Unwelcome Dental Advice

It’s been a rough week. The wife and I are trying to sell our house (and purchase a new one) before the incoming administration fucks our country’s economic situation into the dirt. The interest rates aren’t terrible, and I have a VA loan, so it’s a decent time to offload the current home. We’re on a busy street that doubles as a drag race strip due to the nearly two miles of three-lane road without a stop light or stop sign. The noise is annoying, so obviously selling the place is a little more difficult than we’d hope.

To make matters worse, the only people that have shown interest, so far, are younger people. I’m assuming they’re millennials, based on what we’ve seen in our doorbell camera when they come to view the house. Their absolute entitlement shows in their offers. I won’t provide a link to my listing since I don’t want to get doxed, but our house is modestly priced at $365,000 in a neighborhood where we could just as easily get $400,000. We wanted to keep the price lower, even though I’ve put about $30,000 of work into it (new stucco, new floors, astroturf covering the gravel side yard, and a slew of other simple improvements). Most realtors have agreed that our price is prime.

And yet… these younger generation of people have come in, lowballing us or making audacious offers. Two of the most recent offers have been lowballed and they’ve asked the sellers to pay closing costs. If you’re not familiar with home buying, it’s traditionally the buyer’s responsibility to pay the closing costs. You know, because you’re buying something!

To ask the sellers to pay their closing costs is like going to a store, picking out a pair of expensive sneakers, taking it to the register, and telling the clerk you want them to pay you to take the sneakers off their hands. It’s mind-blowing, and both our realtor and mortgage broker have been dumbstruck by the sheer audacity of these offers. One of them even said we needed to offer up nearly $12,000 on top of the closing costs. It’s absolutely ridiculous to think that I’m going to pay someone to take my house.

The whole process has been a shit show because we still live in the house and have to remove our dogs (the cats stay) every time we have a showing. To make matters worse, during one of those expeditions, our large dog somehow flipped the dome light switch on our car, and we didn’t notice it until we got a flat tire rolling into a pet store to take that very dog in for a wash. The battery died, the car had a screw in a relatively new tire, and it was 19˚  outside while I’m putting the spare on and keeping three dogs from running away.

Good times.

And now, I’ve learned that Milwaukee Brewers mainstay, and the best goddamn announcer in all of Major League Baseball, Bob Uecker, has passed away.

Uecker (or Ueck) has been the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers since before I was even born. His voice and delivery are iconic, and he even starred in movies and television. He was in Mister Belvedere and Major League (the motion picture about the Cleveland Indians back in the late 80s). For decades, Brewers fans and front office members have chanted, “win it for Ueck,” and the Crew maintained its mediocrity, only coming close in 1982, when they actually went to the World Series and lost to the Cardinals, and 2018, when we lost in the playoffs.

https://www.mlb.com/news/bob-uecker-dies

I’m crushed. I knew he was old, but I thought he might still have a few years in him. He was Mister Baseball, he was Harry Doyle, he was the spirit of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Guys, fans, Brewers… please. Win it for Ueck.