Please send voodoo

The plan is to run away. Really away. Like people do when they're 23 years old. No home, no jobs, no possessions, no stuff. OK, not quite like we're 23, because well, we're not, and because mostly it's running to, not from. But here's the big difference. We've got more of everything - home, jobs, stuff. Easy enough to quit. Took me two years, but otherwise, yeah, easy enough to quit a job. Easy enough to get people to take our stuff. But we own a house, or rather, there's this big brick thing and a bank that own us.

The domino trail toward escape goes something like this. Before we can go, we need money. Before we can save money, we have to sell the house. Before we can sell the house, we have to find someone who wants to buy it. Before someone will buy it we have to put it up for sale. Before we can put it up for sale, we have to make it pretty. To make it pretty we have to fix things, paint things, put in a fence. Before we can do that we have to go to the hardware store. Before we can go to the hardware store we have to make a list. Why does it always start with a bloody list?

So we've been working our way through the list and yesterday we checked off a big-ass bullet point. We signed a purchase agreement on the house. For our asking price. Too good to be true. There have been so many conversations I didn't really listen to that began with, "so we fell out of escrow ...." I should have listened more closely. I don't know how often that happens.

Is it like one of those urban myths that get repeated so often, the stats get exaggerated? Or is it like miscarriages - so taboo we don't know it happens to everyone all the time?

Despite our best efforts to remain jaded and skeptical, we're pretty fucking excited. If this thing happens that sounds like tumbling out of the back of a fast-moving convertible, we'll be damned depressed. I keep waiting for the phone to ring and Alan checks his email obsessively. I wonder if we'll sustain this kind of suspense for 30 days.

So I'm feeling pretty superstitious. I knock on wood surfaces every time I tell anyone. Hell I'm knocking on my desk right now for putting this in a blog. Wood just doesn't seem good enough though. I'm starting to think about what I would do with a chicken foot. We've got the wishbone from last year's Thanksgiving party, but we're trying to decide at what point we use that up.

What if it's a karma thing? Do we have enough karma built up? Have I been good? And kind? Oh geez, I've got to start helping the elderly and the drunks get on the bus. Better yet, the drunken elderly. Gotta go, good deeds to be done!