punchdrunkmom

In which it's done, and I'm briefly caught up in a feud between the Hapsburgs and the Mikhails

So it turns out that the deal wasn’t dead. The two realtors rushed to convince the seller’s attorney to reopen the negotiations and to convince Scott that he could still find a way through this. I was surprised he was even open to it, since his last communication to me about it after the seller terminated the contract was, and I’m quoting here, “Fuck them.”

The seller, whom I’ll call Igor because that’s actually his name, is like the best negotiator in the world. Our conversations go something like this:

Us: Could we have you modify the specs on the house so that there’s some kind of awning over the back door?

Him: No.

:::

Scott and I agreed that we could live without some of the things the attorneys couldn’t come to terms with, but dealing with Igor was less than satisfying. Scott and I both come from the advertising industry, where you make your client feel like you’re happy to be around them all the time. I know one client who got a standing ovation just for walking into the boardroom. Literally, all she did was walk into a room.

I don’t need a standing ovation, but a little give would have been nice.

While we were waiting for our attorney to get back from court or sober up or whatever was keeping him from returning my numerous calls, I decided to call a guy I’ll call Hans. No. I’ll call him Seigfried! Oh! Oh! Wolfgang!

Okay. Whatever I’ll call him Frank because that’s actually his name. He’s German, complete with the accent, and owns a house built by Igor. He was provided as a sort of reference. And he was both blunt and loquatious.

I told him that we were trying to negotiate the contract and found Igor to be rather abrupt and unbending.

We talked about contract negotiation for a minute or two.

“That’s not really why I’m calling,” I said. “Do you, you know, like your house?”

“Oh, yes!” Frank said.

“It doesn’t, like list to one side or have demons in the basement or anything?”

“Oh, no. It’s not a money pit.” Frank laughed. “It’s really energy efficient, too.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said. Germans are into efficiency.

We talked about his energy bills, how much easier it is to buy a house than design your own, which he had done once, that when you have construction guys over at your house you have to watch them like hawks.

“Igor’s a good guy. His big problem is that he’s Russian. Russians are—” Frank hesitated, searching for words. “They resent anyone who isn’t Russian.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“I mean, I’m German and we have our own issues. But some of Igor’s men can be brutes, you know? They lack finesse. Also, they say they’ll be at your house at 8 and don’t show up until 11 or 12.”

I wondered if I’d wandered onto the set of a Tarantino movie. Here I was talking to Christoph Waltz about the deficits of an entire population. On the other hand, Frank was trying to provide me with a philosophical way to explain Igor’s communication style. Brutish and without finesse, indeed.

Frank told me that he’d had exactly one problem with the house, that Igor had fixed it, that he was overwhelmingly happy with it. He described an elaborate and, according to Frank, very expensive Kohler medicine cabinet he’d had installed by Igor’s guys that apparently involved rerouting some plumbing.

“It’s exquisite,” Frank said of his medicine cabinet. I would imagine that it’s something like this.

I thanked him for his time, and told him that we would likely be neighbors. He invited me to come see his house, and if you think I’m not going to take him up on that invitation, you’re crazy.

I hung up the phone, satisfied with what I needed to know—that the house wasn't likely to fall apart and that Igor was going to stick around and fix anything that wasn’t right, though he might not show up at 8 am.

I called Scott and told him about my conversation with Frank.

“I'm not sure any of that makes me feel better,” Scott said. 

I reminded him that we could still back out.

My phone vibrated then. The attorneys had finally worked out their differences. 

:::

So it’s done. We’ve written a check for the rest of the earnest money and there’s no backing out now.

All that’s left to do is sell the old place. I think we should take some negotiating lessons from Igor. And when this is all over, I want to have a beer with Frank, and ask him if he has ever seen this.

In which we think about when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run

So yesterday, the seller of our new house terminated the contract. The reason was because the lawyers couldn’t agree to terms, and thus, like everything else in America, our life was turned into a shit show but the lawyers still made money.

We had a deadline of 6 pm to reach a deal. The drama as the seconds ticked down nearly killed me, our final offer of terms hanging in the air as I took the kids to get ice cream and to the grocery store and I pretended that I was totally cool. But Kai and Ryan have already chosen their rooms. We’ve chosen paint for said rooms. We’ve mentally furnished the place, Scott and I have picked our parking spaces in the new garage. Two hours to go before the deadline. An hour. Forty-five minutes. Fifteen.

And then the seller killed the deal. We weren’t going to come to terms.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

I needed not to have to fix the kids dinner, so we headed around the corner to a restaurant we go to a lot. We go there because it had a bouncy house in it. As a bonus, as though a bonus is necessary when bouncy houses are involved, kids eat free. As an actual bonus, there’s a full bar.

The service at this restaurant is, uh, how you say, terrible. You can’t get in and out in under two hours.

Our server was new. Our server is always new.

“Do you want anything to drink besides water?” she asked. (Told you she was new.)

“I would like a bloody mary,” I said.

She shook her head. “Our blender is broken,” she said.

I stared at her for so long, she just walked away and returned, several long minutes later, with a bloody mary. I don’t know what she decided about the blender.

:::

I wondered if we would continue to keep our house on the market. I couldn’t face getting all of our stuff out of storage and putting it all back. I wondered if this was a sign we should move to the suburbs. I wondered what I would say to Kai and Ryan. They would be fine, I knew. But this hasn’t exactly been a cakewalk for them, as I’ve renamed them “Nononono!” and “Stopstopstopstop!”

As in, “What are you doing NONONONONO!” and “Oh my God don’t touch that STOPSTOPSTOPSTOP!”

Movement out of the corner of my eye jerked me out of my reverie. Kai was poking at some kid. At a table. In front of the kid’s father.

I leapt out of my seat.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Kai said.

“He’s hitting me. He’s really annoying me and my sister. He hurt her and made her cry,” the boy said. I’ll call him Bjorn.

I looked at the sister. Fat tears were rolling down her cheeks.

I didn’t see what Kai did. And I don’t take much stock in what other kids say Kai does. It’s not that I think Kai’s an angel, but that kids say a lot of things, you know? And nothing is ever anyone’s fault.

“Kai, did you hurt this girl?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, she looks upset,” I said. “Can you see she’s crying?”

“Why are you crying?” Kai asked.

“Because he hurt her,” Bjorn supplied.

“Kai, what do you say when you hurt someone?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Kai said.

Yes he does.

“We say we’re sorry.”

“Sorry,” Kai said.

I nodded. “Shake it off,” I said to the girl. I gave her a pat on her shoulder and we went back to our table.

:::

Kai sat with me for a while, before drifting back to the bouncy house. I saw him running around with Bjorn.

I flipped though Trulia looking for new properties and drank my bloody mary and felt a presence next to me and looked up to find Bjorn.

“He’s really annoying me,” Bjorn said.

I resisted the urge to tell Bjorn just how annoying he was being.

“Okay,” I said.

“Can you tell him to stop?”

“You tell him,” I said.

“I did.” Bjorn described Kai’s offensive actions. Apparently he was chasing Bjorn and pinching him on his forearm.

“Okay, well, if it happens again—“

“If it happens again, you know what to do,” Bjorn said.

And I decided that Bjorn was a little creep, and I didn’t care what Kai did to him.

“You don’t tell me what to do, pal,” I said.

We narrowed our eyes at each other, and Bjorn went back to the bouncy house.

:::

The next time Bjorn tried to tell on Kai, I walked over to the bouncy house and called a meeting.

“Kai,” I said, “I need you not to play with these two kids.”  I pointed to Bjorn and his sister.

“But I like them,” Kai said. “They’re so tall. And this one has red pants.”

“Yes,” I said, “but they only like to play with each other. They’re like flowers in the attic. Why don’t you find some more interesting kids to play with?”

Bjorn and his sister looked confused.

“What about his boy in the blue shirt?” I suggested, pointing at some other kid.

“But I like this one,” Kai said, indicating Bjorn.

“That kid doesn’t want to play you,” I said, putting it in blunt terms not to be cruel, but to be clear. Learning how to cut your losses in a relationship is an important skill to learn. There’s always another kid, another house, another job, another day.

:::

As I walked back to the table, I heard Kai suggest a game of hide and seek. All the kids started to play, including Bjorn and his sister.

Kai lost interest in the game and came to sit near me.

Bjorn sidled up a few minutes later.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“He was supposed to find me.”

“You didn’t want to play with him,” I reminded Bjorn.

“I think he’s learned his lesson,” Bjorn said. I was reminded just then of some advice I’d gotten, that if I wanted to hear how I talk to Ryan, I should listen to how she talks to her dolls. I knew that Bjorn was just a kid parroting his parents. But there was something creepy about it, too, this weirdly articulate kid so comfortable talking to me about Kai, like we are all just chummy adults laughing about the antics of a wayward tot and not strangers with some 35 years between us.

“Ew,” I replied. I just knew that this kid would grow up to be the kind of man who wore argyle sweater vests. “I think you need to mosey along.”

Bjorn hesitated.

“You didn’t want to play with my kid, I fixed that for you. Now get lost.”

“But—“ he said.

“There’s no but,” I said. “Only ‘bye.”

Bjorn slunk back to his table.

Shortly after that, I got a text from Scott. The seller’s attorney might be willing to talk after all. The deal wasn’t dead. It was just in V-fib. The realtors were trying to resuscitate it.

I gathered our stuff and looked around for the waitress. I think she might have quit during the course of our dinner. I hadn’t seen her for a long, long time.

I handed the manager my credit card and Bjorn and his father and sister left the restaurant to do whatever it is creepy families do after dinner.

And I corralled Kai and Ryan for the walk/scoot home, and whatever fate was going to meet us.

In which I have a very Punchdrunk weekend

Hey, there! How was your weekend? Really? Hmmm. Imma totally let you finish, but let me just tell you about mine. It started out a little frantic. We had showings on Friday and Saturday, so we had to keep the house immaculate, on constant patrol for scuffs, dustbunnies, fingerprints, wayward crumbs of food, wilting flowers, and new things to clean. Scott used Tilex, CLR and Magic Eraser in quantities that might be illegal.

“Did you see the bannister?” he asked me.

“No,” I said.

“It looks amazing. It’s been bothering me for so long and now it looks great!”

I had no idea the bannister had been troubling him, or that a bannister could have that kind of power, but there you go. We’ve all gone a little mad.

It is a dirty secret in the Punchdrunk household that Scott is the better of the two of us at domestic things. He’s a way better cook, and when he cleans, he cleans. I found one of the kids’ toothbrushes soaking in a Pyrex container of some kind of noxious cleaning fluid. I have no idea what he’d used it for. I did remember to throw the toothbrush away, though.

:::

I thought it best just to get the kids out of Scott’s way, and took them to work with me on Saturday morning. During yoga class, I missed a call from our realtor.

We had an offer.

I raced home to tell Scott. The offer was for $1,000 over our asking price, and good until 7 pm, at which time they were going to make an offer on their second choice house.

“Okay,” Scott said. “I’ll take more than I was asking for.”

We called our realtor, who in turn called everyone who had shown interest in the house. The plan was to see if anyone else wanted to put in a bid.

I felt such relief that I can’t even begin to describe it. The idea of not having to live like we don’t live here! OMG! The kids could have some of their toys back! I had so much gratitude to the new owners, who were pregnant with their first baby. They were the new us. I thought I’d leave them a nice note of welcome for when they moved in, point out the hidden park that was so perfect to take Kai when he was tiny, maybe a leave a bottle of champagne for them.

In the meantime, we still had showings that afternoon, so with the promise that our realtor would have the answers we needed by five pm, we packed the kids up and took off for lunch and to see my guitar class play a show.

:::

I don’t even know if I’ve told you that I take guitar lessons. Lately, they’ve taken the form of an ensemble class. It’s kind of like a band. It IS a band, I guess. We’ve got guitarists and bassists and a drummer who is not yet 21 (!) but is awesome. We play music from the 90s—your Nirvanas, your Pearl Jams, your Gin Blossoms. Anyone who wants to can jump in on lead vocals. There are some girls in the group who can really sing, and they asked me early on if I sing, too.

“In the car,” I replied, which they took to mean “yes,” so they gave me a song to sing.

The first time I sang with the group, one of the girls, Cathy, fed me a glass of wine and stood up there with me, holding tight to my waist, presumably so I couldn’t run away.

The kids haven’t heard me play or sing, largely because I can’t manage them at the same time. But this seemed like a good time to show them how I spend Tuesday nights, plus Scott would be there, plus we needed to be out of the house.

We were playing in the lobby of the school, a sing-a-long to showcase the school’s curriculum. It was crowded and hot and noisy.

I tried to give the kids instruments to play—shakers and a tambourine, which Kai shook half-heartedly for a minute or two before losing interest and wandering away. Ryan decided that it was a good time to start to cry. She crawled into my lap and howled over versions of “Closer to Fine” and “Evenflow.”

When it was my turn to sing, she clung to me like a wet t-shirt. I tried to put her down to no avail. Scott motioned for me to bring her over to him, which I tried to do. This only made her cry harder.

So I stepped up to the microphone with Ryan on my hip and started to sing.

“Step off the train, I’m walking down your street agaaaaaain…”

“Mommy,” Ryan cried in my ear, “I just wanna go home Mommy.”

“I pass your door, but you don’t live there anymoooore….”

“Mommy, I just want some ice cream, Mommy. I want some water. Mommy I wanna go home.”

“And I miss you…..like the deserts miss the rain…”

“Mommy!”

“Mommy’s trying to sing a damn song,” I hissed between verses.

“But I just want some ice cream,” she wailed.

:::

Ryan cried the whole way to the car.

“I just wanna go home,” she sobbed.

“We’re going home,” I replied.

“But I don’t wanna go home,” she said.

I stopped walking and looked at her.

“I wanna go to a different home,” she said.

I shifted her to my other hip, jostling with my purse and guitar. It was hot and I had a voicemail from our realtor I wanted to listen to, and I was kind of over Ryan just then.

“You’re not allowed to want anything for the next five minutes,” I said.

“But I just wanna go home,” she whispered.

:::

Driving home from the show, Scott and I called the realtor. The couple had rescinded their offer.

:::

On Sunday, I took the kids to the pool while our realtor held an open house.

Ryan and I coaxed Kai into the big pool. Kai wasn’t convinced it was a good idea until I pointed out that Ryan can stand in the shallow end.

I pulled him into the water with me, and after a few minutes, he was feeling more confident. He used his mask to look underwater, his new orange silicone ear plugs making it possible for him to submerge his head. He went from clinging to the side of the pool to walking around, to trying to sit on the bottom.

“Want to try to float?” I asked.

“No!” he shouted, edging away from me. “I’ll do it myself.”

Eventually I found him actually trying to swim, imitating a spastic version of the crawl, legs bent under his body.

“Honey, I’m going to straighten you out,” I said, and held his waist with one hand and used my other to pull his legs straight.

“Now go,” I said, and pushed him to the side of the pool.

And I’ll be damned if that kid wasn’t swimming. I never thought I’d see the day.

“I’m so proud of you,” I said to him.

He grinned.

I let Kai practice and bounced around with Ryan. It was a beautiful day. I wondered how the open house was going.

I looked around for Kai and found him clinging to the side. His body was making a weird heaving motion, so I went over to see what was going on.

Kai was throwing up into the pool.

I lifted him out of the water, where he continued to puke, spraying the wet cement of the pool deck.

People were backing away from us, but some of the children, unaware that Kai had thrown up, were swimming through Kai’s vomit.

I ordered the kids to stand still and ran for a lifeguard, and then packed up the kids to go home.

“But I want to stay,” Kai said.

“Kai, you just threw up. We have to go home.” I was also nervous that some parents might come after us with pitchforks.

Kai reluctantly put on his shirt, his shoes. Ryan helped me put our things in the bag.

We passed an ice cream man on the way to the car.

“Can I have some ice cream?” Kai asked.

“No, honey, you were just sick,” I said.

Kai stared out of the car window, sullen and silent.

“There will be other days at the pool,” I assured him.

And there will be. And there will be another offer on the house and another chance sing without a crying child on my hip.

But then, where’s the fun in that?

In which it gets better

Three years ago:

Kai: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOO!

Me: Kai, its okay, Buddy. We wash your hair every day.

Kai: (sobs) AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

:::

Three weeks ago:

Kai: You got water on my ears.

Me: You don’t like that, do you?

Kai: No.

Me: Which part is it that bothers you? Touching the outer part or getting water inside your ear.

Kai: Inside.

Me: I’m glad you told me. What if we got some earplugs to keep the water out?

Kai: (thinks) What do earplugs look like?

Me: Well, let’s look on the computer.

Kai: Okay!

:::

Last night:

Me: Kai, five more minutes. You’ve been in the tub for a half hour.

Kai: But I’m looking underwater.

Me: (watches boy, in full snorkel gear submerge his whole head, orange silicone putty covering his ears, to find what treasures await at the bottom of the tub) You sure are, Kai.

In which we contemplate a brave new world

It’s been almost two weeks since we bid a second adieu to the Sheraton. I wasn't overly excited to be back home. We had no furniture in the upstairs, and everything was covered in a greasy dust that someone was going to have to clean. I was increasingly nervous that that someone was going to be me.

I decided that I would try to find a way to get the kids back into some kind of routine, some semblance of the life we usually live, so we went to Whole Foods while a load of laundry churned and I waited for the cleaning service to text me back. I taught a yoga class, I took the Kai for therapy in the suburbs. I made the kids dinner, or at least I tried to. I heated a pan of oil to make Kai some fishsticks, but freaked out when they smelled like polyurothane while I was cooking them, so I threw them out and we ate McDonald's instead. 

Everything smelled like polyurothane. The refrigerator, the towels in our bathroom, every load of freshly-washed laundry I pulled from the dryer. The Internet told me to find a detergent to mask the smell, not to use something to mask the smell, to let the clothes soak in a tub of vinegar, to let them dry on a clothesline in the hot sun, that I should have used wax instead of polyurothane like they did in the old days.

In the end, the smell began to fade. Now you only catch it when you open the freezer.

:::

Relief in the form of furniture happened the following Wednesday when the stager showed up. This is a person that charges me to make my home look like something you'd want to buy. I was kind of expecting her to bring in good, expensive furniture, ornately framed mirrors, sumptuous rugs. What I was not expecting, was the cheap crap that showed up on the truck.

The sofa, though low-slung and sleek, is stuffed with the same material they stuff carnival toys with. It crinkles when you lean against it. The table bears a strong resemblance to a table I got for free from a friend back in my single days. The artwork looks like it belongs in a bad motel

"It's all about what's going to catch the camera's eye," the stager said. She had an air of confidence about her, and wore a jaunty headband around her forehead, a la Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu. And the place actually does look good–modern and minimalist, yet with nothing standing out as being too interesting. And I love the chairs that go around the table.

Before and after

"I'm taking those chairs with me, so just let me know how much that's going to be," I said.

She told me she'd be happy to sell them to me.

The stager placed pillows on our bed, detached our headboard and brought in another one, placed what she called an “architectural element” on the wall over the whole arrangement.

After she left, I began to anticipate what Scott would say about the staging. After all, it was mostly his stuff that they recommended we get rid of for showing the house–his mother's dining table, his Stargate video game, his artwork that he acquired before I met him.

I could hear his voice in my head, in the way you do when you've been married for ten years: They made me take down my artwork to put up this cheap crap?

I served the kids dinner on our rented table, pizza that tasted like pizza despite the polyurothane smell when I turned on the oven.

"Wow," Scott said when he came home.

He put down his bag and made himself a martini, sipping it as he stared around the room.

"I can't believe they made me take down my artwork to put up this cheap crap," he said.

:::

Scott and I spent the next six days cleaning and packing and sprucing and arranging. I threw away expired food in the pantry so that it looks neat and organized. I sent all the pie pans and roasting pans and muffin tins to storage so it looks like there's plenty of space in the cupboards, threw out the cat food bowls since we no longer have a cat. I cleaned the windows, bought new bathmats, put flowers on the back deck, took down the plastic we hung from the brushed steel railing to keep Kai from climbing on it, pressed wood putty in between some floor boards that have come apart. Scott power washed three years worth of filth from our deck, the cracks in our sidewalk, the green scum from the base of the building. All the while the kids lazed around on the crinkly couch watching their iPads. They have nothing else to do because all of their toys are in storage.

I remember walking into our place for the first time. I know now that it was staged in the same way, with the fainting couch angled just so, and the basket full of bottled water and soft towels in the master bath. No one can live like that. No one does live like that.

Our listing agent dropped by to check on our progress. I was scraping Dora stickers off of the sliding glass door with a spatula.

"It's so much work to move," she said. "Luckily the new house has so much room, you won't have to do it again for a long time."

And she's right. I wonder how long we'll be there, if we'll take the kids' prom pictures outside of it, if they'll throw a party in the basement one day when we're out of town, if one day Scott and I will be living there alone.

One thing is for sure, I'm still going to wish I'd done a better job of controlling the vast amounts of crap we own, and Scott's going to pay someone to do the power washing.

Or we’ll get a robot to do it.

That's right, a robot.

Because that’s how long it’s going to be before I can face doing this again.