Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for March 15, 2024

Those eyes are open now.

Mind- – - – BLOWN !

Deer in the headlights just before the truck load of reality comes through.

A fantasy that is becoming a Reality?

Arlo’s right. But maybe Janis will change her mind about selling.

Bam

Panel #4… a deer in headlights.

Panel #4 Arlo’s plan seems to be working, tap-tap-tap.

Panel 3: “Its twoo, it’s twoo!” (Blazing Saddles)

That’s how we prepped our house. No new paint, etc., but the walls and floors were SPOTLESS! (Thanks, grandkids!)

And don’t leave them anything you think they’d like… I’ve moved 17 times and that’s the worst. Take all your “stuff” with you, or you’ll be cleaning it out the morning of the closing. People pay for the home, not your junk.

I have a nice comfortable ranch style home with an attached garage built back in the 60’s. The thing is, I have an absolutely wonderful view overlooking a lake and low hills on the other side. Sunsets here in northernmost Maine can be fantastic and I’m able to watch the sunset year round. I’m 72 and sometime in the next 20 years I’m sure I’ll sell it. What would not surprise me would be if someone bulldozed the house flat and built a more modern and much larger home in it’s place.

What? The new owners will change the color scheme? How dare they!

I’m 70 years old. Recently drove past the house I grew up in. Unrecognizable.

“Maybe” is a big word. No guarantees.

Arlo opens a door that Janis can see through …

Generic white paint on walls and ceilings to freshen things up. Obvious repairs so everything works. Clean so the house is spotless. Bury a St. Christopher statue in the yard.

Janis is thinking, “Whadda ya mean, someone might not like things exactly as I have them now, change to suit them? Why I never…”

We bought the house we live in now from the original owners. We met the husband on one of the visits and he was a very nice guy. We never met his wife because she couldn’t handle the idea of selling the house where she raised her children.

As a coda to this story, about 20 years later, we saw a car outside our house and someone taking pictures. We walked out and asked them about it and it turned out that it was one of the children of the couple from whom we bought the house. We invited them inside and gave them a tour. It was nice.

“CLICK” goes the light switch

uh oh, you broke Janis… :{

When you do move, you’ll have all of that nonsense to take care of in the NEW place as well!

Arlo speaks truth! Reasonable repair, washed windows, clean toilet,“broom clean” floors, lawn mown, keys on the kitchen counter.

Before we downsized, I scraped and repainted two rooms and hired someone to fill and hide a crack in the front door. But I think it was well worth it in terms of the price we got.

Apparently the new owners had studied Realtor ads for houses made anonymous looking so people could imagine their preferred colors. They just have thought that was stylish. So they covered the traditional colors in our 1830s farmhouse with flat gray paint.

That depends. Young people today have different goals. They’ll spend the entire weekend playing video games in front of the TV.

Change is good. It reminds we still have more life to live.

If you’re going to move, Janis, then it’s time to let go. You’ll have plenty to keep your mind occupied in your new house. As the adage states, “Out with the old, in with the new.”

By the way, Arlo, you handled yesterday’s trap expertly!

DANG! One Day WE IS MOVING! Next Day I GUESS WE IS STAYING! I think Jimmy has started a SOAP OPERA!

could be or not

We invested a great deal of time/$$$/effort in two of our previous houses on landscaping, particularly planting trees; across those two, we planted over 50 trees. It saddens me no end to look at both places on street view and Google Earth to discover that they’ve removed almost all of the trees. One to install a massive pool and patio, the other simply took them all out. My ex-neighbor told me that the husband didn’t like mowing around them or raking leaves. Um, most were evergreens. But whatever. Sigh.

Perhaps she is getting upset thinking about others destroying all the things they did to make the house perfect.

Panel 4: what’s with Arlo’s fingers and the table?

Abandoning one’s nest can be a shock.

Great Wise A..s advice: Stay where you are.

This is an extremely realistic treatment. Like it

The truth seems to be too much for poor Janis. She looks traumatised.

Happy Ides of March!

When we had our house built in 1963, my dad built the kitchen cabinets and my older brother’s bedroom. As time passed and we 3 kids moved out, he remodeled, knocked out the walls of my bedroom ( maybe he wanted to make sure I couldn’t move back home!), etc. After he died (2006), the realtor wanted us to tear out the WOOD cabinets and put in newer PRESSED wood ones. Also change a few other things that made the house unique, to make it like the other cookie cutter ones in the development. We left it as it was, sold for more than the average price in the area. I haven’t been down the street since then, as I don’t want to see if it’s been changed since then.

No bpdy wants to live in “your” house. And that is a hard realization. Experience speaking.

That’s what we thought. I finished a few small projects and asked our realtor for advice. She agreed and we got enough to buy our retirement home outright. Now I’ve finished the major work that needed to be done here (fix termite damage, new windows, new roof). I made a list of the small things that need to be done but it was too long and depressing.

Husband will bring up the idea of moving whenever something local annoys him. Where we would move varies between Lancaster, PA and Williamsburg, VA – the two places we like to go on vacation. (Does that mean we will have to come back here for a vacation? :-) )

I don’t want to move. All 3 of our sisters with their family and my mom live in the general area. If nothing else one of our niblings might actually help care for us when get older (and not young now). In addition to liking where we are (more or less) and it being familiar – I think like the people who live on a small island – “I was born on this Island and plan to die on this Island and stay here afterwards.”

And then there is the logistics of moving. I look around and get ill thinking of trying to deal with it all – and it is not a question of throwing things out as there is little we do so. We each have a large book collection – mostly of books we use for reference often. I have a teddy bear/doll collection. He has a James Bond collection. We have a movie poster collection. We have a movie collection – 16 mm, Beta, VHS, DVD (and not talking about home movies – these are theatrical movies). The garage is his woodworking shop with many power tools. The basement includes his leatherworking shop plus. We have a studio at the back of the house which is loaded with craft tools and supplies. Furniture he has made for us. It is exhausting to even think of moving as we want to take almost all of it – to all of it with us.