Housesitting

My dad and stepmother are out of town for a week. I am looking after their house while they are gone. I’m not actually staying there since they only a few minutes walk from my place. I stop by once a day to check on things and empty the dehumidifier, which fills up in about 3 hours (mystery moisture source somewhere in the house apparently). At this point, I am not really sure why my dad still asks me to look after his house, considering all the disasters that have happened while it was in my care.

1. I was staying at the house one very frigid January and the pipes froze (incompetent plumber had put the plumbers smack up against the outside wall of the house). The water had to be turned off for three days, and I was stuck, unshowered, in the house with a cat who wanted nothing more than to gnaw on my flesh (R.I.P. Leo). I found a case of Pellegrino, which I used for the necessities. Brushing your teeth with fizzy water is quite an experience.

2. Another time, my keys decided not to work. No, the locks hadn’t been changed. The keys just wouldn’t work. While trying to figure out this conundrum, my boyfriend at the time managed to set off the burglar alarm. It was the most horrifying thing I had ever heard. It was bad enough to wake the dead. I had visions of bodies popping out of the ground, a la Poltergeist. The only upside: the alarm turns itself off after 20 minutes. Did I mention that the neighbors hate me?

3. Once I was sharing caretaking duties with my stepmother’s nephew. When my dad and stepmother returned home, they found a strange substance plastered to the kitchen wall. They assumed one of had had a cooking accident. Ummh, no, that was the cat. He didn’t like being left in the care of either of us apparently.

4. About three years ago, my dad suggested I make the house look “lived in.” I took this to heart and had a party. It was fun and as far as I know, nothing got broken. I was completely busted upon their return, because I had forgotten to remove the three bags of ice from the fridge.

5. Two summers ago, I walked into the house and went to turn off the burglar alarm, but it indicated that there had been a breach in sector 7G or something like that. I was completely freaked out and could not figure out how the hell anyone had gotten into this extremely well-guarded house. It turned out to be totally not my fault, just a short in the wiring that the system saw as an intruder. Still, I sat outside on the steps waiting for Lord Kissington to show up since I figured there was an axe murderer waiting in the basement for me.

6. Last summer was my first time taking care of the dehumidifier. This is pretty simple. You pull the water tray out, dump out the water, put the tray back, and the machine starts running again. This worked for a couple of days, and then the machine just refused to reset. No matter what I did. I had visions of them coming home to a junglesque sauna. It wasn’t all that bad, but this one was definitely my fault—I had dropped an important part of the water bucket when I was dumping it out. Ooops.

Some of these things weren’t my fault, but I do seem to have bad karma where this house is concerned. Seriously, would you want me watching your place?