Saturday started out uneventful. Chad took the dog to the vet for his shots, came home, then got groceries. After that we went to Sam's and A.C. Moore's so I could get some yarn. Chad had applied for a promotion in Cleveland so I ended up with an urge to make sweaters.
After lunch our doorbell rang. That is never a good sign. I was the first one there with Chad right behind me. I opened the front door and tried to open the storm door but a thirty-something guy with blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing clothes that made him look like he would be at home at a private school, was barring the door with his palm. His arm was outstretched and his foot planted, so I couldn't open the storm door. As I glanced down at his hand, two lines of thought raced simultaneously through my mind. One, the more (I suppose) more logical one, was a mental tally of the exits in the house and how we could escape this madman's attack. The second was the (insane?) urge to shoulder the door open and punch the bastard in the face.
My attacker released the door, I opened it, and foolishly stepped out. He innocently mentioned that we had our home for sale (as if I didn't know!). Amazing how putting your house on the market brings out all the wierdos. I took a quick look at his car. It was a huge black shiny thing, kind of like a Hummer. Chad told me later it was a Toyota something or other, the name having letters and numbers that sounded like it should be a name for a Ford truck. Maybe car people know what that means. All I know is it was big and black with lots of chrome, and looked like it drank a lot of gas. It made me wonder why he was looking at our house.
Attacker guy asked me if I had info about our house, and Chad quickly produced a booklet. I began telling him about our house and he told me he was looking for something for his mother-in-law. She wanted to be close by and he lived in the neighborhood behind ours. Again, I had to wonder about his choice of house when considering his vehicle and clothing. He got around to saying he had been holding the door shut because when people open their doors, dogs jump out. That made me curious about how often he went to strange people's houses. I reassured him I always keep my dogs back. I guess he was worried about his spotless, preppy clothes. He went on about the house; asked some questions and I gave some answers, and then he asked if he could keep the booklet. I wondered what else he thought it was for, but just told him graciously that he could, and he left.
All this naturally occurred at the precise moment when Chad and I were discussing whether or not to withdraw our offer from the short sale down the street. We'd signed the realtor and the offer nearly three weeks prior. During those three weeks we'd produced $500 earnest money, had our realtor try on multiple occasions to bully us into giving her the first 5 digits of both our social security numbers, and waited in vain for updates on our offer submission, but the listing agent (our realtor's partner) had still not even managed to submit our offer to the bank. We could just imagine how long it would take to close. We'd had enough. Our agent was supposed to work for us, not against us. We emailed her and told her to withdraw our offer. Now let's see when we get our money back.
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