Today the new owners took possession of the house whose basement suite we live in. So much has happened in the last few months, most of it pretty mundane, so I’ll try to sum it up as briefly as possible.

February, I hit absolute rock bottom in my grief and shame spiral. Somewhere in there, I saw my OB for the results of the ultrasound which was supposed to clear up once and for all whether the polyp that possibly caused my miscarriage was still there. It was inconclusive. We scheduled a hysteroscopy in order to not waste any time, for which I was incredibly grateful. Miraculously, despite a seven-month waiting list, I actually got an appointment for March 9! I thought it must be a good omen – that’s my sweet little Momma’s birthday.

The hysteroscopy was easier than I could have imagined, but the recovery was harder than I thought. Two days before my surgery, our landlord called and left a message saying they they had decided to put the house up for sale.

The house in which we live. Sure, it’s “just” the basement suite, but it’s a really sweet apartment and I’m fed up to the back teeth with moving. It was (is) an incredible blessing that any new owners would be more than likely to want to keep us on as renters, but I have to tell you, I was intensely peeved. Worse, the landlord was calling, not just to tell us this, but to inform us that the realtor (he kept saying reel-i-tor on the voicemail – made me want to throw the phone at the wall) needed access the next day. The day before my surgery. I was so incensed that I just told them no. Flat out no. I’m having surgery, y’all can leave me alone until that’s over.

How well do you suppose that went? Long (oh, so long, and so full of outrage and hue and cry!) story cut drastically short, I spent the week after surgery alternately cleaning like a madwoman and crying from the sheer stress and humiliation of having strangers randomly walk into my home without knocking. The idea of any one of those rude, inconsiderate and frankly offensive-smelling people becoming my new landlord was enough to send me around the bend. Ishi was no help whatsoever. He periodically chooses to side with the enemy, for no reason I can ever quite comprehend. In his mind, Ernie and Alicia^[1] were perfectly within their rights to not only put the house up for sale with no notice to us, but also to leave during these showings with no instructions to the real-i-tors not to just go waltzing into our suite seeing as we kind of freaking live here.

Anyway. After an absolutely miserable week and a half, the house actually sold. By our calculations, Ernie and Alicia must have lost at 20K on the sale. Not only that, but they’re moving back into their parents’ house with two children under 5. We can understand hitting a rough patch financially, but we don’t get these guys. He’s supposed to be a church worker, and yet he and his wife told us the most bizarre lies about why they were selling. The strangest thing for me is realizing that exactly one year ago, we moved into this place thinking they were pillars of the community and people to be looked up to. Now we feel so strange as we realize that in many ways we are far more mature and honest than they are.

So much for being brief. But in my defense, there were quite a few details I left out. You really have been spared a lot!

The couple who bought the house aren’t even in their 30s, and they actually aren’t even married yet. They brought a puppy with them, but the puppy lives outside. I am so incredibly unhappy about this. It’s not that I don’t like dogs – I love them! Which is why it pains me to hear them bark and cry because they are separated from their families! Ernie and Alicia had a lovely Weimaraner named, er, Thunder. And when they left him alone, he would cry and howl to such an extent I would be wild-eyed with fury by the time they finally came home. I offered to watch him for them repeatedly, and they never took me up on it. Just before they moved out, they left him while they went on a three-day seminar. I just about lost my mind listening to poor Thunder pace and cry.

Now there’s an adorable puppy in the back yard just outside my window who cries because he’s lonely. I haven’t felt this way about my neighbours since Ishi and I were married and lived above an abusive foster family with six children. My heart can’t take another situation like that. I’m honestly worried about coping.

As for the owners – let’s call them Jason and Jennifer Jones. It fits, I swear. He’s a firefighter and she’s a kindergarten teacher. He’s a burly bruno and she’s a tiny, perky blonde. The odds are fantastic that she will be pregnant either before the wedding or five minutes after. I hate that I’m being so cynical, but for me, for now, this is an impossible scenario to accept with any kind of graciousness on my part.

Especially when I have to spend the better part of tomorrow cleaning so we can be ready for the “walk-through” on Monday, where we once again have to be on display for complete strangers as they get to peer into every nook and cranny of a home that is beginning to feel less and less like “mine” every day.

1. No, of course those aren’t their real names. Their real names are Voldemort and Bellatrix. [↩]