I Quit (and Joe Scares Me)

Elly LononFamily & Home, Other Randomness, , , , , , , , , , , , , 20 Comments

I’m quitting.  Again.

My wee Hoboken apartment has been on the market for four frickin months – four long, long, vacuuming filled months.  We’ve received a whopping ZERO offers over those four fabu months.  So as of this morning, my apartment is off the market.  Uncle.  The end.  Stick a fork in me.  I’m singing and everything.

With my new found freedom, I’m going to re-inflate my exercise ball (you know, so my parents have something to do when they visit), reassemble my easel, use my oven for cooking rather than storage, remove all my sneakers from the freezer, carpet the bathroom floor with dirty underwear, and maybe even carve out a corner of the living room to build a miniature smurfscape filled with the tiny plastic figurines posed in various positions of worship where Herbert rules over them all.  Maybe I’ll give them all little signs like, “Herbert, you’re smurftastic!” or, “Can you smurf us another one, Herbert?”  Smurfette’s would read, ” You’re the smurfiest shade of blue, Herbie.”

Now that I can officially stop cleaning compulsively, at least until the parents plan a trip here to “re-christen” the exercise ball, I’ll have so much more time on my hands to find you gold mines like today’s Craftastrophe.  (I’m thinking about getting one of these guys as a companion for Mildred and Lucy.)  Maybe I’ll learn how to play Bohemian Rhapsody on the ukulele using only my toes and a pez dispenser.  Or even better, I’ll try and master spelling “restaurant” correctly without the help of spell check!  The sky is the limit now, Interwebz.

There’s just one little problem – one little issue that has me all in a tizzy.  (Actually, I have a shit ton of issues with this whole situation but I’m trying to keep it positive.)  Remember that undead angry piece of holy plastic I have buried in a pot outside the stoop of my building?  Yes, this guy.  What the fuck do I do about him?  I mean, do they have little decommission kits for saints?

The only thing I know how to decommission is an oil tank.  For those, you just empty them, fill them with gravel, cap ’em off, and leave their buried corpses to rot in the ground.  I’ve never heard of a holy oil tank, though.  Oh wait, not true!  I almost bought a house once with such an oil tank.  I forgot because legally they were required to use the term “leaking” rather than “holy.”

Meanwhile, back at a tiny St Joe in the mud, I turned to the internet for help.  As per usual, everything I found was neither useful nor important.  (Remind me why I spend so much time on here?)  Everyone agrees that you dig up St. Joe, give him a little scrubbing, and then put him in a place of honor…in your new home….AFTER YOUR ORIGINAL HO– USE SELLS…which, in case you haven’t been paying attention, DIDN’T HAPPEN.  Nowhere in any literature anywhere does anyone say any damn thing about what you do with the little bugger when he doesn’t work.

Maybe he’s broken.  Faulty.  Has anyone seen any blanket recalls issued by the Vatican for tiny plastic religious figurines manufactured between December 2009 and April 2010?  How would I check that out?  Maybe they have an account on Twitter I can follow?

Is anyone else getting a headache?

It just seems kind of cruel to leave him in there.  Then again, it also seems kind of cruel to trick Rocco into removing all the broken liquor bottles from around the plant and then hand him a tiny shovel as his only defense against the brain-sucking, religion-fueled goblin laying in wait to chew off my husband’s face.  It’s not cruel if I make sure Rocco has a weapon, right?

Let’s say for the sake of my avoidance issues that we leave him down in his tiny dirt crypt.  What happens when we try to sell the house again next year?  Do I buy another little Joe and bury him next to Zombie Joe?  Will the Bizarro-Joe maim then eat our shiny new helpful Joe?  If I filled the new shiny Joe with Listerine before I buried him, would it be enough to ward off Zombie Joe?

I suppose this is why non-Catholics shouldn’t play with plastic saints.

Comments

  1. I’ve actually got so much to say about this that I temporarily short circuited and couldn’t respond.
    Dig him up, wash him off and then send him to some super holy site with a religious person to get his mojo recranked with some holy water.
    THEN put him in your kitchen to await further real estate tomfoolery.
    That wasn’t as good as my original thought, but I TOLD you I sparked out and lost it.

    1. See? This is why you should come to Hoboken this weekend and intervene. Show Joe your Catholic mojo and I bet he’ll let us all keep our faces intact. Also, what qualifies as a “super holy site?” Does the town of Forks count?

  2. Now see, before I go any further, I should point out that I am renowned (at least in my own family) for having absolutely wonderful (some call them “bizarre”) ideas for such matters. If I were you, I would dig up St. Joe, bathe him gently, perhaps dress him in some bell bottoms and a beard and pose him with other action figures while photographing them. Make them a feature of your lovely home. Like, in my house he could’ve hung out with my X-Files dolls and a stuffed cow and they could’ve had adventures involving staplers and plasticine monsters. Of course it’s inevitable he’d end up less saintly because naturally he’d have to have sex with Scully, but that’s ok. Being a saint is not all it’s cracked up to be anyway.

    So you see, there’s a world of possibilities out there for your little guy.

    Sorry your house didn’t sell but I bet it’s too funky for most people what with your fab ukelele and all. Their loss. Where else will they get a uke and a saint? Nowhere, that’s where.

    1. Are you sure you don’t want Joe for yourself? I hear zombie plastic saints LOVE mouse brains. Oh wait, then you’d have a zombie mouse. In bell bottoms. Awkward.

      Honestly, now I just want to see how I can fashion some bell bottoms that go on a figurine with his legs molded together in a single piece. Damn toga.

  3. One day your apartment will be viewed by tourists.

    “And this is where she wrote. And this is where she drank cocktails. And this is where she began her world domination.”

  4. I say leave it. And when you finally sell your apartment (and you will), whomever is living there decades from now will dig that thing up and be totally freaked. Better yet, I’d find all kind of white-elephant worthy trinkets and bury them, scattered about.

  5. If you wait long enough there should be some kind of Saint Amnesty eventually. They’ll come around Hoboken calling: ‘Bring out your Saints’ and heave them all into the back of a truck, still weeping.

    1. Like those days when you can leave your busted down fridge on the corner without paying a haul-away penalty?

      Suddenly I have a hankerin’ for some Monty Python.

  6. Hold the bus. Did you name your Ukelele Herbie. Well let me tell you, I dated this guy and we more like he named his penis Herbie. Just thought I’d share that with the entire interwebz. You’re welcome.

    Second, the plastic saint of house that did not sell, I hear that you are suppose to put him in a blender and spread his bits o’ plastic on the steps of the house that did not sell. That’s according to my grandmother.

    1. Wow. Two Herbies. I’m going to refrain from making a joke about Herbies and fitting in mouths and…oh…well…I guess it’s still just as dirty if I allude to it. Damnit.

      I melted my blender. Issues.

  9. If I had to stop and think of all the things that I’ve left and buried…well that would give me a headache.

    Do ceramic saints count?

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