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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Ewwwww! You Can't Be Serious... Oh Yes, I Can!

Allrighty, most of you know at least part of our story, and the fact that we were chosen for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Two men - had to put up with a lot through this whole adventure: John Unzueta and Jeff Morrell. They are our realtors.

One part you don't know - I'm about to tell you. And let me prepare you: It's not pretty.

Our house was for sale - for a LONG time. We didn't know why - it was brand new, beautiful, and had a ton of showings - but God knew what would happen, thankfully, He's in control and not Kim.

Finally, an offer came in and we realized we needed to find a place to live - and quick! We had discovered that the only thing we could afford in this pricey land of real estate, were homes that were foreclosed - so we tried to jump on those as quickly as we could. (We lost numerous ones the day they were listed.)

My husband, Jeremy, was particularly excited about one, (it was dirt cheap and relatively new,) and so we went to look at it. I discovered early on that it was not normally a good idea to bring the children into these foreclosed homes, (you never knew what the inside would look like,) so the children stayed safely locked in the car. Let me digress for a moment, I don't know if you know this about me yet, but I tend to be a little "anal" (that's Jeremy's word- LOL) and could be OCD if I really wanted to be. :) I like things clean, do not like bugs, and especially do not like rodents. :)

Before I continue, you need to have a good picture in your mind. Our realtors are great guys and were helping us every chance they had - anyway, John, had just come from showing a 1.5 million dollar home to someone else. He was nicely dressed. My husband and I were nicely dressed. The home was... dirty. Mild understatement.

Okay - SO - we are in this house and I am walking around with my hands in the air like I had just painted my fingernails and didn't want to touch anything - saying, "Ewww" a lot. But in my defense, I did see the potential of the house once cleaned. This is where you need a good imagination.

John, (the nicely dressed realtor,) came out of the bathroom with a very serious face, "I'm sorry.... he didn't make it."

Fear would adequately describe my feelings at that moment. "Who... didn't make it?"

John started to laugh and told me there was a dead mouse in the toilet. (Let's just say that he had a good grip on my personality by this point in time. He knew I would freak if I saw it, so he was trying to keep me laughing.)

I began to do the little girly dance that most of us of the female gender do when a mouse is even mentioned. I asked him to get rid of it, "can't you flush it?"

"Um, no. It's frozen in a block of ice." More laughter.

Upon exiting that house, I'm pretty sure we used an entire package of antibacterial wipes. All of us. And we laughed, for a long time. (Okay, so the guys were laughing at me, but it was funny.)

I'm sure John and Jeff both have their share of stories from our crazy real estate adventures, but at least we had a good ending. :) And whether they like it or not, they'll always remember us.

Needless to say, I was not upset when informed that we didn't get that house. I called a friend that afternoon and she said, "It's okay - you would've never been able to use the restroom in that house anyway."

So there you have it. The "dead-frozen-mouse-in-the-toilet-house" story.

Ewwww!