Recalculating

If I learned anything out of this nightmare, it’s that Kurt and I have no patience. We don’t have to move. We were only moving because I’m homesick. But now we’re busting to get out of here. Busting I tell you! Yes, not finding out the buyer couldn’t get her mortgage until two days before the closing caused everything to be in an upheaval. It caused financial difficulties, logistical problems, lost opportunities and at the least, it inconvenienced everyone. But that’s not the reason that we suddenly have to get out of here like the place is on fire.

It’s like being in a car crash. You’re going 60 miles per hour; suddenly, you hit a wall. Screech! Boom! The car stops but you keep going. It goes against the forces of nature to stay in your seat like nothing happened and the broker tells your buyer, “Look for another house—it was probably a blessing in disguise,” like you can just turn the station on the radio or readjust your GPS. Like it’s nothing. Like there’s something not great about your house! But you’re already in motion. So what was once going to be a leisurely exercise—we had been planning to hunker down for the winter—has turned into a lesson about patience. I’ve learned we don’t have any. Coming to a screeching halt makes me crazy to find a way around this detour.

And there’s no reason. Jersey is still going to be there when we find another buyer. The winery house might even still be there. Who is going to buy that thing? You can’t get a C.O., you can’t get a mortgage, I just found out right before all this happened that you can’t even insure it. It’s as as-is, as as-is gets, and nothing is hooked up so you can’t test or inspect anything. Who else is going to have the gonads to take a chance that when they buy that house, they don’t get in there and discover that the septic is shot or the well water is polluted? How many Debi-and-Kurts are there out there?

(The seller obviously believes she is going to sell that house because she refused to give us a house-selling contingency.)

Plus, the good part is we don’t have to move in the dead of winter. Can you imagine, moving a whole farm and a business (not to mention the kid) to another state and to a house with no heat in freezing temperatures and then trying to build some sort of horse shelter and fencing in a three-week period while there is snow on the ground? We’re crazy I tell you!

Maybe Bill is right. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. For me. Not my buyers. They won’t find a place that’s better than this, in this price range. Someday, when they look back, they will be kicking themselves that they didn’t try harder to make this deal happen. Me? I’m going to recalculate and turn left at the next sunny day. The riding arena is just waiting out there and if I am patient enough, maybe, just maybe, I’ll hear my mother’s voice again.

The End of the Trail

The people who came to see the house this morning, loved it. Funny, they’re from New Jersey and that’s where we’re going. I don’t know if they’re going to buy it. They’re looking at a dozen other properties while they are down here. No property is perfect. In this price range, I know they won’t find something that has it all so it depends on what’s most important to them. The drawback to this place is we only have one bathroom. For me, even with the irritable bladder, that wasn’t as important to me as having real horse facilities. There were a lot of things that were more important to me. You can always make a bathroom. But I don’t know what they’ll decide. They did say I raised the bar.

Oh, but what a pain getting all ready again! I knew enough not to start packing just in case the deal fell through and I’d have to start showing the place again. I figured I’d pack while Kurt was up at the winery house getting the electric and heat on and all that. But I had to do some things. So I spent the last two days putting it back together—putting the cross-ties back up, stuffing things back into the attic, rehanging pictures, unrolling the sisal rug we keep under the table on the deck and unfolding the chairs… Staging. And cleaning. I’m a clean freak but when you’re selling a house and you only have one chance to make a first impression, it’s got to be flawless. Kurt went out on the trails with the tractor and manicured them. He cleaned up all the things in the garage he had prepared to take with him to New Jersey and he parked the farm truck in the back. We made phone calls to people to let them know we’re still in business and canceled people who were waiting, like the movers, homeowner’s insurance people, etc. I had to call the hay lady to see if she still had that hay she had asked if I wanted. Also, I’ve been reviewing and relisting all our house-selling ads and contacting people who inquired. Stuff like that. Now we start the process all over again.

I don’t have any hopes for my buyer coming through. Though she signed a contract agreeing to make every effort to obtain a mortgage, and though she has a down payment, high income, excellent credit and stable jobs, she says she’s not qualified when I tell her about other loan programs I’ve found out about. I don’t know how hard she has been trying. I don’t know if she has been frantically digging online, researching USDA loans and FHA rules and contacting other mortgage brokers like Kurt and I have. Heck, it seems like my online friends are doing more digging! If she’s scrambling, she’s not telling me about it. It looks like it’s over. I think it’s the end of the trail.

We’ve asked the owner of the winery house to give us a house-selling contingency but it’s been a few days now and no answer.

I know we’ll sell this place sooner or later. Spring is coming and it’s gorgeous here in the spring—flowers blooming everywhere, birds singing… We weren’t expecting to sell it so fast anyway. We’d planned to hunker down for the winter. I was surprised I was getting bites on it to begin with. It was the ugliest time of year and we were getting action! Of course I had to tell everybody that we were under contract. At least two people who were interested have already bought a house. That makes me mad. But I know that sooner or later it will go.

All my friends, all my blog buddies, have been so good. Screaming for me, feeling for me, coming up with ideas. I just wish I had my mother. I do think she spoke to me. It was when I was picking up manure in the field. That’s when I do my best thinking. It’s peaceful. It’s dead quiet except for the occasional horse snort and I put the pitchfork down, stop to look at the mountains behind Pearl and Eldon’s field…

All of a sudden I heard my mother say, “It’s all going to work out even better Debi.” It was like she was standing right next to me, whispering in my ear. Either I’m going crazy because I’ve had one bad thing after another happen since we left New Jersey and I’m so frazzled that I’m hearing things. Or my mother really is on my shoulder. Either way, a sense of peace fell over me.

Bad News

Bad news. Our buyer couldn’t get her mortgage. Two days before closing. Not because of her credit. Not because of her income. Not because of the appraisal. All of that was fine. It was because of something totally ridiculous. We’re zoned agricultural. And I guess FHA doesn’t give out loans for property in rural areas.

My buyer can’t get a conventional loan—she’d need a 20% down payment and she doesn’t have it. FHA requires less money down. She’s not selling her house to buy this one, which is what most people to do to come up with that kind of money, in this case, about $52,000. Her house is a doublewide that needs some work and she was going to sell it later, at her leisure. This enabled her to give us thirty days to vacate the premises, a big plus when you’re moving a whole farm to another state and to a fixer-upper. Everyone was happy.

In the beginning of this process, what I was worried about was the house appraising for the proper price. It’s a tricky property because it’s a horse farm and comps are hard to find. I called the buyer’s banker, Bill Reynolds from Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation, to make sure he was aware of this. I asked him to send an appraiser who was familiar with horse properties and who would understand the value of a real horse property and not compare it to a house with ten acres and a shed out back. I stressed this was a turnkey working horse farm. So he was aware of the nature of the property from the beginning.

But he let it go all the way to closing. And now everybody’s lives are in upheaval. I can’t tell you how this has screwed up so many people in time and money. One example is how Bill made us put in electric heaters upstairs, even though it is warmer up there than it is downstairs. That cost us five hundred dollars. It was totally unnecessary but we figured if that’s what they wanted, we would do it. How about how we had to stop work because we’re supposed to be leaving and now we don’t have jobs? What about the seller up in Jersey who is in financial hardship and is counting on us to close on Tuesday? I could give you dozens of examples how this has hurt us and other people. It’s just too long and upsetting to write.

My buyer was so upset she asked me if we could change the zoning. I said I didn’t think so but I would call the zoning department just in case. The zoning officer couldn’t believe it either. She said most of the county is zoned A1—agricultural, and single house dwellings are permitted. In fact, most of the state is zoned agricultural. Agriculture is our number one industry! FHA only gives out loans to people in cities? If that is true, Bill doesn’t know the products he is selling because he knew this was a horse property from the beginning.

And now I may lose the winery house because of all this. I have some other people interested in the farm, and I know that I’ll sell it sooner or later, in fact, I had a drive-by yesterday, and I have somebody coming over on Friday, but to go through this whole process all over again… it just might take too long and the winery house will be gone.

Of course I should have known the bank would screw it up. Just like they screwed up the whole country.

A Scary House

We put our house on the market in September, for-sale-by-owner, and sold it in December. This is the fifth house we sold ourselves and I expected this one to take a little longer, due to the economy, but it went about as fast as the last one did. In fact, we were planning to hunker down for the winter because fall is not a good time to start marketing a property, but it flew off the shelf.

Now we had to find something to move to. This was going to be the hard part. We wanted something old; it had to have acreage for the horses; it had to be close to family, work, and barrel racing, which are in all different directions; it couldn’t be on a busy road or near power lines; and it had to be around $200,000. In Jersey. And we only had two days to do it. We had to get back home because of the animals. The animals is one reason why I want to move back to Jersey. It’s too hard leaving them every time we have to go up there for the holidays or a wedding, or like the last time, my mother’s funeral.

This time we went up there for Christmas. And to find a house. In a blizzard. We weren’t expecting a blizzard. We didn’t even know there was going to be snow and I didn’t bring any of my functional farm-wear because I wanted to look good; I didn’t want my family to say, “What the hell happened to Debi down there? She’s a mess!” So I brought clothes that looked good but weren’t good for trudging around in the snow. Jersey clothes. Form over function.

And I can hear my sister’s words if she’s reading this: “What do you mean you’re not a mess? You most certainly are a mess!” See, I told you. You’ll know what a northerner is thinking because she’ll tell you. And somehow I feel comforted by this, even if it’s not what I’d like to hear.

The first house that we looked at was a turn-of-the-century Victorian that had once been a winery. Our hearts started thumping as soon as we saw it. We parked in the street with our flashers on because the house was vacant so no one was there to shovel and we couldn’t see where the driveway was. If there was a driveway. We climbed through knee-deep snow in sneakers to get to the front door, surrounded by yellow clapboards with peeling paint and wires dangling from the ceiling where a porch light once hung.
The cops arrived to investigate why an out-of-state truck was parked out in the street. Someone called. They thought we were casing the joint. Hey, this is Jersey!


We loved the house but it was scary. It wasn’t because of the ghosts. Supposedly there are ghosts in the house. A woman and a girl. But it wasn’t that. It was the work. Talk about a mess. There was no electric, heat, or plumbing. It was colder inside the house than it was outside. We were so cold and it was so dark, we couldn’t really examine anything and when I had to pee, I had to go outside in the snow. My fingers were frozen, my toes were frozen and my butt was frozen. We looked at each other. Heartbroken. It was too much for us. Then we looked at other houses.

But we couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was crazy if we got that house! It was risky! It was reckless! It didn’t even have enough acres. We could squeeze those horses in. The taxes were high. We’ll be making a lot more money in Jersey. It’ll cost an arm and a leg to heat. We’ll get a woodstove. What if the septic is broke? Septic shmeptic. Oh, what we could do if we had a house like that! The possibilities were endless. And so we went back to see it again with the only pair of boots we could find since all the shelves in all the stores in New Jersey were wiped clean and luckily I have big feet because no one wanted the size eleven.

We brought my father back the second time. I could tell he loved it as much as we did. He asked, “Did you see that movie The Money Pit?” But he didn’t actually say, “Don’t buy it.”


In truth, if you really look at the situation, it’s not as bad as it appears.
The worst was over. All the demolition. All the messy and expensive stuff. The owners had gutted it down to the studs and put in all new wiring, plumbing and insulation. They put in new windows and two hundred-and-forty-something sheets of drywall, curving it where it had been originally curved, saving all the molding and salvaging all the architectural details.
They put in new heat. They stripped all the hardwood floors. Then it looked like someone just put his tools down, went out to lunch and never came back. Nothing was done. Wires were hanging out of holes in the walls and ceilings waiting to be hooked up to outlets and switches and lights; the toilets were in the bathrooms with the labels still on the bowls connected to nothing; the cabinets were in boxes on the floor in the kitchen and the sewer pipe went to nowhere.


But, when scrutinizing it and rationalizing why we should have this house, we realized that any house we bought in our price range would need new cabinets and new floors and new electric. They always do. We know that from experience. It can be the cutest house, the most adorable, well-kept thing on the block and we’ll think we lucked out and we don’t have to do anything but paint and move in. Then when we get in there we discover, even though we got an inspection (like the Ferrum house) and even though it’s brand new (like the Oklahoma house), the roof is leaking or it needs a new well or the heat doesn’t work or the septic is on its last legs, usually all of the above. The only thing is, it wouldn’t be scary. You could go in and turn on the lights and it would be deceptively warm and nice because everything would be up and running. But we’d have to fix all the same things we’d have to fix in the winery house. Sooner or later. Besides, we didn’t like any of the other houses. They were 1980’s tract houses, houses on highways, modulars with popcorn ceilings, cracker boxes and shit boxes and houses that didn’t melt my butter.


So we bought the winery house.

Going Home

I haven’t been able to write about the houses because I’m afraid I’ll jinx myself. I guess I’m really superstitious. I avoid walking under ladders and I do knock on wood, using my head if there’s no available oak or pine. But now it looks like everything’s going to go through so I think I’m safe. Knock wood.

I’d been out of Jersey for seven years but it took my mother dying for me to get homesick. That’s the reason I’m going back. People assume it’s because of work. It’s not, though I expect it to be better up there. I miss my peeps.

And I don’t feel welcome here. I’m a Yankee.

At first I was in denial. I even wrote a story about it, Yankees and White Lies. But once I started analyzing my feelings about why I had this sudden urge to get out of here like the room was on fire (was this just grief?), I realized that I was not imagining being disliked and sometimes discriminated against by the people who didn’t know me and I was tired of it! I’m great! I want to be where people appreciate me and even if we are different, even if we have a difference of opinion, even if we vote differently (egad!), we can still be friends. We can still tolerate each other.

The fact is, I don’t feel safe here. Admittedly, part of it is because of what we went through with the Evils. But the other part is because I am different. And that’s a no-go in the south. I warned Kelly not to tell anyone that we go to the Unitarian church—they won’t like it down here and I didn’t want her to start getting picked on. I was afraid to put a bumper sticker for Obama on my truck—afraid the truck would get keyed the next time I was in Walmart. I hesitate to admit I think gays should be able to get married just like everyone else.

I was even told that my grandchildren will never belong here. A friend of mine informed me that if Kelly has children, they will never be considered “from here,” even if they are born here, because their grandparents are from the wrong side of the Mason Dixon Line. Even when I pointed out that her ancestors were from Europe—that was different—she made sure I knew that my future grandchildren would never belong. I’m a Yankee and all my kin, forty years from now, fifty years from now, doesn’t matter, will be Yankees. This was my friend.

So I’m going home to a place that, ironically, has a reputation for mean people but where I’ve never been assaulted, robbed, vandalized, harassed, or had my dogs poisoned like what happened in Ferrum, and where I’ve never paid a higher price than what someone else paid because of the way I speak, like what happens here all the time. When they hear my accent and figure out where I’m from, they either charge me higher prices than my neighbor because they don’t like me or because they think I’ve got money. Either way, I get ripped off left and right down here.

Sometimes I think I was meant to be here for a while so I can truly understand what black people go through when they complain they were stopped for walking down the road or couldn’t get a job simply because they were black. I used to think, “Ah, get over it. Stop being paranoid.” Now I’m rethinking the matter. Now I’ve got a taste of it and I know what they’re talking about. Only they can’t change their skin and I can go home.

To be clear, I am not saying that everyone is bad down here. Just like all Yankees are not bad, but some are, all southerners are not bad. I’ve met some wonderful people—Becky and Claudia the writers, my other writer friends and blog buddies, too many to mention, some nice horse people, my German girlfriend Tanja, the nice folks who own Blair’s store, Effie, Olivia, Dee-Dee my seamstress, George my farrier, the Johnsons—I could go on and on. But best of all my neighbors, Pearl and Eldon. They have been a bright spot in my life, teaching me how to garden, bringing me pies, bringing Kelly to Dairy Queen and choir, taking care of my animals when we had to go to New Jersey because my mother was sick—they’ve been the closest thing to family that I have here. I can’t even talk to them about moving because Pearl and I start crying. I’m really going to miss them.

But I am busting with excitement because I am going home. We sold this farm and we bought another one. You won’t believe how we did it all and what we are up against next. It is crazy with a capital C. And now that it looks like it’s all going through, knock wood, I’m going to catch you up.

My Mother's Sweaters

I wear my mother’s sweaters. A nice, big, cable knit, olive green, from Land’s End. It’s the kind of sweater you wear when you’re eating soup or getting firewood. She never got wood. She thought this life on the farm was, “A hop in the ass.” Those are her words. She also said, “This is for the birds.” She shook her head and said, “You’ve really got to love this…” when she watched me going out to feed the horses, putting on the rubber boots, camouflage sweatpants and ski mask that makes me look like a burglar, twice a day. I took that as a compliment. She saw my passion.

I can’t wait to look in the mirror when I put on one of her sweaters. With a face like mine, that looks so much like hers, and then in one of her sweaters, I can trick myself. If I stare into my eyes in the mirror, and look really hard, she looks back. I get a fleeting glimpse.

Sometimes I think about dying my hair red to see how much I will look like her. She was a natural blonde like me but she dyed her hair red for so long that I don’t remember her as a blonde. I always used to joke around that I was going to do it to see what kind of trouble I could catch her in, when people mistook me for her. With a name like Cookie, and red hair, she was bound to be in trouble. But I never got around to it. Now I’d like to do it to see if I could channel her, like I do in the bathroom. But I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed when I find out it’s really not her.

When I was in the beauty parlor last week, they took my coat. It was my mother’s coat. I wanted to say, “Be careful with that coat! It’s my mother’s coat and she just died in April!” My father let me take whatever clothes of hers I wanted. I left my sister the Elk’s jacket even though I wanted it myself because it was all covered with her pins and buttons, a real piece of her. But Sharon is an Elk. That’s what they had together. I think about that jacket a lot but I’m proud of myself for giving it up. Especially since no one asked. No one would have even known, there were so many clothes and shoes and pocketbooks to sort through and I was all alone, taking what I wanted. That’s what my mother would have wanted. For me to be good. She could count on me for that.

I worry about what’s going to happen as things wear out. Should I conserve the sweaters and wear the coats only on special occasions? Some things that she gave me long before she died are already wearing out. Hand-me-down sweatpants and sweatshirts, flannel pajamas, things she knew I could always use on the farm because I’m hard on them or because they would keep me warm. The sweatshirts have dark cuffs from dirt that won’t come out, bleach splatters and paint stains, red like the barn and grey like the porch. The neckband on the sweatshirt from Wildwood is loose and hangs like a necklace. What happens when one of these is to the point of no return? Do I throw them away? How can I throw an item of my mother’s clothing in the garbage? I don’t care how messed up it is.

The silence in this house is loud when I think about the loss of her. You really notice it when you’re alone and you stop for a minute. The finality of it. I will never have another chance to tell her how I appreciate the hand-me-down pajamas with the pictures of the monkeys on them. I can’t believe it myself how much I didn’t appreciate these things enough when they were coming on a regular basis. How I took it for granted that they would always come, worn ones replaced with new ones, another kind she rustled up just because I mentioned liking the ones with elasticized ankles. She had a pair! “Here, see if these fit you,” she would say, coming out of her bedroom where she had been digging around.

I want to say to my daughters, “Appreciate me.” Not for my sake. For theirs. I want to warn them to pay attention, to slow down, to savor whatever I do to show them how much I love them. But they won’t listen. They can’t imagine. Just like I couldn’t imagine. I thought I knew what it was going to be like, losing my mother. I worried about it my whole life, in fact. Pictured screaming and crying. And I have screamed and cried. But I never imagined I would feel so powerless, that this would be so final, that I would never have another chance, no matter what I did, and all I can do to comfort myself is wear her sweaters and hope I feel a little bit better by the time they’re all worn out.

A New Low

I’m a garbage picker. I get a big charge out of it when I find something good in the trash. In fact, I’m proud of it. Saving money and helping the environment at the same time by being creative and resourceful is fun. Especially in this economy and because of the mess the earth is in. But even I have to admit that I’ve sunk to a new low.

You can find all kinds of good things in the garbage. Some of my best finds have been an antique cookie jar,
a couple of metal motel chairs with original green paint,
and Jamie’s turquoise swivel-chair,
circa 1950 or so. That chair was a real coup. We found it at a garage sale. We wanted it bad but the sellers wouldn’t budge on the price. They were asking fifteen bucks for it. That was too much money for a single chair in an outdated color and style, no matter that we loved the color and style, at a garage sale.

On Monday evening, around midnight, we happened to be driving home down the road where the garage sale had been and lo and behold, what do we see sitting out on the curb waiting for the garbage pickup on Tuesday morning but the turquoise chair! I slammed on the brakes. Jamie ducked down. I made her get out and help me load it up. Had to drive all the way home with the hatch on the little Geo Storm flapping open but it was worth it. That chair looked great in her bedroom with the cool lime green walls and black carpet and is still going strong in her funky apartment twelve years later.

Here in Virginia, the garbage is a sitting duck because we don’t have garbage pickup—every few miles there is a collection of green Dumpsters for residents to dispose of their household trash and unwanted goods. These are often surrounded by a chain-link fence that is never locked, convenient for night-picking, and have identifying labels: Household Goods, Recyclables, and directions and warnings: No Commercial Dumping, No Brush, County Residents Only.

I’ve gotten some good stuff at the Dumpsters. A yellow coffee cup that matches my kitchen.

A vinyl webbed lawn chair for the poolside that adjusts to four different positions.
Plastic chairs for the horses. Well, not actually for the horses. More like for watching the horses. I keep one in my arena and one behind the barn and this way if you ever want to take a load off, just sit down. After a while they crack from being out in the elements all the time. But I don’t care because I got them for free. Last winter was hard on the plastic chairs. I had to throw one away. I kept my eyes out for a new one. It took me about a week before I found a replacement at the Dumpsters.

One time I picked up a vintage chrome breadbox.
As soon as I put it in the truck, another truck pulled in behind me. He was towing a flatbed trailer filled with junk. I couldn’t tell if he was a metal man, or he was looking for good stuff to sell on eBay or keep for himself, like I do. Either way, he would have liked the chrome breadbox. I tried to make eye contact with him because I wanted to gloat, “Na na, na, na, na, you just missed out on something good,” but he wouldn’t look my way. He strolled over to the other Dumpster and nonchalantly peeked inside, watching me out of the corner of his eye, waiting for me to go. He would have never imagined that he and I were on the same page, garbage pickers, me being in that diesel-taking dually blasting the Sirius radio. He probably thought I was one of the rich people from the lake and he wasn’t about to let me catch him digging in the trash.

It helps to live at lake where all the rich people have huge houses with round rooms and walls of glass jutting out over the water like crystals in a stone. The stuff they throw out… Sometimes you can upgrade. I finally admitted it was time to throw away my white wicker set that I kept on the front porch and that the cats favored as their own personal scratching post. I hated to get rid of it because that set looked perfect on my porch. But it was falling apart so, reluctantly, I loaded it up on the truck. A few minutes later I returned with almost the exact same set but in like-new condition, plus an extra piece for my bedroom that matches the grey-green in my Victorian carpet. It doesn’t make a lick of sense why someone would throw away something that was so good. The rich people.

They’re the ones that probably left the food. It was sitting right there in a perfectly fine Kroger bag, off to the side so someone would see it. I never like to show any interest when I see something someone doesn’t want anymore, but thinks is too good to throw away because someone else might want it, so they put it to the side. Don’t want to look like a low-life if there’s someone around who doesn’t abide by that kind of thing. You know, snooty people. Those ones who are too good for themselves. The same thing the metal man was afraid of. So I looked around. I was alone. I flung another bag into the Dumpster where it landed with a thud and casually walked over to the sack and peered inside. It was stuffed with boxes of cake mix. Poppy seed. German chocolate. Yellow. I stuck a hand inside and took a better look. They were all sealed. But what sealed the deal was when I saw the black walnuts. Two large bags of walnuts. I got excited. Walnuts are expensive.

I quickly pulled out a couple of boxes. Clean. There was a bulk-size box of Gummy Bears someone probably picked up at Sam’s Club and then found herself disappointed on Halloween when no trick-or-treaters came. There were also jars of spices with the cellophane wrappers still intact. I considered inspecting it all right then and there but thought better of it. Someone might catch me and I didn’t want to rush the job. We’re talking food here. So I picked up the whole bag and threw it in the back of the truck just in time. Someone pulled in. It was Effie in her old turquoise pickup truck.

“Hey girl,” she said, opening the gate to her truck and lifting a white plastic bag. “You git any a them tornadas last night?”

“There’s more tornados here than when I used to live in Oklahoma.”

“You musta brought ‘em with ya.”

“Either that or global warming,” I said. “The weather’s been crazy lately.”

“That there’s a conspiracy by the government,” she informed me. “They wanna put folks out of jobs is the reason they’re saying we’re having global warming.”

“Ah huh,” I said.

No use arguing. One thing I learned about country folks is they’re set in their ways. Plus Effie is as cute as a button. Crossing mean rednecks is one thing. Crossing a little old southern lady who drives an old turquoise pickup truck with a spirit catcher hanging from the rearview mirror is another. And good thing too because she invited me to the cake sale down at the church. I wouldn’t want to be excluded from that. In fact, I offered to contribute. Poppy seed, chocolate, yellow, whatever they wanted!

I helped Effie throw out the rest of her trash. Then I hurried home to go through my loot.

I opened up a couple of packages of cake mix and examined the plastic bags. Clean as a whistle. I put it all in the freezer—just in case I missed anything, a little time in the freezer would kill it.

When I made Kurt listen to this story as I was working on it like I always do (I like to read them out loud to him), he said, “So where is this free food you got at the Dumpster?”

I looked at him. “Uh… You’ve been eating it?”

I don’t know what’s lower. Getting food from the garbage or feeding it to people without their knowledge. It’s just not right! Not that I actually got the cake mix out of the garbage. But it was low nonetheless. The question is, why was it so much fun? And where should I put that breadbox?