercenters were not yet a thing. The store was 2-3 miles from my house. Should have been a simple feat for Hick to go buy the things on the list. But NOOOOO! Hick came home with $35 worth of groceries (way back in the early '90s), and not one thing on the list! He said he lost the list. He thought about asking to use the store's phone to call me, but didn't. Let the record show that his "groceries" included ice cream and cookies. $35 worth. Would it have been that hard to drive back and ask for another list? I think not.

MEN love the hunt. The gathering, not so much.

Last week, Hick asked if I needed anything from Walmart. He was going by to pick up dogfood. I told him I DID. Two bottles of garlic aioli, because I can't find it in the grocery stores. And since he'd be on that aisle anyway, one Kraft Mayo in a squeeze bottle. Does that seem hard? I don't think so. I even set both bottles on the top shelf of FRIG II, so Hick could see them when he got his morning Diet Mountain Dew.

Hick took a picture. However... he only took the picture of the aioli. Can you believe that? How much harder would it have been, to consciously cut out the mayo? That's how close they were. Hick called me for something else, and I asked when he was going to the store. He said in the afternoon. That he had an appointment at 2:30, and would go after than. That's when he said he took a picture of the aioli, so he'd know what to get. When I reminded him about the mayo, he said to send him a picture. Which I did, around 1:00.

When Hick came home, this is what he brought me:

I suppose the aioli will be fine, even though it's NOT what I asked for. Maybe the packaging has changed. The old bottle was expired. Hick himself admitted that he got the wrong mayo. 

"I went to Walmart early. I didn't have your picture yet. I like to never found that aioli. I had to ask a boy working there. It took the two of us over 20 minutes to find it. It was on the bottom shelf, behind something else. Even the boy said he KNEW he had stocked it. And then after I'd already bought the mayo, I got the picture, and saw that I didn't get your kind with the pickle on the label. So I went by the grocery store and got the right kind. So you have the two bottles you asked for."

"I asked for TWO bottles of the aioli, and you got one. The mayo doesn't matter about the picture on the label. Which isn't even a pickle! It just needed to be KRAFT mayo. Each kind is a little bit different."

"Well, you got what you got."

Uh huh. Men are all about the hunt. As long as they bring home something, they figure they have done their job. They are terrible at gathering. Any old thing will do.

Hick Does Not Suffer Rumpusholes Cheaply

It doesn't pay to be a rumpushole to Hick.

"The guy with his driveway on my land called me. He just said his name and jumped right in before I even had a chance to think. He said, 'So what are you thinking?' I said, 'I have to at least get out what I've put into it. Around $1200 to $1500.' Then he said, 'That ain't happenin'.' 

His attitude kind of pissed me off. I said his son had talked to me about it, and he didn't say much. Like his son shouldn't have said nothin'. Then he says, 'Well, I've maintained it all these years.' And I said, 'You ain't done nothin'! You put your driveway on it. And I don't think you own that other section that the other half of your driveway is on, neither!' He basically told me I can't do nothin' about it. And he said, 'Why would you buy a piece of land like that?'"

"That's what I said! About the shape of the lot."

"It was on the courthouse steps. I didn't have a map. I just bought it because it was in the city limits, and it was cheap. I found out later it was just a strip. And I'm not sure his sign is really on my part. Technically, I think it's on the road right-of-way. The reason the city wants the sign down is because he never applied for a building permit to build the sign."

"So this guy thinks it's his right to build his business on whatever property he feels like? And that the owners of it have no rights, but should pay the real estate taxes on it for 35 years?"

"Seems like it. I'm so mad that I feel like having Lawyer send him a letter."

"I guess first you should make sure you actually have legal recourse to start something. It's not like an easement where you have to let people travel across your property because there's no other way to get to theirs."

"I'm not sure. There might be a law in Missouri that after a certain amount of time, if you don't say anything, you can't claim any damages. Seems like one of my buddies told me that a while back. Like at your $17,000 house. That driveway next door? It was technically an alley. Your neighbor used to put posts in it and block it off every now and then. When nobody did anything about it, the alley eventually became his driveway."

"Whatever. I don't really care either way. You'd think this guy would just agree to pay you, and be done with it."

"You'd think so. But I'm enough of an asshole that I'll pay money to see if I can fight it."

"The thing that bothers me is that we DID pay the taxes on it for 35 years. Even though it's not much, it's the idea that we're paying for land this guy is claiming to have a right to use. Send HIM the tax bill every year!"

"IF there's anything we can do, he'll have to get it surveyed. That'll cost him. And he'll need a lawyer. And then he'll have to get the deed recorded at the courthouse. I'm gonna call Lawyer and see what he thinks."

"Yeah. It won't cost that much. He'll know if you have any rights to your own land, heh, heh!"

This strip of land is worth nothing. Unless somebody needs it to expand his business, which is what this guy did. I don't know if he can legally do that. Maybe he can. Maybe anybody can decide to build something on land they don't own, and it becomes theirs. Just like squatters moving into a house and refusing to leave, and they can't be kicked out. The only people who benefit are the lawyers.

Like I've always said... Hick is happiest when he has a project. Even if that project is making a rumpushole miserable.

Mysterious Visitors

I took my usual route to The Pony's house on Sunday. Probably my last time to do so for the year, since it takes me right through the intersection where construction of a roundabout will begin on Monday. Anyhoo... this shortcut takes me past the Double Hovel flip house(s), on the street in front of the Beauty Shop. I always check to see if anybody might be touring the houses with a realtor. So far, I had never seen anyone.

WHAT'S THIS???

As I drove by, I saw a red pickup truck parked in front of the main house! At first I thought it might be Hick, perhaps showing one of his cronies his handiwork. SilverRedO is a red pickup truck, you know. And this one was a Chevrolet. But it didn't quite look like SilverRedO. Especially when I saw the people coming around it, headed for the gate.

The man was the perfect example of a good ol' boy. He might be pictured next to that definition in a dictionary. Do people still use dictionaries? If not, they don't know what they're missing. So many tangents to explore when you are perusing a dictionary page.

Anyhoo... this guy was probably named Bubba. On his birth certificate. No shade thrown on Bubbas. Bubbas are people too. He was a portly fellow, following his stomach as he walked, arms sticking out at about a 45-degree angle. I can't remember if he was wearing overalls or just jeans, with a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. The woman was in short jeans shorts and a white tank top. She had kind-of-bleached hair, and was a skeleton compared to Bubba.

I was driving, and could not give my full attention to being nosy. I wondered WHY these people were at our Double Hovel. Of course, the realtor signs are still in both yards. They don't update signs to signify a property that is under contract. So maybe these folks were looking at houses to buy. I thought of turning up that street and asking, "May I help you? I own this house." Then I thought better of it.

I don't want to act like a car salesman on commission. They were probably "just looking." And why should they believe some random woman who was passing by would be the owner of that house? What are the odds of THAT? Also, you don't really want to mess with strangers these days. Strangers are like a box of chocolates...

When I told The Pony, I suggested that maybe this was a good thing. In case something goes wrong with our closing. Maybe there are backup buyers out there. The Pony had another idea.

"Maybe it was the buyers. From your description of them, it sounds like they could be from [That Town] where they are selling their old house."

On my way back home, I went by again, but nobody was there. Nothing looked disturbed.

When Hick got home, I asked if he had been over at the Double Hovel. He said no, he had been at his SUS2.5 (Storage Unit Store 2.5) all day. He had no idea who those people might have been. He also thought it might be the buyers stopping to look it over again.

I guess it will remain a mystery, since we never see the other party at closing.

Another Sabotaging of Val's Rightful Handicap Parking Space

When I drove onto the parking lot of 10Box on Saturday, I was happy to see one of the four handicap spaces available. Until I got closer. Oh, I was able to squeeze T-Hoe into it. But there was a complication.

I had to park poorly! Can you believe it? VAL straying outside the lines of a parking space? Good thing the right side of that space bordered on a striped walkway that goes next to a handicap space. So I wasn't ruining another parking space for anybody else. I HAD to park poorly, because there were CARTS in my rightful handicap parking space!

Not just one cart, or two. A whole LINE of carts, jammed together. Too heavy for Val to move. She is, you understand, not exactly spry. Lest you assume that there was no room for those carts to go, I offer the next view of the cart return area:

The entire cart return area was basically open. I've seen three columns of carts parked there before. But on this day, people only cared enough to drag their cart to the sidelines. Which might indicate that some even worse handicap-thwarter had parked a car in that space, as I saw last week.

While taking the pictures, two other cars left. How convenient that two other handicap spaces were now open. Didn't help me. I was already parked, though poorly, and it wasn't worth the effort of watching for traffic and entitled walkers while trying to back out and drive a few feet closer. T-Hoe's backup beeper hasn't worked for many years. I am paranoid about running over somebody! Especially here, where people traipse about all willy-nilly, returning carts (poorly!) and browsing the garden selections, and not controlling their rambunctious youngsters.

As I hobbled back to T-Hoe, clutching my scratchers, a lady walked in front of me and jammed her cart into that line, making it even closer to blocking T-Hoe's door when I opened it. I guess I got out of there just in time.

Just Another Perk of Having Friends in OLD Places

Hick is not a person to let items go to waste. He's definitely not filling up the town dump  landfill recycling center with his castoffs. If anything, he will wring the last bit of use out of something, then toss it down our main sinkhole. Which he considers to be nature's wastebasket for things like broken home-made kitchen cabinets.

Anyhoo... Hick hoards keeps things in case he might have a use for them later. Like those plastic jugs that held pool chemicals, which he later filled with water and took to town, to use for flushing the toilet while working on the QuickFlip house before turning on the utilities. The water in the pool chemicals jugs that was subsequently drunk by a crazy naked man trying to break into the QuickFlip house...

One of Hick's preferred "recyclables" is the white 5-gallon plastic bucket. Like the kind drywall mud comes in. Not only good for hauling water from the outside pump spigot to the chicken and goat pens back when we had livestock, but also for storing smaller items inside, or dogfood until squirrels eat the lid off of it, or just having handy with water inside for putting out fireworks mishaps.

Hick was carrying two drills in such a bucket (actually two buckets stacked together) on Thursday. He said he had a regular drill and a hammer drill, to fix two of his giant wagon wheels on the front porch that had been knocked down by the dogs (he said). Don't get me started on a hammer drill. Why not just use a hammer, or a nail gun, I wondered. But Hick said it's a drill that vibrates, to knock a screw loose to take out, or to get it in really tight. Hmm. How can it do both? It must not go in all THAT tight if you can use the same drill to get it out. But I digress...

I figured our newest dog, Pupsie, would surely love to sink her chewing teeth into that pristine white plastic, and chew those buckets into tiny pieces before eating them. I asked Hick what was in the buckets before he started using them.

"I don't know. I got them from the Senior Center. From the kitchen. Maybe cooking oil? I don't know."

"They just gave you the buckets?"

"They asked me if I wanted them, and I said YEAH. There's three more out in my truck."

Well. I'm sure the cooking oil flavor will make them even more delectable to Pupsie.