♫It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood....♫

[captainsblog]

...but for the neighbors, not so much.

We adore our neighbor Sally. She's not having the best of days.  A few hours ago, Eleanor saw her car back out and head down the street with a package on top of the roof. Lord knows I've done that more than once (famously, during law school, when I left a laundry basket with a full sheaf of loose course materials on my car and spent days retrieving dirty clothes and tire-tracked contracts cases from the gutter alongside Millersport Highway after it sailed off). We tried calling her cell to warn her, but it was off. When she did get home and called back the message left there, she was in serious funk about it.  It was a gift she was shipping to a friend, which she was taking to the UPS Store, via two other errands. She'd tried retracing her steps, without luck. I told her I'd give it a shot when I went out later in the day.

Moments later, she called again. No, the Good Samaritan had not arrived yet (it had both her and the recipient's address on it, but no postage), but a second disaster had laid in: Sally's CO detector was going off. Not blaring-siren Get Out Of The House going-off, but probably a malfunction signal. Naturally, the manufactuer has no support for the thing on the weekends, I recommended she just get a new one, and if the old one got fixed, we'd buy it off her (ours goes back to when we had RG&E as our gas supplier, and I fully suspect it's mostly dead).

By this point, I was feeling really bad for her, so I decided to start my errands right then. Not sure which route she'd taken to Sheridan Drive, I took the one I usually take, ready to double back the other way if nothing turned up. Yet something did- the right size, color and even with what looked to be a mailing label on it, nicely buried in a snowplow-built bank next to a driveway on Delamere.  I fist-pumped, stopped the car, headed over to dig it out, and.... damn this cardboard is cold.

A few very cold seconds of digging later, I discovered I was trying to unearth a partially-buried toilet, kicked to the curb for garbage day and doubtless buried by the plow the following morning.

Shit. So to speak.

The rest of the retrace on the way to Sheridan, and then onto it, produced nothing but a couple of good-sized snow turds. We're still hoping someone will be decent and let Sally know; I'm sure the relief will be worth even more than the cost of the gift.

----

Then there's things across the street.  Vinnie is one of the original owners on the block- her deed goes back to 1957- and unfortunately, her health has deteriorated to the point where she's gone into a nursing home. The house went on the market a couple of weeks ago, and the usual curiosity started to circulate about the 'hood.

A few nights before the first open house last weekend, Eleanor asked what I thought they'd listed it for.

A buck and a half?, I guessed randomly. Ours is assessed for 136k, and a lot's been done to update it inside and (especially, Eleanor;) out.

She laughed. Try 189.9.

What, I replied, is there a safe inside the house with 50 grand in it that the owner gets to keep?

We both follow a Cheezbrgr site called Lovely Listing, known here as hideoushomes, which mocks the overpriced, the tacky, the just plain weird. Would you consider a nomination of this?





The scenic street view. Yeah, the yard doesn't get much more interesting than that when it isn't snow covered.

---



Is that an antique living room or what? I think we had that lamp in the lower right corner in East Meadow in 1966.

----



A Very Brady kitchen.

----

Yet all of these are dated, maybe sad. You need weird to cut it with Teh Cheezbrger, and this might just do it. Their regular Saturday feature, of lawn chairs in various stages of loneliness or mobbiness (so much so they call today "Chairturday") might just have met its match with this one from Vinnie's cellar.



I can't tell WHAT that is on Telly's head. Maybe a yarmulke? Wait! It's upside-down chair legs! Telly wants to join in all the chairy games!



So far, the stop-in traffic has been mostly blue-hairs being brought round by their adult children; the few younger folks (and by that, I even stretch to include people our age) have zooped by pretty quickly. Maybe it's because its alleged "fenced-in" yard counts the other-side neighbor's Invisible Fence as part of the perimeter.  We've already got a few perpetual for-sale homes on and near this street, and I'm hoping that reality sets in before we have another long-term empty house here.

Comments

[firynze.livejournal.com]

....it's rather more modern than my house.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

The house itself's only a few years older than ours (and from what I remember, much newer than yours). It's the 1968 House Beautiful look to the whole thing that just makes us wonder. The thought of a bird running loose in that house would probably have sent this owner to an even earlier exit.

[plantmom.livejournal.com]

Ah, but what you're missing is the contrast between how it looks and how the realtor described it:"This is a Prestine Home! Not a mark, scratch, dent anywhere."
(In other words, it's like walking into a mausoleum.)
It's a well-known fact that Vinnie didn't spend a lot of time there, preferring to hang out at the casinos.
Personally, I like a cozy home, and that we've got.
FYI, Vinnie's was built one year LATER than ours.
Also, I don't understand the layout of the basement, where it appears there's a whole second kitchen, including far newer cabinets than there are upstairs, and a freakin' behemoth of a stove. I've run into this in some other Italian-American homes, where they use the second kitchen to prepare stuff for family/holiday dinners, which are served on long tables down there. Yikes. Vinnie and her husband never had kids, so I wonder if it ever got used. Interesting.

[firynze.livejournal.com]

I've seen secondary kitchens like that. I'd sort of love to have one, honestly! The one thing I don't like about my house is that my kitchen is so small. I like to have a huge kitchen that everyone can congregate in. :-D

[plantmom.livejournal.com]

Me too, but on the ground floor, not in the basement. That's just my preference. I'm allergic to mold and uncomfortable in cold dark places. I. Need. Light. When I start my seeds downstairs in our house, I use heating mats and loads of light, and I kinda swaddle myself for warmth.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

It's a lovely home. Are the bathroom facilities avocado and harvest gold?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Not to mention shag carpeting, lava lamps, and a live-in housekeeper named Alice.

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Oh I love that living room, right down to the lamp. But I'm weird. *g*

[horizonchaser.livejournal.com]

In California, that'd be overpriced if it had less than three bedrooms and two baths. O.o; But in a good, established neighborhood in a better economy, they might actually get it. These days? errrr no.

Selling it from the Kitschy end is their only hope. I actually like it, but I like kitsch. The basement scares me. Does it come with a creepy pale guy with a pair of scissors?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Riff Raff: Hello.

Brad: Hi! My name is Brad Majors, and this is my fiancee, Janet Weiss. Is this the house that's for sale.

Riff Raff: You're wet.

Janet: Yes, it's raining.

Brad: Yes.

Riff Raff: Yes... I think perhaps you better both come inside.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Anywhere around here, that's better than a quarter-million, just as she sits.

And, hell, that kitchen's 100 years newer than any I've ever had. I have never lived anywhere -- including here -- that had any counters whatsoever, or more than two cabinets. If it has a bathroom, I might just make an offer!

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

We've never been inside, and there are no pictures of it as such, but there is a door to the outside from one of the bedrooms, so come on down!

(Plus, as noted earlier, there's always an available toilet outside within a block or two.)