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Muffins and Mayhem, Recipes for a Happy (if disorderly) Life
I'd love to meet you in person. I'll be blowing bubbles, sharing some of my homemade chocolate chip cookies and reading from my book, Muffins and Mayhem at Bookstore 1 Sarasota. Can you make it? I hope it's a date...
See you at 6 p.m., on May 24th.
Dear Reader,
There's a "For Sale" sign in my friend's yard. Obviously the housing market is challenging, but that's not what my friend was frustrated about when we ate lunch together the other day.
When your house is on the market you have to keep it neat and tidy 24/7, just in case the realtor calls, breathlessly announcing a showing in 30 minutes. And it's that neat and tidy part of selling a home, that's driving my friend crazy.
"Suzanne, it's killing me. I've been getting up every morning at 4 a.m., before I go to work, to clean my house--just in case the realtor calls."
Getting up at 4 a.m. every morning? Why wasn't my friend rallying the troops and getting the other members of her family to help her clean?
"It's my own fault my son won't lift a finger to clean," she confessed, "and my husband--well, he just never has."
I thought she was kidding, but when I realized she wasn't, I suggested maybe she should lie. Tell her husband and son the realtor called and there's a showing scheduled later in the day. So the troops would be forced to pick up a dust cloth and turn on the vacuum.
"That's not a bad idea, Suzanne, but it would be even better if you actually called the realtor and scheduled a time to see the house. Then after my husband and son helped clean, and my house was sparkling again, you could call the realtor back and cancel."
Two women, figuring out a way to get two lazy guys to help clean. We were lovin' this idea, so we took it a step farther.
"Sounds good to me--and when I call to cancel the appointment, I'll simply tell the realtor I've developed a hang nail, and it looks like it could develop into something serious, so I'll call back to reschedule."
A hang nail, I fell off the porch and sprained my ankle, out-of-town guests suddenly showed up, a hurricane is on the way so I'm boarding up the windows--if we played this right we could keep this going for months.
"And how about this idea?" my friend suggested. "It takes three weeks for my house to get messy enough to qualify for one of those reality TV shows to send a team in to declutter and clean, so if you called the realtor every three weeks, with a different name and back story, 'My husband and I did a drive-by and we think this house would be a winner.' Then my house would always stay clean."
I was laughing at the idea, but then my friend pulled out her Daytimer, "Tuesdays work best for me, because my husband and son would both be home to clean house, while I was at work."
"So how long do you think we can keep this ruse going?"
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
* I'd love to meet you in person. I'll be blowing bubbles, sharing some of my homemade chocolate chip cookies and reading from my book, Muffins and Mayhem at Bookstore 1 Sarasota (941-365-7900). Can you make it? I hope it's a date...See you at 6 p.m., on May 24th.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
www.MuffinsandMayhem.com
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