The Last Best Hope

Our home has been on the market for exactly three weeks tomorrow, and everyone loves it. They love it, I say! Unfortunately, they do not seem to love the neighborhood. They do not love the Hispanic family of approximately 8-18 people who live a few houses down, nor do they admire Shuffles (bag lady extraordinaire!), nor do they favor the unintelligible little woman with the small dog, nor do they want to have a dinner party and invite the timid-looking Chinese family who still has a big fat light-up snowman sitting on their porch by the Ides of April. My beloved neighbors, shunned.

So this past week, someone is on the way to our house to look at it--to possibly even BUY it--and on the way out of our neighborhood I see it. A dreaded shopping cart of the CVS variety, parked idly in front of someone's shitbox of a house (a house built 100 years ago that was once beautiful until dopeass proles got their meaty hands on it and removed the front porch, vinyl-sided it, and vanquished every ounce of original charm and character). I dunno about you, but when I see shopping carts sitting about in a neighborhood, I think, "I'd rather not live in that neighborhood." Except that I do live here already. Um.

Almost nine months pregnant as I am, I slam on the brakes and park the car, hop out, and deliver the shopping cart unto the house before which it is parked. (Oh, yeah: Before I do that, I pause to fill it with flaming turds. I thought that would be a nice added touch. The cart sails through the front window of the house and deposits the burning poo on the owner's carpet. It's crazy good fun! Burn, poo, burn!)

So the person who came to see our house that day turns out to be someone so wealthy and good-hearted that she is looking to buy a house for her housekeeper. No, that was not a typo. A real house! Maybe our house. Our house, which represents our entire livelihood, is being considered as a gift. Hey, I'd like to work for that lady! I will be a chore-girl who can answer her door, iron her clothes, or buff her pet iguana.

There may be one problem: The housekeeper may not be fond of neighborhoods in which stray shopping carts, occasionally filled with flaming doo-doo, roll haphazardly down the street. "Thank you for the free and wonderful house!" she may exclaim. "But I spotted an abandoned shopping cart. Forget it. I do not want such a house in such a dreadful place. Nor do I wish 'Shuffles' to be my neighbor. No, I do not."