Real estate: great way to meet crazies
Oh, my pretties. The stories I will tell you. The things I’ll be able to spill, once this is all over and done. The tales with which I’ll be able to regale anyone who might be thinking about trying to sell a couple of houses and buy a new one… well, it’ll make you go home and kiss the floor in gratitude, I’m sure.
But right now, a good portion of it will have to wait. Fingers are crossed and prayers are being said and once we are all settled in and I am no longer waiting for the sky to fall—assuming that point ever comes, that is—I will say more.
For right now, I can tell you two things: First, We are not buying Second Choice House. Second, I think the lady who owns it should seek professional help. read more…
Drowning my angst in the words
Hey! Know what would be funny? If the “I need a night to sleep on it” from the homeowner turned into a full 24 hours that ended with “Gee, I need another day.” That would be HYSTERICAL. Oh. Wait. Actually, THAT wouldn’t be hysterical so much as that it would cause ME to be hysterical. Small matter of nuance, I suppose.
To offset the sheer joy of being me right now, you may have noticed I’ve been working a lot. Well, there’s another place to find me up and running, now, and I swear not to talk houses over there at all. Well, not unless they’re dollhouses.
I dream of replacement flooring
Otto and I thought it would be really fun to spend the the last week playing “let’s pretend the housing market makes any sense at all.”
I could tell you the rules, but it’s pretty complicated and involves a lot of invective about Otto’s realtor, who has become—unfairly or not—the main target of all of my angst about our current situation. It doesn’t help that she is very! enthusiastic! all the time! even though half of what she says never actually, you know, HAPPENS.
After spending the week playing our delightful new game (or just, you know, freaking out and crying a lot about how we’re going to be broke and homeless) (yeah, that was me, not Otto), we made an offer on a house. This house, actually.
They turned us down. read more…
Phone calls from the edge
As I’d already predicted, this was pretty much the week I lost my mind.
(That’s about all I’m going to say about that, for now.)
The natural fallout from this, however, is that I am perhaps A LITTLE STRESSED OUT, and the children react to this in different ways. Monkey reacts to it by giving me extra hugs and kisses and telling me that I am the very best Mama in the whole! wide! world! right before he runs off to do whatever he was planning to do anyway. Chickadee reacts to it in two ways: She either gets a stomach ache (or at least says she has one) or she clowns around until she gets a laugh from me.
Needless to say, I prefer the latter. read more…
Susan said it would be interesting
I have very little to report, because I often try to stick to the whole “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” thing. Oh. You’re laughing. Right. Well, there is a small exception to that rule, you know, which is that if you don’t have anything nice to say but you DO have something funny to say, then go ahead. In that case, I go ahead.
Today I have nothing nice or funny, though I do have 2600 square feet of boat anchor around my neck, so if my posture is a little off, that’s why.
While chatting with Susan this evening and complaining that I had nothing to blog about (see above), she was kind enough to pluck items from our conversation and direct me to write about them. That Susan; always helpful! read more…
By any other name, still the same
I was paying some bills this weekend and realized that hey, I’m moving in less than a month, and I should probably really stop, I don’t know, writing checks on an account I’m going to be closing soon. Duh.
Why yes, I HAVE managed to do all of my banking with a local New England bank instead of one of the eleventy national chain banks available in the area, thank you for noticing. Ahem.
So this morning, I got the kids off to school and did some work and then set out for the local branch of Big National Bank to open new accounts. Sure, I could’ve just stayed home and shoved paperclips into my eyeballs instead, to achieve the same level of joy, but this way seemed slightly more productive. read more…
Wait, it’s not Sunday?
I have spent the entire day convinced that it’s Sunday. Nevermind that I went to church YESTERDAY (which should’ve been my first clue), but the whole Monday-holiday thing, it confuses me. I cannot be expected to follow along.
I was supposed to spent today sorting and pitching the ever-growing contents of some of my closets, but that’s hard to do with a helper who likes to chew on things. With the dog here, it became clear that cleaning was not meant to be. (Oh! Twist my arm! Keep me from being productive! Okay!)
Just so that I wouldn’t feel like a total slug, I decided to take the dog for a nice long walk. read more…
Celebrate good times, come on
Happy Memorial Day weekend! Or, as I like to call it, Happy Can’t Get A Decent Price On A Plane Ticket So Instead Of A Naked Weekend With Your Husband You’ll Be Stuck At Home Taking Care Of Someone Else’s Dog weekend!
Oh, like YOU don’t call it that, too.
I really LIKE dogs, you know. And I especially like other people’s dogs because I can GIVE THEM BACK after a while. You may recall that I had a very exciting dogsitting adventure a couple of years ago, from which I have only recently recovered. But I’ve kept this particular (smallish) dog for my friends before, and so when they asked me if I could PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take her at the last minute, I said “Are you kidding me? I’m trying to sell my house! There are people here all the time!” Um, well, I said that at FIRST, but then I realized holiday weekend = no showings, and they were desperate, so I took the dog. read more…
The most fun $6 can buy
Today one of the house showings was CONVENIENTLY scheduled for right when the kids got off the bus. Honestly, I don’t think this whole house-selling thing has disrupted our lives enough. I’d like people to start coming for showings in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. Just to keep things hopping around here.
Anyway.
So, on account of the needing to clear the premises immediately (“Touch nothing! Put your backpack away and GET IN THE CAR!”) and the fact that it was about 95 degrees here today (Welcome to New England; take your pick of snow or sizzle, without any of those pesky temperatures inbetween), we opted to go for ice cream. read more…
Sinking in
We’ve got about one week for Something To Happen before I enter panic mode, re: the housing situation. The movers are coming in one month. One. Month.
If we make an offer on a house in this next week, we could close before my stuff shows up and needs to be left at that van down by the river.
I am, of course, dealing with this information by:
1) Not packing.
2) Not mowing the dandelion fields grass.
3) Working into the wee hours every night.
4) Shopping for shoes online.
5) Trying to find a cheap last-minute ticket to get down to Georgia this weekend to see my husband and also maybe look at some more houses.
But it was tonight at choir rehearsal when I opened the card they all gave me that it really hit me. I am moving away. I mean, that thing was FULL of kind words and well-wishes. Anyone who tells you church choirs are all sweetness and light has never been in one; I am accustomed to being tormented mercilessly in there. All that NICE can only mean I’m dying or moving.
I feel okay, so I guess I’m really leaving.