Steve’s working on the roof over the sitting room today. While I was gone earlier, our neighbor just pretty much walked up to him, as much as could be since he was on the roof, and said that her friend wants to buy our house.

Ehhhhh… what?

We call this woman Neighbor Lady and we try to avoid her because she likes to talk and talk and talk and she’s nosy and kind of bossy. My mom used to be appalled at this and would tell me to “be nice” to our neighbors. We’re nice. We just don’t want to talk.

She’s always telling us how to take care of our plants and how we’re doing it wrong and such. Well, Steve must be doing something right, his roses look better and bloom longer than hers.

There was one time she was so offended and stopped me one morning when I was leaving for school; she was upset because Steve had marked the property lines. I told her honestly, we were thinking about getting a fence… I didn’t tell her it would have been a 6 foot privacy fence. She was just appalled that he would mark the property lines and “no one’s ever needed to do that before,” and “I told so-and-so, ‘I don’t know why he’d do that,’” and things like that.

Then there was the time my mom and siblings were down on a Friday afternoon and we were going to go to supper. We all walked outside the house only to find her and two other neighbors walking around our back patio, smelling Steve’s roses. I took it in stride, but it really pissed me off. Sorry, maybe it’s the country girl in me, you don’t do that crap. Stay away unless I invite you.

There was the van she tried to sell and our friends/neighbors (were friends before neighbors) wanted to buy it. They were going to give her above Blue Book value but suddenly she starts accusing them of trying to cheat her, and says that it’s worth $10,000 (please!) and so-and-so’s going to give her $10,000 and how dare they try to cheat her and I think she even told the husband that he was stupid. Then she has to start bringing it up with us, she knows we are friends with them; Steve had to say, “look, they’re my friends, we’re not talking about this.”

This woman has a way of offending you but in a way so that you don’t notice until later when you think about the conversation, and you think, “Hey! She insulted me!” But by then, it’s too late. But she also has a sweet side – she did give us two small braided rugs when we moved in and a wall hanging for Elijah just before he was born.

So, back to today. Steve says, well, he doesn’t know if we’re going to sell it or turn it into a rental house. We had a good laugh when he told me this, he said her eyes got really big and she said, “OH you don’t want to do that! It’s so hard to find good renters and they don’t take care of the place and you have to fix it.” Blah blah blah. Honestly, we have talked about this all before – he would like to maybe turn this place into rental property when we can finally get out. He seems to think if we put the rent up high enough (yet decent), the only people who could live here would end up being good renters. I say it doesn’t matter, we’d be taking a chance. But that’s all another story.

So, here I am, thinking, how serious is this friend? Steve says that Neighbor Lady went inside to call this friend after he talked to her. He told her what it appraised for last time, but he accidentally lied and upped it by $2,000, but that wasn’t on purpose. And then he says since then we’ve put work into it – we have. Last time it was appraised, none of the upstairs was finished yet. And she says we “wouldn’t have to work on it anymore” because this friend’s son is a carpenter. Okayyyyy…

I’m also thinking that unless this person is really serious, then I don’t want to mess with it. I mean, we are SO cramped in here right now, so there’s a lot of stuff laying around cluttering up the place because there’s NO WHERE to put it… and by this I mostly mean 537 candles. So before anyone would look at this place, I’d have to do some MAJOR cleaning. And we’d need to do some trim work and painting probably. And I am just not looking forward to that unless this will come of something.

And, the last thing I want is someone coming by here out of the blue wanting to see the place. That SO does not go over well with me. I have to be prepared. I don’t even want my friends or family coming over without calling. Where I come from (which isn’t exactly here) that’s almost rude. I neeeeeed warnings.

So I guess I will just try to get this place straightened up some more and sit around and wait and see if we hear anything about it again. If not, oh well. But if this person is really serious about this and can afford to pay what this place is really worth, even if it’s not completely finished/remodeled… then… wow… awesome… let’s get the heck outta this house!