Sadly, I did not get photos.  You will all have to stretch your imagination tall and long in order to wrap it around the mental image of a 24 foot uhaul–backed into my driveway.

Now, if said Uhaul had been mine, that would be alright.  If it had belonged to a sister, cousin, or neighbor, I’d grumble but still be okay.

But it didn’t belong to anyone, so far as we could tell.  The very afternoon that we finished picking up the last of our big stuff from the house someone plunked their uhaul down, locked it up, and left.

For two days.

Now, remember.  They had no way of knowing that we’d taken all the big stuff out, and in fact we were still picking stuff up and generally working in and out of the house.  Of course, since the driveway was filled to over-flowing (I did say 24 Foot Truck, yes?) we had to work from the curb.  There was also the concern that at some point the HOA folks would slap us with a fine, since the truck had clearly been there longer than the codes allow.  We were also still showing the house, since it still hasn’t gone under contract.  So, on the third day, I decided the uhaul had to go.

I’d already called the 1-800 number, and asked them to pass on a message to the owner that it was not welcome.  Now I called the tow trucks.  It took a bit of doing to find someone willing to tackle a 24-footer, but a couple hours and a few oil stains later, the uhaul was gone.  Incidentally, we discovered that it was full of stuff.

All very odd, but the tow-truck driver assured me that it happens all the time and we thought no more of it.  A week went by, and it faded into the background with all other weird incidents we tell each other at parties.

Until, that is, our agent got a phone call.  The lady on the line was very put out, wanted to know where her uhaul was.  She didn’t say, ‘my illegally parked, trespassing abandoned uhaul’, though she could have.  But the best part?  This lady is the same woman who has so far made two offers on our house.  Laughable offers which were based on a bogus willingness to rent-to-own, in which she paid less than half the mortgage, required us to pay her agent up front whether she eventually purchased or not, and in which we, the landowners, paid a large deposit in case she, the tenant, broke or destroyed anything during her stay in our home.

Her second offer, which she turned in to us despite it being worse than the first and despite our having coolly turned down without encouragment the first attempt, had her move in date set for–

You guessed it.  The same day the uhaul showed up in the driveway.

Well, I wish her well in collecting her uhaul, but can’t say I’m sorry to see the last of her.