H is for House

House. I'm currently obsessed with that word. Selling the one we have. Picking out a new one. Watching HGTV with the zealot-ism usually reserved for the Facebook Jellies.

I do have news. And, for once, it's not evil.

Re-cap: We had an offer on our house, with the condition of a home inspection. It wasn't a stellar offer, meaning we would have a shortfall of up to $16,000 on closing day. We were convinced it would be the only offer we got, so we took it. The ensuing inspection revealed we had vermiculite in our attic. Only 10 per cent of attics with vermiculite insulation also contain asbestos. A test was done. Asbestos was found. I called an abatement company and was told it might cost us $10,000 to clean the attic. The people who wanted to buy our house wanted us to pay the bill. Dave and I were devastated at the thought of handing over our beloved property AND paying $25,000.

We decided I would fly out to Alberta and spend some time together. We told our realtors we would discuss our options. We did not want to shell out that kind of money, money we didn't even have. We thought maybe we could rent out our house until the market improved, and rent a place in Cold Lake, Alberta (where Dave is working and where we are moving) for the interim.

Dave picked me up at the airport in Edmonton and we started the three-hour drive to Cold Lake. We hadn't gotten very far when the phone rang. It was our real estate agent.

"You're not going to believe this," she said, "but I have another offer on your house."

Dave and I pulled over and did a happy dance at the side of the road.

Turned out this second out-of-the-blue offer came from a guy who saw the place three weeks ago. He called to see if the house was still available and was told there was a conditional offer on it. He was also told all about the asbestos in the attic.

The guy didn't care. He had experience with vermiculite/asbestos clean-out and he was willing to do the work himself. His offer had no conditions, no strings, and came with a faster closing date. Dave and I couldn't believe our good luck.

What that means is the people with the first offer have until this Friday to decide if they want to buy the house, asbestos and all, or walk away from the offer. If they decide to buy it, our house is sold. If they walk away, our house is sold to the guy with the second offer. Either way, our house is sold.

It's all kinda hard to believe.

I just want to say how much your words of support have meant to me. This has been a trying time and I've been depressed and anxious – so much so I have abandoned my blog and many of the things I love.

Well, it's now catch-up time. Yes, H is for House, and the fecking thing has now sold.

WOOT.

G is for Geez, what next?

My life lately has been one problem after another. Wham! Deal with it. Wham! Crap, deal with it, too. Wham-whacka-whacka-feckitty-feck, what else? What fecking else?

One of the conditions of our house sale was an inspection. The guy showed up on Saturday and spent nearly two hours doing the equivalent of a pap smear to our property. Things were going surprisingly well, which should have been a clue that the other crap-covered shoe was about to drop. As he was leaving the inspector came to our door and announced he had found vermiculite in our attic.

Vermiculite?

He was holding a baggie full of some kind of gray pebbly stuff. "Vermiculite itself isn't a problem," he said. "The problem is, it could contain asbestos."

Asbestos. I knew what asbestos was. Asbestos is a nasty, cancer-causing, house-deal-killing toxic nightmare that requires haz-mat suits, masks and tons of money to clean up.

I can't even tell you how discouraging this is. The building inspection that was done in 2004 made no mention of vermiculite. "Fibreglass" was the only insulation type listed by the lazy, lying, no-good inspector at the time. We can't sue, of course, because the inspection was paid for by the people we bought the house from. Screwed, blued and tattooed, that's us.

So here's the deal. The vermiculite has to tested. If it is asbestos-free, the people who want our house will firm up their offer. If it has asbestos, Dave and I will have to pay to have it professionally removed and new insulation put in, at a ballpark cost of $10,000.

If we were making money off the sale of our house, that $10,000 might not be such a big deal. But we are already losing money – $16,000, to be exact. That's how much cash we will have to shell out to get out of our mortgage, pay the realtor, the lawyer and whoever else has their hands out. Apparently we paid too much for the property four years ago – that, combined with a flaccid economy, has meant we will not be making enough money from the deal to pay our bills.

If asbestos is found, we might have to pay $26,000 or more on the day the deal closes.

In case you're thinking we have $26,000 hanging around, we don't. We will have to cash in our investments, sell a lot of our belongings and maybe borrow money in order to get this done. And if we have to pay to have the asbestos removed, there's no way we can afford to buy a house when we move to Alberta. We'll have to rent for a while, and that's fine, but that sucks because we're old and we had dreams, and now they're probably going to be crushed.

If my luck wasn't so shitty right now I'd say there's a good chance there won't be asbestos in the vermiculite. But it's me we're talking about and, dollars to doughnuts our attic is full of it.

Some days I don't think I can take one more bad thing. Not. One. More.

F is for Feck, my precious

Because my mother will wash my mouth out with soap if I say the other F word.

From Wikipedia:

Feck (or, in some senses, fek) has several vernacular meanings and variations in Hiberno-English, Scots and Middle English.

Contents   [hide]  1 Modern English 2 Scots and Late Middle English 3 Debate about the word's level of offensiveness 4 Other uses in popular culture 5 References 6 Sources 7 See also

[edit]Modern English

• Verb meaning 'to steal' (e.g. 'They had fecked cash out of the rector's room.' ^[1])^[2]

[edit]Scots and Late Middle English

Feck (or fek) is a form of effeck, which is in turn the Scots form of effect. However, this Scots noun has additional significance:

1. Efficacy; force; value; return
2. Amount; quantity (or a large amount/quantity)
3. The greater or larger part (when used with a definite article)

From the first sense we derive feckless, meaning witless, weak or ineffective; worthless; irresponsible; indifferent; lazy. Feckless remains a part of the Modern English and Scottish English lexicons; it appears in a number of Scottishadages:

"Feckless folk are aye fain o ane anither."

"Feckless fools should keep canny tongues."

In his 1881 short story Thrawn Janet, Robert Louis Stevenson invokes the second sense of feck as cited above:

"He had a feck o' books wi' him—mair than had ever been seen before in a' that presbytery..."

Robert Burns uses the third sense of feck in the final stanza of his 1792 poem "Kellyburn Braes":

I hae been a Devil the feck o' my life,

Hey, and the rue grows bonie wi' thyme;

"But ne'er was in hell till I met wi' a wife,"

And the thyme it is wither'd, and rue is in prime

[edit]Debate about the word's level of offensiveness

Magners Irish Cider have received complaints relating to an advert in which a man tells bees to "feck off": members of the public were concerned that young children could be badly influenced by seeing this advert. Magners claimed that the "feck off" mention in the advert was a "mild rebuff" to the bees, rather than an expletive. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that the poster is suitable for display.^[3]

In a 1998 interview on Nickelodeon, Irish girl group B*Witched landed in hot water when a viewer made a complaint alleging that one of the teenagers had used the phrase "fuck off". Although Nickelodeon maintained that the singer had in fact said "feck off", which they described "a phrase made popular by the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted," the item was found to be in breach of the ITC Programme Code and the complaint was thus upheld.^[4]

[edit]Other uses in popular culture

• The Channel 4 situation comedy Father Ted helped to export and popularise this use of feck through its characters' liberal use of the word, especially by the drunk priest Father Jack. In an interview, Dermot Morgan explained that, inIreland, feck is far less offensive than fuck.
• The word "feck" also frequently appears extensively in the Nintendo 64 video game Conker's Bad Fur Day, in which the word replaces "fuck" in all instances. It should be noted, however, that this substitution is in no way trying to limit cursing; the game itself is riddled with blatant swearing and innuendo. It is not known whether this substitution is due to the nationality of the producers or simply to give the game a lighter mood.
• Heard repeatedly in youtube videos featuring Loca, "the pug who can't run", and sung in lyrics with an Irish flair.
• The word "feck" is also used in the movie Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe, as an alternative to the word "fuck". A teen girl (played by Zooey Deschanel) who is angry at her overbearing, strict mother (Frances McDormand) shouts, "Feck you!" Her mother is taken aback by this, stating aside to her 11-year-old son (Michael Angarano), "I can't believe she said the F-word," to which he replies, "I think she said 'feck'."
• In the 1981 film Caveman, "feck" is used as a general term of disparagement. After Atouk's band of misfits defeats Tonda, the crowd joins in proclaiming "Tonda feck! Atouk! Atouk! ATOUK!" [3]
• In 2004 French Connection UK, sellers of the popular "FCUK" T-shirt, won a legal injunction in Dublin that barred a local business from printing and selling a T-shirt marked "FCEK The Irish Connection".^[5]
• The word "feck" appears in Frank McCourt's memoir Angela's Ashes and also the film which was based upon the book. English subtitles on the original DVD miscaption "feck" as "fuck".
• There is a brand of Irish whiskey called Feckin' Irish Whiskey.
• The BBC/RTE television sitcom 'Mrs Brown's Boys' makes regular use of the word 'feck', whilst occasionally also using the more offensive 'fuck'.
• It appears frequently in the play The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh.

[edit]

E is for Erotic Earlobes

I was touching my earlobes last night, as we are all wont to do, and quite suddenly I fell in lust with them. Incredibly soft, supple, smooth – all the sexy s words. Even now, as I write this, I can't stop feeling them up.

Like all good feeling up, this is perhaps done better without aid of a mirror, especially when one is old, like me, and gravity has pulled the lobes in the general vicinity of the boobs, which are hovering somewhere between my hips and the south pole. Not the one I'm dancing with, the one with the penguins.

So plump, my ear lobes are. Plump. Soft. Inviting. Excuse me while I stroke them ...

Sorry. I'm back now. Wow that was good. I was thinking that ear lobes could be the New Breasts. Porn stars will start having them augmented and wind up with lobes the size of coffee cups, and just as hard, with the skin all stretched and the piercings gaping. A whole new genre in porn will hit the market. Can you imagine the titles?

LUSCIOUS LOBES.

THE HAPPY HEARER.

EAROTICA.

ERICA EATS EAR WAX.

And do we even need to talk about ear canals???? My mother always said, "don't stick anything bigger in your ear than your elbow," but I wasn't thinking about elbows ...

D is for Dave

I'm taking part in the A to Z Blogging Challenge for the month of April. For more information, click here.