​​​​​​Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.

Home ownership & other bruises​ (continued)

Here’s another example of odd behavior: I really believe that my mail-carrier-person would rather walk on hot coals than get out of that weird boxy truck and put something on my porch. Except, to walk on hot coals, she’d have to get out of the truck.

By the way, last week, I bought a room humidifier, because it’d been nearly twenty minutes since I spent any money on my house. Among the several dozen warnings in the instructions and user manual was this advice: Do not sit on the appliance.

You know what that means: once, someone, somewhere…

Finally, from the wild world of home ownership, I have some good and bad news. The good news: There’s a swath of woodland immediately behind my home, and just beyond that is an area zoned ‘Commercial,’ so there’s no looming possibility that any rabid realtor will try to construct another neighborhood just behind me. Unless somebody gets a variance.

The bad news: The commercial enterprise just beyond the woods behind me seems to be caught up in some kind of Heavy Industry contest to see who can make the most noise. I think I’ve finally figured out what, exactly, this business makes. You know that beep-beep-beep that large commercial vehicles make when they’re in backing up? (The beep’s somewhere between an E natural and an E-flat)

I think that’s their product. I think the company behind me manufactures those back-up beeps. They have to be building the beeps, because nobody can back up for that long. They beep-beep-beep for hours.

But only when I’m at home.

-Barry Parham

Barry Parham is a recovering software freelancer and a music fanatic.  He’s the award-winning author of humor columns, essays and short stories, whose work has been featured in four national humor anthologies.  He’s also the author of nine collections of award-winning stories whose most recent compilation is “Winding Down Civilization.”  You can follow Barry on his blog, The Diatribe, and on Facebook.  Barry can also be reached, at the most ridiculous hours, at barry@pmwebs.com.