A Vigilant Mind

I always enjoy seeing mail in my in-box from Susan Davis, my realtor, mentor, best friend, confidant, paramour from Carol Jones Realty in Kimberling City, Missouri.  Well, maybe I'd just better stick with realtor, since I don't think she's aware that she's all those other things to me.  Anyway, I look forward to her mail because she always has new houses for me to look at so that I can day-dream about the day when we move away from here, except that my day-dreams are often crushed because I start worrying about if we'll have any money to actually do it, or if I'll get cold feet at the last moment or some other disaster will befall us.  Such is my train of thought.  Now, if I were like that lucky son-of-a-bitch rancher who won the 240 gazillion dollar powerball jackpot the other day, I wouldn't have to worry about shit like that and could spend my time thinking up other things to worry about.

So, yesterday she sent me a listing for a very nice house in Kimberling City.  As you can see from the picture, it looks very nice on the outside and sits on about an acre of wooded land about a mile away from the lake.  The inside is very nice too and the price is reasonable.

What's not to like you say?  Look closely, as I asked Jan to last night, but she couldn't see the basic flaw that would keep me from making this house mine.  Did you see it?

It's the driveway.  Look at the terrifying roller coaster dip it takes from the road down to the garage.  Southwest Missouri may be warmer than here, but they still get snow and ice in the winter.  Imagine me as an old retiree in my old mans' Ford Crown Vic trying to get out of that driveway to get to the store to buy my old mans' food, which probably includes those icky Vienna Sausages covered in that snot looking substance that I'll hold in my gnarled old mans' hands and gum to death because I have no teeth.

Okay, don't imagine that.  It kinda creeps me out.  But, what if I pull into my driveway and, even if there's no snow and ice, my brakes fail! As I go hurtling down the driveway toward the house, I have to make a split second decision!  Do I plow into the tree by the driveway, saving the house, or make a break for two trees farther to the right, also saving the house, but opening the possibility of me missing the trees all together and hurtling down the canyon side until I crash at the bottom, turning my Crown Vic into a blazing inferno and roasting me alive!

And since I don't want to make such a decision, I'll have to contact my beloved Susan Davis and tell her to keep sending me listings so that I can find weird shit wrong with them too.