Yesterday Life Was Simpler

Yesterday I woke up later than usual so I had the radio on while I was making my breakfast.  Suddenly I heard that there was an auction for houses and the deadline was “today”.  I took my breakfast into my office and excitedly began searching for the Alberta government online auction site.  That took a few moments and before I had had my first sip of coffee I had not only registered but suddenly had bid on 6 houses.  I took a sip of coffee and some sanity seemed to clear my brain.

Six houses, was I out of my mind?

On two of the houses I had put a proxy bid of $10,000 (good God I really had lost my mind) but luckily by the time the fog had lifted from my brain I saw that I was outbid.  Churls, I thought, this is a scam!  Who is up at this time of the morning outbidding me?  You see most of the 26 homes were bid at around $1,500; only one lunatic (thankfully not me) had bid $100,000 on one of the homes.  Having finished my coffee, woken up mother to the alarming news that I possibly was going to get 4 houses and then having read the fine print I saw that I was on the hook for $80,000 in security deposits it was now time to spread the alarm wider afield.  First I took another look at the site before calling my brother.

“Hi Ole.  The good news is that I am only the owner of 2 houses, not 4.”

“Whaaat?”

I explained what had happened and his solemn response was “are you sure you woke up sane?”

”Can you come and look at the site.  The houses are really nice.  I was thinking of Felix.”

He said he would come and he did show up about an hour later.  Meanwhile I was pacing back and forth from the hen yard to the office, refreshing the site page every 5 minutes.  Yep, I was still the highest bidder on 2 houses.  My brain was firing on all one cylinder (let’s be frank, I was in a panic).  I didn’t know if I should be excited-happy or excited-hysterical.  On the one hand, I would be helping out my brother but on the other hand, complications loomed.  Little did I know how complicated those complications would be come but John was shortly to disabuse my mind of any sense of excited-happy.

He showed up and as usual put the kettle on before getting his ashtray, searching for his lighter and then sitting down and looking at me with a frown.

“What were you thinking?”

“Well, I thought it would be great to get a house for Felix.”

“You know you could be looking at $50,000 just to move it.”

“I thought it would be around $20 to $30,000” I said lamely.

“Bobcat Johnny said he could put in a septic field for around $50,000.”

“$50,000!” I exclaimed “I thought it would be about $5,000.”

“The rules have changed.”  John said bitterly.

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission; we’ll do it anyway.”  I was grasping at straws.

John sat back, blew a slow puff of smoke up to the ceiling then looked across at me and sighed. 

“Yesterday life was a lot simpler.”

To be continued . . .