Goodbye, Bully Bougainvillea

I've been working on putting my townhome up for sale, because I'm moving to Brooklyn next week. Yeah. I'm a little behind. Thanks for pointing that out.

ANYwho, I've been trying to keep up with this endless list of stuff my realtor keeps pointing out. Now, let me be clear. The woman is an amazing realtor. She actually comes over and dabs touch up paint on my walls. She helped me trim the trumpet vine in the backyard. And she knows what makes a place sell. So the list is a list of good and useful things that are good for me and good for my townhome. It's just so damn long.

Part of the problem is that I seem to have very low standards. One of the kitchen cupboards doesn't close. You close it, and then it swings open like there's a little ghost inside it. Doesn't bother me. Sure, part of me would like it if it were shut. But I'm pretty sure it's nothing sinister, so I've lived with it for two and a half years. It's on her list.

The bathroom tile was coming up when I moved in. I never ever get any water on the bathroom floor. I'm a freakish freak of a person, and when I get in and out of the shower, I go to great lengths to make sure no water escapes. So I was sure the tile wasn't getting any worse. But that chicken came home to roost in a big way. (Now I have all new tile in there. I guess it's nice. Who am I to argue?)

Then there's the matter of the bougainvillea. The big bougainvillea that bullied all the other plants in my tiny enclosure had a rough winter. It actually got down around freezing for like ONE night this winter, and these plants that stride around here summer after summer threatening to kidnap and eat your animals all turned out to be big babies. It was like watching a big, scary, macho wrestler pass out while getting a tattoo. Not that I've ever done that.

So the two bougainvillea and the TVUO (tropical vine of unknown origin) out front all looked dead. No, seriously. You had to cut them to see if they were alive. Donna, my realtor, was philosophical about it. "These look dead. We should get rid of them." Apparently she was expecting tears (and let me just say that I've been really stressed lately, so that wasn't an unreasonable expectation). But I did not need to be asked twice. I trimmed them back as far as I could by myself, and then recruited help to get them out of the ground. The grapefruit tree that's been cowering there all this time practically wept with gratitude.

Also marked for death was the sickly desert sage. This plant reminded me of a story that I think Tina Fey told after she won the Emmy for SNL. She was being interviewed by Conan or Jay or someone, and she talked about how image conscious everyone is in LA. By way of illustration, she described standing in line behind this woman who looked just beautiful. This woman looked young and vibrant and perky, and had long silky hair like a mermaid. Then the woman turned around and revealed herself to be an old woman with approximately seventy years of tanning damage. That's what the desert sage was like. As you walked IN to the townhouse, it looked all gorgeous, with lovely purple flowers and mossy green foliage. As you walked OUT, it looked like a dead skeleton. Sort of a Dorian Gray effect.

My gay best friend, Mike, came over to help me with the yard work. I've never seen anything so butch as him pulling that desert sage out of the ground--it was like Paul Bunyan yanking trees out of the earth. The bougainvillea put up a bigger fight, but eventually victory was ours. My trash bin is really full, and I don't think I can clean out my fridge, but whatever. We did good work, and the grapefruit tree and the trumpet vine have the place to themselves now. Both of them are already growing leafier to show their appreciation.

Now all I have to do is...the rest of Donna's list. Which involves paint and decorating and sanding and cleaning and hiding and staging and generally pretending that perfect decorator Barbie lives here, wearing clothes that never get dirty, showering with pretend water that never generates soap scum and walking on clean floors with her clean Barbie feet.

I can be Barbie for a week, I'm sure. Stop laughing, or I'll hit you with this bougainvillea stump.