We're moving to Nashville. I'm teaching two classes through the local university, and I'm teaching them to high school students, the really motivated ones who want to do well, so I've got the best of both worlds. Did I mention that we're moving to Nashville? Where they have restaurants that aren't Applebee's or O'Charley's or Red Lobster? And more than one grocery store? I'm really looking forward to being in the city, in case I haven't made that clear yet.
But moving requires selling our home, and getting a house ready to sell is exhausting. Time-consuming. Overwhelming. Especially since my husband already resides in Nashville, since the job he accepted required him to start December 1.
Because I'm stuck with the awful task of making our house look move-in ready at the drop of a pin, I've been giving some thought to ways I could lessen my burden. I don't want to ignore my students and let my classes slide, so I've turned my thoughts on the whole house-selling situation. And I think I've found the perfect solution.
We just need to sell our house fast.
I know, I know -- the housing market hasn't been so hot lately, and sales have been sluggish across the U.S. But this is Kentucky, and sales have slowed some here, but since we didn't have the super-hot market, we didn't have the super-ugly slump either.
I've got the power of a secret weapon anyway. Well, maybe. Sort of.
I'm going to buy into the superstition of burying St. Joseph in my yard to make my house sell faster. Only my way has a bit of a twist.
According to Snopes, the whole burial of St. Joseph has several different versions, depending on which realtor you ask:
- Upside down, near the 'For Sale' sign in the front yard.
- Right side up.
- In the rear yard, possibly in a flower bed.
- Lying on its back and pointing towards the house "like an arrow."
- Three feet from the rear of the house.
- Facing the house.
- Facing away from the house.
- Exactly 12 inches deep.
Lots of options there, thank goodness.
So what happens if I choose to bury a proxy instead of the saint himself? That's the question that I've been asking myself. It just seems silly to always bury the same guy, because each house is different and each family has its own needs. Besides, I'm not Catholic, and I don't have any spare statues lying around. And digging is hard work. Have you seen the size of those statues? That would need to be a decent-sized hole, and I've got shoulder issues.
Meet my options. I asked Frankencow to help me make a choice on which of these little guys would be the right one for me.
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| Possible proxies for St. Joseph. |
I put together a selection of all the different police and army personnel that I have in my little arsenal, plus a few extras. Then I divided them into groups, as I saw fit.
The first group consisted of all the gun-toting cowboy types.
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| The Gun-Slingers. |
Then there were the movers and the shakers. The men who issue the call to action, see what's going on, and so forth.
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| Frankie liked these guys better. I can kind of see her point. |
Last were the defectives. Not defective as in, "They defected from the other side to join ours," but defective as in broken. Missing body parts.
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| Perhaps burying these guys is akin to burying trash. Probably not good mojo for someone trying to sell a house. |
After much deliberation, I felt Frankie had a point: guys with guns don't exactly send the right message to potential home-buyers. That eliminated everyone in the first group. And broken discards didn't seem quite right either. That left only the candidates in the second group.
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| Not bad options, but not quite right for my purposes. |
While all of the men left were decent, two of them were eliminated because they just didn't quite fit my needs. Lookout guy and tough-looking guy were nice enough, but the other three fit better.
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| The cheerleader, the dog keeper, and the greeter. |
With Frankencow's help, I settled on these three as the top choices. The cheerleader can call potential homebuyers, get their attention. The dog keeper, to my way of thinking, fits because we have a couple of mangy mutts in our household. I think our home would be good for another canine-friendly family. And the greeter? He can pull them in. Doesn't he seem warm and friendly to you?
Tomorrow I'll make my final decision, but I think I'll get more input first. Any opinions?
