Bizarre Day on Wisteria Lane…

Yesterday was bizarre. That’s about the only word for it. I swear, we no longer live in a Monty Python Show. We seem to have moved to Desperate Housewives’ Wisteria Lane.

I’m racing around trying to get out the door to meet my friend and business partner in Tempe for lunch at the fancy restaurant we favor, there to celebrate her birthday. The doorbell rings. The dogs go batsh!t.

It’s my neighbor cattycorner across the street. She’s sold her house and is moving out, apparently having fallen on hard times. The sale closes on Friday, the 29th.

As it develops, she has not found another place to live. She had arranged, she says, to stay with a friend who was going to put her up for a month while she looks for a new place. But said friend went on vacation to Puerto Rico and just returned to the states — with a Boy Toy in tow! This guy is moving in with the woman, and now Neighbor is dis-invited to stay there. Would I do her a favor and let her move in here? Otherwise she doesn’t know what she’s going to do.

Holy sh!t.

A month or two ago, when the house sold (it was underpriced by about $30,000 and so got snapped up instantly), while the three neighbor ladies on this end of the block were out in front yakking, she mentioned that she hadn’t even looked for a place, and I said, jokingly, that if push came to shove she could move in here.

That was before I had the last surgery and long before I was told I have to have MORE surgery tomorrow.

Caught point-blank and face-to-face, I didn’t see how I could say anything else than “uhhh….ohh-kayyy….” The puppy is squirreling around. I pick her up and put her in her X-pen to get her out of the way.  Now suddenly Neighbor is planning where she’s going to put her bed (meaning I have to move furniture out of one of the rooms) and talking me into letting her put her refrigerator in my garage (do you know how much a fridge running in a 110-degree garage will run up a power bill?!?) and saying words like “one to three months” and going on about how she’ll start looking for a place to stay after she gets her money from the sale (while I’m thinking…don’t you get your money on closing day? the kids aren’t moving in for a month because they want to do a bunch of renovations…can’t you ask if you can rent the place for a week or two while you look for an apartment?)

She wants to start moving in on Thursday. That’s the day after tomorrow: when I’ll be recuperating from surgery!

This conversation goes on until I say I have to leave because I have to drive to the far side of town. Neighbor is shoveled out the door.

Now I’m running late. I fly around the house trying to finish getting dressed and write a check for the  editorial work my friend has done, which I intend to pay her for over lunch, and get ready to shoot out the door. Last task is to stick the puppy in her crate so she can’t defile the floor. And…and she’s GONE!

I call and call, search and search, and I can’t find her. I figure she slipped out the door when Neighbor left. So next thing I’m out in the street screaming like a fishwife for Ruby. Neighbor comes over; they look around. Finally she explores the house and finds Ruby in her X-pen, where of course I’ve  forgotten that I stashed her. This is what happens when old ladies get distracted by unexpected and potentially hassle-laden new developments when their lives are already disrupted by repeated cancer surgeries.

I thank Neighbor, pick up Ruby, and shovel Neighbor out the door. Ruby, squirming in a frantic effort to get out the door, too, hooks a hind claw in my shirt — my favorite shirt — and tears a hole in it.

Shit.

Lock up the dog. Change my clothes, fly out the door. Meet my friend.

Have an amazing meal, as usual, at Tricks. Then we go over to The Shoe Mill, the single best shoe store in the Valley, where I need to buy a couple of pairs of the expensive Europoean shoes that don’t hurt my feet. There I buy two pairs of Naot sandals, all my sandals having simply worn out, and we each buy a pair of Pikadillos, actual shoes of the sort grown-ups wear. None of these are cheap: my tab is almost $600.

Well, I figure since I buy good shoes about once every four years, that works out to $150/year, so I don’t feel too bad about it. And I wear those kinds of sandals almost every day, since I live in jeans. One pair is a little dressy-looking and will be perfect for church (we’re required to wear black shoes to process), and another is an amazingly cute and astonishingly comfortable platform.

But meanwhile, as time has passed and discussion has been had, the whole idea of Neighbor moving into my house at all, to say nothing of one day after I get my boob cut open again, sounds worse and worse. I didn’t like the idea much at the outset but now I’m getting worried. I’ve lived alone for 20 years, and I like it that way! If I wanted someone living with me, I’d have someone living with me. Notice that I live with dogs: they can’t kipe my food, they don’t talk back, they don’t leave their makeup on the bathroom counter, and they don’t want to watch mindless television into the middle of the night.

I discuss this with Wonder Accountant, also a Wisteria Lane resident and friend/acquaintance of Neighbor. She suggests a written agreement and points out a number of pitfalls, not the least of which is “what are you going to do if she doesn’t want to move out after three months?” I want her out after one month, not three months.

Discuss with Insurance Broker to see if taking rent money from this woman will affect my homeowner’s insurance. He says not but is concerned about liability if one of the dogs bites her. He suggests I require her to take out renter’s insurance, about $15 a month. He asks what I’m going to do if she doesn’t want to move out after three months…

Discuss with Realtor Pal, to see if he can help find her a place to rent — he says the rental market, especially in the “reasonable rent” category, is impossibly tight right now and it could be difficult to find her a place to live. Because she’s getting so little from the house sale, it’s not going to be easy to get her into a condo or patio home, either:  she underpiced to begin with and then she agreed to give huge allowances to rereoof the place ($10,000) and do the pool repairs and apparently some other things, and then she discovered the house had a $45,000 lien against it to cover the care of her crazed father, Carlos the Knife, as he descended into his final dotage. He says that she should get her money on Friday when the deal closes and in fact if she asks they should cut her a check on the spot. By the way, Realtor Pal asks, what am I going to do if she doesn’t want to move out after three months?

Now I’m feeling behind the barrel.

Phone rings: it’s my son, wanting to see how I am and, while he’s standing in line at a deli to buy his dinner, to lay plans for the next Surgery Day. I explain what’s going on. He says, “I’ll be right over.”

He arrives, riding his white charger.

This man is an automobile insurance adjustor. His job is to spend the whole damn day, every day, listening to people’s sad stories, fielding their demands for compensation, and telling them “no.”  He pours a bourbon and water. I tell him the story with all its convolutions.

He says, “You stay here. I’ll take care of this.”

Mounting his white charger and taking up his white lance, he gallops across the street and presents himself at Neighbor’s door. Drawing from deep wells of testosterone-fueled swagger (God, but men are amazing creatures!), he informs her that he has unilaterally decided that his mother is not taking on a roommate one day after she has breast surgery. He tempers this by claiming that I’m actually a great deal more fragile than I look, and says he has decided this is all a very bad idea.

She says no problem, she’s sure she can find someplace else to stay.

So. Thank God and my doughty son, I’m out from under that. What a flap!

Today, then, all I have to do is deal with the plumber, deal with the cleaning lady, deal with the new 102 class, deal with new copy sent by paying client, prepare for surgery, and call in to the hospital after 4 p.m. to find out when it’s scheduled. Doesn’t that all sound like jolly fun?

At least I won’t be moving furniture out of the spare room…