Our oldest son, Alex recently joined the ranks of the overburdened everyman, staggering under a crushing amount of debt. By that I mean, he bought his first ever house. Oh Joy! My oldest is now a homeowner, THAT doesn't make me feel old, nope, not at all. The only thing making this situation slightly more tolerable is actually being able to witness, firsthand, Alex having to experience all the stress and problems associated with being a money pit owning grown up. Ahhh, revenge is sweet, sayeth the Mom.
Now, what IS causing me stress and aging me considerably is the way Alex and his two friends are handling the situation. Or maybe that should be NOT handling the situation. As in, all their junk is still smack dab in the middle of the den floor - where they dumped it on moving day, four days ago.
Alex's house was a foreclosure, but it's a CHARMING foreclosure. Somebody, sometime, loved this house and loved it enough to take very good care of it and enhance it's potential with creative ideas and a sharp eye for details. Seriously, I'd live in this house, it has such personality.
That's not to say it doesn't need some work. Between the "loving owners" and Alex, I'm pretty sure the house was occupied by some fairly unsavory characters - especially judging from the type of people who have shown up at the front door "looking for the guy who used to live here".
The first order of business was to change all the locks, the second was to put 911 on everybody's speed dial, just in case.
This situation has brought home how very different Alex and his friends (maybe his whole generation?) are from Roger and me. I'm a list-making, organizational type person, who would have already had that house whipped into shape. Okay, maybe nobody would be speaking to me anymore and I'd probably be divorced, but at least that house wouldn't have a moldy toilet seat in one bathroom, ceiling fans so wobbly they give you motion sickness just looking at them, and a light switch in the kitchen that gets so hot, you have to use a potholder to turn it off.
The funny thing is, in THIS particular instance, ROGER is the one who's chomping at the bit to get over there and take care of things. NOT ME, for once, I'M not the one who's the most obsessed. How weird is THAT?
Just today Roger told me he wanted to "swing by" the house and check on a couple of things, maybe do some watering and just "piddle around". Alex is out of town on business and said neither one of his friends were living at the house yet. (See what I mean? who moves all their stuff in and then LIVES SOMEWHERE ELSE?) It's just not right, I'm telling you.
So, at 11:30 this morning, Roger and I arrived at Alex's house with water hoses, sprinklers, flashlights, tools and plans to go shopping to stock the refrigerator. Oh, and both dogs - did I mention we had BOTH DOGS with us? Um, well we did.
We fall out of the car and Roger opens the front door. Both dogs burst into the house and the sound of their nails on the laminate floor is a whole lot like machine gun fire, only louder. I wouldn't be surprised to learn the Police Dept. received reports of a possible drive by shooting.
As the dogs drag me through the house, I glance in the den and see one of Alex's friends, asleep on the floor...or at least he WAS asleep. I'm pretty sure he's awake now....awake and probably suffering from some coronary damage.
Sure enough he IS awake, and IN HIS UNDERWEAR. He stumbles out of bed, IN HIS UNDERWEAR, and groggily looks around to find his pants. Roger, the big chicken, bolts out the backdoor to "check on some things" and leaves me behind to stammer out our sincerest apologies to the friend who, moments before, WAS IN HIS UNDERWEAR.
After babbling incoherently for a few minutes, Roger and I loaded up the dogs and made a hasty retreat. In the car on the way home, we decided we'd let Alex and his friends proceed at their own pace to get the house set up. It may not be as fast as we'd like, but I'm not willing to risk that his friends are always gonna have clean underwear.
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