Yeah. You heard me. There’s no other way to say it. Joel, in his frenzy of drywall-dust vacuuming, sucked up St. Joe with the shop vac. He knew it. Joe put up a good fight as he flew through the tube. Joel panicked and then thought, “No need to worry. I’ll get him out when I clean out the vacuum.” And then he forgot. He got busy with more vacuuming and then emptied the Shop-Vac into the garbage bin. The next day he remembered and ran back out to the bin to dig him out only to see the garbage men driving away with the little guy buried somewhere in the array of miscellaneous ick.
OK, so a good chuckle, right? No big deal since our house is sold and his job was done. But alas. A few days later the contingency deal on our house ended, the buyers decided not to renew, and we found ourselves back to square one of listing and showing our house. Coincidence or fate?
In any event, we got to work. I washed windows and vacuumed screens. We laid a few truckloads of new mulch. I rearranged the few remaining decorative items not packed yet so our house looked ‘staged’ and we relisted our house with a lower price. AND I got on eBay and ordered a new St. Joseph. The listing came with a guarantee – ‘Sell your home in 90 days or your money back!’ Nice. I emailed the seller to explain the urgency and asked her to ship him ASAP. The reply: “It will go out first thing in the morning. Don’t worry. Remember you are covered right now by the promise – All things are possible to him that believeth. Mark 9:23” How could I lose?
St. Joseph the Second, aka SJTS, looks remarkably like his predecessor and came with a prayer card and instructions. I had gone with the statue-only version with St. Joe the First, aka SJTF, so kind of winged it that time around. These instructions said to bury him in the back yard (SJTF was buried in the front) at least three feet from the house (SJTF had been one foot) facing toward the house (SJTF faced away) upside down (got that one right) and to leave him there until immediately after the closing. It’s no secret that I had dug up SJTF immediately after accepting the contingency offer and moved him to the niche in the new house. This blog talks all about it. Why didn’t any of you set me straight? And now SJTF is buried in a landfill facing heaven knows which direction working on selling some scrap of land that probably isn’t even for sale. Oi vay!
In all honesty, we are grateful that we’ve had a house with air conditioning and a normal amount of dust to come home to each day this summer, so having a 90-day contingency that then fell through turned out to be the perfect setup. Maybe SJTF knows full well that his job was to be part of a botched-up sale and is resting in peaceful repose in the local landfill with decomposition of his sturdy-plastic self a thousand years away. He’s leaving the real selling to SJTS.
So please hold a good thought that SJTS, properly buried in the yard, with intentions and process fully realized, and sellers who are nearly ready to move into their new house will serve us well by bringing someone here who is ready to love this house as much as we have. Thanks for your collective hope!
