House For Sale: Tales From an Innkeeper's Crypt: First in a series about Kari

I've been trying to sell my house, right? The market is bad and it's not selling, so I came up with an idea so that Kari, my house-keeper and her husband, could buy it. They decided to do it. That was six months ago, but now I'm tired of the whole dam thing. They keeping pussy-footing around...putting it off.

First they say they're putting their house up for sale, then they change their minds and decide to do a little rehab and staging...change the paint in the kitchen...put in new flooring....the old flooring was ruined when the washer over flowed...from the back of the machine. Kari took it apart while it was still full of water....what did she expect? The water ran through the whole house and ruined the kitchen floor so they had to put in a new one in.

Then they put in a new tub...took Marty three or four days...I think he miscaluculated the size of it or something. Anyhow, Kari is always taking things apart and then she can't get them back together. She did it with my electric canopener, then the microwave, and the alarm clock in one of the guest rooms. She's really good at destroying things.

I used to have numbers on the oven knob on my stove, but not anymore. She's a clean freak which is really good for someone working in a bed and breakfast. She loves to clean bathrooms and appliances. She kept scrubbing and scrubbing the oven knob on my stove til she scrubbed all the numbers off. How am I supposed to find 350 degrees without any numbers? I freaked out and laid into her about it so she drew three black circles on the knob...one for 250, one for 350 , and one for 450.

Then the next day in her continued cleaning frenzy, she scrubbed them off again, without even noticing and forgot to tell me before she left. Have you ever tried to find 350 on an oven knob that has no numbers? I was burning everything.

I put a couple of slices of pizza in for dinner and moved the knob to what I thought was 350 and set the timer. When I opened the oven door, smoke poured out and little black slices of pepperoni stared up at me. I was so mad I lost my appetite. I ran to my laptop and mailed Kari a scathing description of what had happened, beseaching her to return tomorrow and draw on some more circles.

More tales from an Innkeepers crypt

I'll never forget Robin, The naked Irish farmer, The exhuberant honeymooners