Saturday, February 28, 2015

Tell Me Friends, What Do I Hear?

Answer: That's metaphysically absurd, man; how can I know what you hear?

I do not recall the stress of showing a home during my youth (the family moved a lot and bought and sold a lot of homes), but it must have been there. It probably was Mom's job. In fact, every time we moved, she would develop itchy rashes on the inside of her elbows that wouldn't subside until a new house was purchased and we were in residence.

The way I am experiencing this is totally different. I don't know if the response is because of how nice the place shows online, or because it's so well priced, but I wasn't expecting this much activity so quickly.

It has become clear that from noon until 5 p.m., seven days a week, I'm living in a model home. Jan and her firm are fielding requests for showings and calling me, sometimes with only a half hour's notice, to arrange showings. And that's what I'm here for.

So, the place went on the market on Thursday. Jan said within 10 minutes of uploading the MLS files, she had a phone call with someone wanting to see it.

Yesterday (Friday) I had two showings. Today (Saturday) I had six showings, with a seventh about to arrive (ETA 3:45).

They're here. A young Japanese woman who just graduated from USC (or was it UCLA) in film studies. The Realtor asked if I was in the entertainment industry, and I said I used to be.

Somewhere in my head, I see these people, looking over my home. It's new and novel to them but it's just a house, but a house they might want for a home. Who will it speak to?

Some folks kind of pretend I'm not here. I leave them lots of leeway so they can. I stay up in the office unless they want to ask questions, then I'm more than happy to oblige.

And I'm more than willing to spend half-days accommodating potential buyers, especially if it means a really quick sale. In my secret heart, I'm hoping that we'll get multiple offers, and that I get my asking price, if not over asking.

An early sale also means a more comfortable cash flow during the transition. I'm just hoping that, if the place sells that fast, I still have time to make one last visit up the coast, but it depends on how long the escrow is going to be, etc., etc.

My first showing today was at noon, but the client had an emergency and couldn't come, so the Realtor stopped by to let me know. He walked through the place saying things like, "Wow, this is so clean," and, "You'll have this place sold in a week, no problem."

Sales brochures and Realtors' business cards
So where we once had our aquarium I now have business cards and brochures for the house. When Jan called about the 3:45 showing, she said something about daylights savings time and scheduling showings later than 5 p.m., then said, "But we'll probably be sold before the time change."

The time change is a week from tomorrow. Holy crap, I'm going to have to get the move to La Crosse organized right quick. I'm already sketching out lists in my head and experiencing the first gleamings of panic attacks over the prospect.

Patty has taken to spending the entire day in the back of a kitchen cupboard, emerging only when the sun goes down. Doug was here all Thursday, and people have been parading in and out all day Friday and today; I'm amazed she's not all freaked out.

So now things like final packing and retrieval and storage of the household start coming to mind. Then the drive across country and the hunt for a temporary (and then a permanent) home in La Crosse.

Oddly enough, I don't feel like I'm standing on a friendly cliff anymore. With my acceptance that, with Doug's work, the house is finished and having folks wandering through creates a tiny crack in my map of the world, and this house is separating away from me and Steve and my history here. And it may sound paradoxical, but I think that I will feel much closer to Steve once this place is sold and all that history settles into the books for later perusal.

Like I told Jan: "I know I'm really selling it, because it doesn't feel like I live here anymore. I'm just in residence to show the house and make the sale happen." She told me that was exactly the attitude to have. "It's not your house, you know, but it is your equity. Once you have the equity out of the property, you will feel great about this sale."

Jan just called again. It's 4:15 and she wanted to send someone over at 4:30. I said sure. No problem. This could be the one that gets the bidding going. This could be the new owner.

Come on down!

(Nope; husband has an artificial leg, and walking up and down all these stairs would be a real hassle for the guy. Other than that, they really like the layout of the place.)

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Did I Pass a Gas Station?

Firesign Theater aficionados will reply with, "No, but the fox did. Squeeze him right there; maybe he'll pass another one." And I'm sitting here, feeling the relief of having passed at least a gas station, if not an entire Kwik-E-Mart.

It is finished. Doug, a longtime friend of Evan and a one-man contracting company, just left after doing the final painting (window trim and front door) and replacing the toilet guts upstairs. He started work around 10 this morning. Realtor Jan stopped in around 11 to pick up the keys to put in the lock box out front.

By this afternoon, the MLS listing for my house had shown up on Realtor.com, and it should be on Zillow by tomorrow. So it's official: the house is publicly for salex.

I told Jan I'm up for showing the house anytime with about 30 minutes warning. So now I have to keep the place clean and picked up, ready to display to the buying public. And my sleep habits will have to go back to a normal circadian rhythm (which they have over this last week). Instead of staying up until 5 or 6 a.m. and sleeping 'til noon or 1 p.m., I'll be rising at 8 or 9 a.m. and going to bed at 1 or 2 a.m.

We were originally going to have an Open House this Sunday, but there's a fairly large storm coming through this weekend, and it looks like Sunday is when the worst of it will hit. So why put out a lot of effort on an open house no one will attend?

So the property is now listed on the MLS, and I will be included in next Thursday's "round-up" of new properties, which is when Realtors tour the properties that came on the market the week before. Then Sunday after next, the open house.

Major fantasy: several buyers start bidding on the property and it ends up selling for over $400,000. Probable reality: we hang out waiting for a serious buyer, I end up taking 350,000 instead of the asking price of 375,000. Reality: in the last six months, similar properties sold for 97.3% of their asking price.

Oh, boy: a whole new set of things to obsess over and to keep my up at night.

But I look around and am very pleased with the place. And I'm hoping some of the design choices I made for the remodel (fixtures, ceiling refinishing, flooring, paint) were good ones.

Come one, come all: come see my lovely home and pocket anything that's not tied down.

Now we wait.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Purdy Pitchers

I am going to have to provide enough prose here to wrap around the photos of the place. They are going on MLS (or perhaps are already there…nope; just checked and they're not online). I think back 20 years and at how rudimentary the Internet was back then. The idea of selling a home online was laughable. Today, though, it may be the medium that gets this place sold fast.

I like the exterior shots of the place she took. There are no telephone poles or wires. There are no street lamps or traffic signs mucking up the photos. And I especially like the partly cloudy sky she captured in the overall shot. (She took the exterior shots last, which was good, since the clouds didn't burn off until late.) She framed everything so that the plants are a major part of the composition. It shows off the parklike feel, which is one of the things I like about this house.

So many of the condo complexes around here are really large, with subterranean parking and elevators to your unit. They have a very apartment-like feel to them. And although they have amenities (some with pools, some with exercise rooms), you get charged for those things in your HOA fees.

One other thing that's been going on is the installation of the closed circuit video surveillance. We now can check out the exteriors of the building online, which must be some kind of additional impetus to buy this place. One of the owners, who is in the security business, gave us a really good price and did all the installation. You can't see anything in these photos of the cameras or the wires.

The interior of the house photographed amazingly well. It helped that it was overcast for the interior shots, since there was no glare coming in the windows (which have no curtains, you will note). Also, she was taking numerous shots at different exposures and f-stops in order to get the best shots possible. Obviously, it worked. She made the interiors look light and bright (which they are, for the most part), while keeping the exteriors through the windows cool and in focus.

The one thing I'm amazed with is how good the place looks. With all the tchotchkes packed away and the artwork off the walls, the nice, clean lines of the interior really stand out. Also, I think I've spent the last six months going over every flaw and outdate of the place and trying to remedy them that I haven't seen what's in these pictures: this is a pretty nice place with really good bones.

Of course, I've completely forgotten what it looked like with all the popcorn on the ceilings, all-white walls, ugly carpet on the stairs, and chipped Formica countertops. All those things have been rectified, and I have to remind myself that I did sink almost $15,000 into sprucing up and remodeling the place last year. And I keep thinking about what the screens guy said when he was here: "People always spend this money when they're selling; you should do these things while you're living in the place and can enjoy it."

So where did the $15,000 go? Removing the popcorn ceilings; patching, prepping and painting the interior; all-new switches and door handles, install bamboo stairs, granite countertop, stainless-steel sink and new faucet for the kitchen; all-new lighting fixtures. I've gotten used to the new environment, and still nitpick about little stuff I really shouldn't be worrying about.


The kitchen shows very well in these photos. Up close, there are worn areas in the finish on the cabinets, but that's how the finish was created, to wear in. Since I couldn't afford to get them painted during the remodel, I found some drawer pulls with a worn bronze finish, so that the pulls match the cabinets, wearwise. It should all meld together nicely. As for the faucet, I should have taken the screen guy's advice: love it, and I should have gotten it replaced years ago.

It's also been long enough since the remodel that I'm going to have to check the walls, as I'm starting to see scuff marks and such that need cleaning. Just one or two, here or there, but enough to mar the pristine condition they were in. I think the biggest challenge is going to be keeping the place clean and sparse, as shown here. Not too difficult to do if you don't move much or eat much, etc., I just have to maintain it long enough to get someone on the hook. I pray every day that selling will be a fairly short and painless experience.

Another thing the photos show off is the architectural interest of the house. Even though the pilasters and beams are all masking the utilities, they look integrated into the space, which I like. And if you need proof that this woman knew what she was doing, she even made this photo of the downstairs half bath look good. In reality, it's very tiny; here she makes it merely intimate. Chatting with her, I thought perhaps getting back into photography as a means of income might be a possibility in La Crosse.

One thing I noticed is she didn't photograph the stair wells, which I was positive she would do, so I spent time cleaning them up. Then I realized I should stop bitching, because I should have been cleaning them regularly all along. Now, however, I'll have to be Mr. Clean and keep things shiny and tidy until the sale. And I'm thinking, "Why just until the house sells? That's a habit you should have as a matter of course." Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought one of the great things about being a grown up was you didn't have to pick up your stuff.

The photos of the upstairs are nice and add a little extra flair, seeing as how the walls actually have color, and the office is the only room with drapes still on the walls. The office, in fact, is the one room that has the least done to it, not only for budget constraints, but also because I needed to have one space in the house that was mine (and fairly off limits) where I could get my work done.

The bedroom is a kind of no-man's land. Since Steve died, it is a place to go and sleep and little else. When we were painting the house, I tried to get a calm, muted blue, but something bright enough not to depress. If I were painting for myself, it would have been several shades darker, as the camel color on the downstair walls would have been more dramatic a color.

All the colors were chosen off of the colors in the kitchen cabinets, as they were the only thing left untouched, besides the office. In fact, the colors downstairs are so skillfully selected (not to blow my own horn) that it's near impossible to tell which color is on which wall. When I chose them, the painters kind of looked at me like I was nuts, but once they got it up on the walls, they really liked the color scheme.

So these are the pictures that will hopefully be luring in the potential buyers and exciting them about this wonderful space. I'm so glad Jan brought this woman in to shoot the place, and it's kind of opened my eyes to the attractiveness of this property.

So it's been a very interesting experience, getting ready to put the house up for sale. It seems like it's taken forever, and I know I've been dragging my feet on it at times, but the fact remains that I will most likely be leaving Pasadena for La Crosse just as spring shows up there.


Friday, February 20, 2015

I'm Ready For My Closeup, Mr. DeMille

The photographer was just here shooting the house for use with MLS (Multiple Listing Service) and the various real estate sites on the web. Knowing something of the technical end of photography, I was quite impressed with her. The equipment she needed was packed and ready for use. She was shooting with a 17mm lens, which is just right to make interiors look really big. She said she'd get the photos to Jan (my Realtor) tomorrow.

Emotionally, this was the point of no return. The whole world will soon know my intentions, and I'll have to keep the place cleaned up enough to be ready for spur-of-the-moment showings from here on out. And I'm sure we'll kick it all off with an open house (don't they always?).

So I'm accepting the house being on the market on a gut level now. It makes everything churn inside when I think about it. I think about the AA slogan, "Let go and let God." Except, in most cases, God doesn't cover cleaning and maintenance. I am going to have to get back into the routine of cleaning house constantly, something I haven't done as a habit in quite a while.

All this is getting me out of my funk, though. And if I have to choose between depression and anxiety, I'll go with anxiety, because at least things are happening. My sleeping habits have slowly slipped back toward the daytime, and I'm getting up at 8:30 or 9:30 in the morning without the aid of an alarm clock. Getting around to doing something productive can take much time, though.

So it's Oscar weekend. Steve and Roberto sent me an invitation to their party, but I don't want to put myself in a position where I blow up at Steve's old friends for dropping out of site when I needed them most. And, beyond Steve and Roberto and a handful of others, I have no desire to spend an entire evening with people pontificating on the Oscars and film and the entertainment industry.

It's taken a couple of years, but I have all the Hollywood out of my identity. Of course I'm still proud of working at The Reporter, and I'm glad to have had an inside look — a least from a media point of view — into "the Business," but I am so glad not to have to pay attention to all that anymore.

I feel no compelling need to see all the nominated films (and have no access to screener DVDs which facilitated that). In fact, the whole awards season (from November through March) is something I do not miss. Still, my experiences in LaLaLand do make good cocktail conversation.

So I've detached myself from the professional reason I am in L.A. And I've grieved the loss of the only reason I was in Pasadena. Selling the house is the final excision of me from Southern California.

I glimpsed a couple of the shots the photographer was taking, and they looked great. This place is really shining and "move-in ready," as they say.

I want to say the house hasn't been this attractive in years, but it's not true. Minimalism is attractive, but I have memories of this home filled with me and Steve and all our stuff, and I want those to be overflowing, cozy and personal.

So as soon as Jan sends over some of the pics, I'll put them up here so you can look at them.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

New Is the New Old

Things have happened fast this last week. First of all, Kittie and David came down for the weekend, and our combined efforts finished off what needed to be done to the place. Painting the front door is the only chore left to be done.

I had started a list of things to do, but the activity of the weekend was a flurry of this here and a concerted effort of completion there. Perhaps we were all of like mind, or perhaps it was because there was really so little left to do, but, come Sunday afternoon, I was feeling ready to open up the house or strangers.

The garage is cleared out and organized. The kitchen is done. The downstairs is done. The upstairs is done. What's packed is packed. What left, it's only clean and straighten left.

My one thing left undone: not having enough time to visit with Kittie and David. They bring welcome familial contact, and fill the house with their considerable energy for a couple of days. When they go it is hollow again, and there is an echo for lack of things.

One development: Patty now seems completely comfortable with Kittie and David in the house. She even let them pet her once or twice over the weekend. On the downside, she has taken to spending all her time curled up in the far corner of the deepest cabinet in the kitchen. But perhaps that is not such a bad thing: at least I know where she's hiding.

Yesterday the carpet guys came and did an amazing job cleaning the carpet (in the two bedrooms and on the stairs from the entry down to the garage). It's natural wool berber and looks amazing for the fact that it's at least 20 years old.

So I'm sending Jan a note saying we're ready to photograph.

I'm on that friendly cliff again. A jovial precipice. A reassured plunge the only move left before me.

So, yeah. Hopefully, the next entry will be recapping the open house.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Pacing Punxsutawney Phil

My friends in the north must commiserate.
Reportedly, there will be six more weeks of winter. No early spring. Looks like dragging my feet on selling the house is actually good timing. My Realtor even thinks so. According to her, the marketing is "heating up."

The last post was so dismal, I just had to add to it, because today I'm feeling much better. At some point last night (or early this morning) while I was dropping off to sleep, I said to myself, most spontaneously, "Quit this shit." Forget that Steve would not want me to wallow in the grief; I don't want to wallow anymore. Besides, there's no more wiggle room in the plan: the house is getting sold and I'm moving on.

I didn't watch the Superbowl. I never do. I can't understand how so much money can be spent on something that is, ultimately, so inconsequential. (Just lost a majority of you on that one.) I suppose football fans would say the same thing about theater or art or literature, if we spent the same amount of money on them. Of course, we don't. There's no cross-branding or aggressive marketing because there's no major profit in it.

Kittie called yesterday. She was out visiting Vena and, of course, they want me to come up and visit. I told Kittie, quite honestly, that I really hate doing the drive up all by myself. Also, I want to stay close to home while the process of putting the house on the market and selling it is in progress. She suggested that she and David could come down here this weekend. While I would really like that, I don't want her or David feeling obligated to race down here every time I'm feeling depressed. Even when I'm in a bad place, I don't like feeling like a user.

One thing that triggers my angst is having two-person chores to do. Every time I encounter one, it's a clear reminder that Steve is dead and I am alone: A downer from a very innocuous source, but still something that can stop me in my tracks. But the truth is it can take me a week or more to get someone over here to help out, even for a couple of hours. This being so, I've kind of given up on relying on the kindness of strangers, or even acquaintances.

Talking with Vena is very strange these days, but in a good way; the widow speaking with the widower. Both of us shedding light on the grieving process for one another. And while I'm talking with her, I have these realizations about my state of being and what's happening to me. Like yesterday, I realized that I had slipped back into last year, as far as the disruption my grieving was causing. Having my sleep cycle turn on its head happened at the beginning of last year, and I am somehow repeating that.

Unnecessary.

Shane, the screen guy, showed up about 1 p.m. and is downstairs measuring and building new screens. He also washes the windows before he puts the screens in, so he's killing two birds with one stone. He wants to come back tomorrow morning early to finish up, since he won't be able to complete the work in one afternoon (seven windows and two sliding screen doors).

Yeah. Now I'll be forced to get up and be presentable by 8 or 9 o'clock, kind of forcing me back into the rhythms of the real world. Now lining up a carpet cleaner and cleaning the house are all that stand between now and showing the house. (Actually, it's showable now, but clean and shiny gets a better offer).

One thing about working at home is you have no real routine. And if there's no work at hand, you can linger in a forever-morning kind of place, where you wear your robe all day long, never getting dressed because there's no real reason to. At first this is a glorious luxury, but after a while it starts to appear tawdry. Today, I didn't even put on the robe and went straight for the clothes. It was a nice feeling, a human feeling. I am most eager to keep it up for the rest of the week. Perhaps it can become habitual and second nature once again, this being alive and enjoying feeling.


Sunday, February 1, 2015

Vampire Zombie Home Sales

My life since the last entry here has been upside down, jumbled and disorienting.

To start with, I've had wild swings in my sleep, often going to bed at 6 a.m., waking at 2 p.m. and spending the afternoon half-heartedly addressing the chores needing to be done around the house. With no real human contact and no real desire to seek it out, I sit here on my own and cannot shake the belief that Steve is somewhere in the house; that I am not alone, merely on the wrong floor.

Add to that the bizarre dreams I've been having, and I often feel like I'm ready to go off the deep end. I'm not, of course, but the dreams have kind of pointed to the quality of my mental state these days.

All of the dreams have to do with life in a post-apocalyptic society; not so extreme as "Mad Max" or "World War Z," and there is no feeling of threat or danger, just a new order to things. And, after all, isn't that what I've been going through in the last year or so? The upshot of all the dreams is that I want thing to go back to the way they were.

My Realtor sent over a guy to measure the house, so now they have a floor plan generated for the place. Tomorrow the screen guy is coming over to measure and start in on the new screens. The Realtor's photographer is scheduled to come by on Friday and shoot the house for the MLS listings and the website. Jan (the Realtor) is wanting to get the place shown the week after.

It's kind of a rock-and-a-hard-place issue for me. Part of me wants to move, part of me wants to hide, but none of my wants to stay here as a solution to things. Intellectually, I know that I can't continue on with life without making a major change.

So I now have the sleeping habits of a vampire and the social skills of a zombie. I don't think that will change much until people are actively coming through the house. I find that things that push me into getting work done is desirable because they provide me with deadlines. Now is when I wish I had a job to go to because it would provide me with routine and force me into scheduling my time.

But I don't. That kind of circadian schedule lies at the other end of the trip to La Crosse. I know that normalcy will return once I'm out from under the place that Steve and I shared. And I know that he would completely understand that, and hopefully be flattered that his departure instigated so much change in my life. It's up to me to make sure the change is progressive and expansive.

Not my best blog entry, I know, but I wanted to put something up to let everyone I'm still in the game.