Eeeeeeeeeee!!!

And a little more eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!  It’s done!  We are no longer homeowners.  We are ex-proud owners of a house.  Proud ex-homeowners.  Proud mortgage-free people.  There’s a little sadness (we were downright weepy yesterday evening when we went to say goodbye to our little house – 9 and a half years and both dogs and I’ll just stop right there), but it’s mostly glee.  Not even a little bit of oh-my-god-what-have-I-done (which is good, because my goodness it’s too late for backing out).

Our buyers continued to be annoying right up to the last minute, but they are no longer our problem, either.  Now I can think it’s funny instead of super-irritating.  Let me count the ways they are not normal.

1. They saw our house during an open house we hosted on a Sunday afternoon.  The following Saturday morning (around 10am), they showed up on our doorstep unannounced, wishing to take another look.  Who does that?

2. They made their initial offer, including a request that we carpet the entire second story (plus stairs) at our expense.  (We said no.)

3. They made their second offer, which included us paying their entire closing costs.  We negotiated that down.

Okay, so maybe #2 and #3 are somewhat normal.  They’re first steps in a negotiation – whatever.  We were still irritated.

4. A couple of weeks before closing, they asked us if they could store some things in the garage.  We said no.  (What if the deal fell apart?  We’re not babysitting their stuff.  Besides, at that point there was no room in the garage for their stuff.)

5. One week before closing, they asked if they could come in to get measurements for the carpet they’ll be installing.  Our agent would have to let them in.  We said okay.  (We’re not heartless.)

6. They asked if they could do the walkthrough at the same time.  We said no, probably not a good idea.  We weren’t entirely moved out, and the house hadn’t been cleaned yet.  (We didn’t want them to freak out over something stupid – we weren’t ready.)

7. We finished moving out (and cleaning) by Saturday night, and they did the walkthrough Sunday morning.  We went back to the house Sunday evening to take the trash out (from Saturday) and say goodbye to the house.  We walked in, moved through to the dining room, and hey!  Someone gave us a big TV, some boxes, a child’s easel, and a pair of longhorns mounted on a big plaque.  Yes, they took advantage of the walkthrough to move some things into the house they didn’t own yet.

Well, they own it now, and we’re 100% done with them.  Or we’ll be 100% done when the check clears.  We had a celebratory dinner tonight of pie and champagne.

Bring on Phase Two!

Almost there

Emily and Sean are coming tomorrow to help us move the heavy stuff.  We’ll move the couch, the last two bookshelves, dining room table, coffee table, media center, dressers, and the bed into the apartment.  So basically, as of Saturday night, we will officially be living in the apartment.  And since we’ll have people to help, we need to get as much moved as possible, and that means we have to be ready, so we’ve spent nearly every waking moment packing things.  I’ve skipped yoga and zumba in the evenings, and we only went to boxing on Monday and Wednesday.  Tuesday morning, we got up, packed up the linen closet, and went to work.  When we got home Tuesday evening, we packed up the kitchen.  (We’ve been eating mostly takeout anyway – we can eat out of takeout containers for a few more days.)  Wednesday night, we started packing up the bedroom, and we finished that last night.  Tonight, we picked up the truck and packed up our bathrooms, and we’re pretty much ready.  All is going according to plan!

It’s a little sad – tonight is our last night to sleep here.  But it’s all in service of our grand plan and our very exciting future.  Yay the future!

Happy Birthday To Me

I’m officially rescheduling my birthday to some weekend with perfect weather in the spring.  Possibly late spring.  I definitely need a do-over.  One that involves wine.  On the one hand, yay – we got a lot of moving done, and that’s something I wanted.  On the other hand, it was maybe the WORST weekend we could have scheduled a move.  Let’s start with Friday.

Friday: My actual birthday.  My gym was closed, so there was no boxing.  John and I went to the normal gym, but eh – it wasn’t that much fun.  Then I stayed at work late, which is also no fun on your birthday.  Highlight #1 (during the day): Chastity took me out to lunch.  We went to the Cheesecake Factory and ate only appetizers and cheesecake.  Delicious.  Highlight #2: everything after I got home.  John picked up Indian takeout (yay!), so that was waiting for me when I got home, but even better, as I walked in the front door, I was enveloped in the smell of a cake baking in the oven.  Best smell in the world.  The smell was so good I wanted to dig myself a hole in the middle of the cake and go to sleep in it.  So for my birthday (the part that counts), I ate Indian food and cake while watching Stardust (I love that movie). That part was good.

Saturday: The forecast called for 5-8 inches of snow, but it wasn’t supposed to start until late morning or early afternoon.  We picked up our truck at 8:30 and were back at the house before 9.  The snow started before we got home.  We spent the next four hours carrying a bed, 10 bookshelves, and 54 boxes (all books and office stuff) from the basement out through the garage and up the ramp into the truck (thank goodness for the ramp), then back down the ramp and into the storage unit (which is only 2 miles from the house), all in below-freezing temperatures (I think it was in the single digits) and driving snow.  We had to keep sweeping snow out of the storage unit before we could put anything else down on the floor, and it was SO cold.  Three pairs of gloves were not enough to keep my fingers warm.  Getting the truck back to the house was treacherous (the roads were awful and windshield wipers on the truck didn’t actually touch the windshield – useless things), and then, to add insult to actual injury (we were sore and achy and I’m bruised all over my arms and legs from schlepping heavy stuff), we couldn’t get it into the driveway again until we shoveled the four inches that had accumulated so far.  We left the truck idling in the middle of the street while we cleared the driveway and sidewalks.  Then we collapsed.

Sunday: Weatherwise (hee – hi, Margaret!), Sunday was the complete opposite of Saturday.  The sun was shining and the temperature climbed into the 40s.  We still had to start the day with shoveling the four inches of snow that fell after we collapsed Saturday afternoon, but after that, we loaded the truck with a few more things for the storage unit and some stuff for the apartment.  The storage unit part was comparatively easy, but the apartment – whose idea was it to take the apartment on the 4th floor?  Sure, we’re in good shape, and on a normal day, three flights of stairs is no big deal.  But over and over?  Carrying odd-shaped and heavy boxes?  Really?  That was not fun.  We quit around 3:30 and returned the truck, then treated ourselves to cheeseburgers and fries at Cheeburger Cheeburger, with milkshakes to go.  It was around 5 or 5:30 when we got home, and after those two days, we were wiped out.  We showered, climbed into bed with our milkshakes, watched TV for a couple of hours, and went to sleep early.

Happy birthday to me!

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Another step forward

I’m not sure if this should count as a whole step or a half step, but it’s definitely some kind of step in the right direction.  We signed a lease today!  We officially have an apartment, and we are going to officially start moving this weekend.  We also officially have a storage unit, so this weekend will be more about moving stuff in there, but I’m sure we’ll put something in the apartment.  Symbolism.  Plus we have to do the initial inspection and write down every scuff mark.  The future is almost here!

Quit playing games with my heart

We had some house drama last week, but it’s all over now.  Freaked us out for a few days.  Our buyers’ buyer flaked out on them.  John found out from our agent AFTER I LEFT FOR CANCUN.  We were all ready to sign a lease on an apartment (6-month lease, local), John was going to find a storage unit, and we had a truck scheduled to start moving stuff for the weekend I was getting back.  But this meant we lost our closing date (because our buyers lost THEIR buyer), and everything came to a screeching halt, and John had to deal with it alone because I went gallivanting off to Mexico (bad timing).  This is the first vacation I’ve been on in years (maybe ever?) where the wi-fi worked, so we were able to chat and email, but still.  John canceled the truck and postponed the apartment until we could get more information.  Our contract was still good, but we were not happy about having to go back to the mindset we had in January, all uncertain about when we were moving while waiting for our buyers to sell their house.  Luckily, our buyers had an open house this weekend that resulted in another offer.  (I’m mostly very happy for them and for us, since their offer means we can move.  I’m only a teensy little bit jealous that selling their house has been so easy for them.)  We’re back on track to close in early March.  We can still have our apartment (as of late next week), and we can still take a couple of weekends to move all our stuff around.

I don’t need this kind of excitement.

I like to keep my promises

I promised more today.  I don’t have a lot, but I have something.  This afternoon we saw a condo for rent about a mile from here, which would be SO convenient in many many ways.  It’s not in the best shape (and it needs a THOROUGH cleaning), but it’s within our price range, it’s available immediately, and it’s practically in our backyard.  It would make moving SO easy.  Our commutes would be the same, it would be no harder to get to either gym, and we could sign a 6-month lease.  Parking would be a pain (no garage, and only one assigned spot), but we could make it work.  Probably.

I’ll feel much better once I’ve seen at least one potential alternative.  And from the looks of things, we have plenty of alternatives.  I’ll be making some calls tomorrow.  We will also start packing tomorrow, although it’s hard to decide where to begin.  It’s a bit overwhelming.  We keep freaking ourselves out.  But if we don’t start, we’ll freak out because we’re running out of time.  So we’re going to freak out either way.  Might as well freak out in a productive way.  Which means I should probably be doing something right now that isn’t on the internet.  Or if I’m going to be on the internet, I should be finding us a storage unit.

Friday couldn’t get here fast enough

Four-day weeks are the LONGEST weeks because you still have to do five days’ worth of work.  I think all I’ve done this week here is complain about work (why? see previous sentence), so maybe I won’t do that right now.

What will I do instead?

Hm.

Well….

Hmph.  I guess I don’t have anything to talk about tonight.  Actually, I do have things to talk about (a thing, anyway), but I want to talk about it tomorrow.  It’s crowding out everything else in my brain, so I’m at a loss right now.

Okay, I’ll tell you.

We have a date!  A closing date!  A moving date!  And holy shit – it’s only five weeks away! !!!!!!!  Life just got very busy.  And stressful, but in a good way.  We made some lists tonight and sent a couple of emails, and now we’re going to beat the stress by having some tea (decaf – I’d like to sleep tonight) and cookies and watching TV.

More soon.

 

Some days it’s harder to stay positive

Things to remember that are good right now:

  • Our house is under contract.
  • I’m going on vacation in a week and a half to someplace warm and sunny.
  • um….

I mean, sure, I could start listing things like friends and family who are wonderful, and that John and I are in good health, and we have a roof over our heads and jobs we don’t hate, but that starts to sound treacly and some other word I can’t quite put my finger on.  YES, there are plenty of things to be happy about or grateful for or whatever, but GAH!  I feel stuck sometimes.  Still in the house, still going to the office every day, still living the same life.  Where are my changes?

[Pause for perspective]

That’s a little ridiculous (a lot ridiculous).  I’ve been making changes all along.  I’m exercising more, doing things I like with people I like.  I make more time to read (on weekends, anyway).  John and I have been enjoying more of the geeky things in life (all those games, some of the TV we watch).  My time is more my own (our time is more our own), and I need every minute of it.

Maybe I’ll stop whining.  For now.  Just a little break.

There’s a long road ahead

It’s January, and the holidays are over.  The countdown to spring has officially begun.  (It’s a long way off.)  But it’s not all bad.  Our house is under contract, the buyers’ condo is on the market, they haven’t returned our HOA docs in horror, there’s a three-day weekend this month, and my birthday is next month.  I will survive.

Happy New Year!

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Happy 2015!  It’s starting off well, actually.  Last night, we heard from our agent that the buyers we’ve been nursing along for the past couple of weeks signed our last counter-offer!  Woohoo!  I haven’t seen the official final copy yet, but unless our agent is playing a very cruel joke, we have a ratified contract on our house!  HOORAY!  We’re a half-step closer to our magical future.  Now we just need to get the buyers’ condo sold.  Anyone looking to buy a condo near me?

So say we all

I don’t generally enjoy the year-in-review articles and lists (except for Tom and Lorenzo’s Best and Worst Dressed lists – those are awesome), and I’m not going to do one myself.  I don’t know what would be on it, anyway.  But it’s New Year’s Eve, and we can all say goodbye to 2014 (and good riddance) and hello to 2015.  In 2015, we WILL move out of this house.  We WILL.

Cheers!

Riley swears it was a beaver

After more than two months of trying to sell our house on our own, with only the two low offers right at the beginning, John and I decided to hand the work over to someone else.  We signed with an agent last Sunday, so now he’s in charge of marketing our house and following up with the people who come to see it.  He’s the guy who put us on the MLS for a small fee, and he’s been super helpful these months, answering all kinds of questions and providing advice, so we figured if anyone was going to get a commission from us, it should be this guy.  He hosted an open house for us today, freeing us up on a Sunday afternoon for the first time in a while, and our fingers are crossed that he’ll get our house sold.

We’re anxious to get moving, and not just because the life we have planned is going to be so cool.  We need to get out of this house before Riley destroys it.  He’s never been a chewer.  Really, never.  That was Roxy, and she was only destructive when she was a puppy.  Riley was never interested in chew toys, even, unless he was taking them away from her, and then he didn’t bother to eat them.  He just kept them away from Roxy.  So imagine our surprise (and horror) when we came home last Saturday morning to find this:

And this:

And this:

We were only gone for TWO HOURS.  And, of course, we had an open house planned for the next day.  We spent the whole rest of that Saturday fixing the house.  It’s all better now – no sign of the rampage Riley must have begun the second we got in the car.  He took a chunk out of another wall (similar to the last picture) a couple of days later, but he hasn’t done anything else like it since then.  We brought in a couple of sticks from the yard, and he seems to be focusing on those.  During the open house today, we took him to a pet store and he picked out a couple of chewy things (which was also kind of jaw-dropping – he’s never paid any attention to what’s going on in the bins in pet stores).  We don’t want to have to crate him all day, so hopefully the chew toys will work.

Encouraging!

Today’s open house brought in more people, and three of the families that came through seemed pretty serious. We’re crossing our fingers for offers. We’re both so tired of this.

We’re off to Bonefish for seafood takeout, since we no longer cook in our kitchen.  Who am I kidding?  We hardly ever cooked in our kitchen.

Open House #2

Lots happened last week, everyone.  We had our open house last Sunday (from noon to 5), and we had a whopping TWO people come by the whole time.  We were a little disappointed, but the second person stayed for a while, asked a ton of questions, and seemed fairly serious about it.  (Also, I kind of know her through the gym.)  That night we got a call from her realtor – boom.  An offer.  Her realtor was god-awful and terribly rude to us (we’re doing a FSBO for a reason – we’re willing to give 1% to the buyer’s agent, not 3), but the offer came in anyway.  It was a little low, but dude!  An offer!  So we panicked.  Kind of.  We were SO not prepared for that.  We had planned on using a real estate attorney to help us with closing, but we hadn’t even begun to find one.  Also, the buyer only gave us 18 hours to respond (the offer came in at 9pm Sunday – she gave us until 3pm Monday), so we spent Monday morning frantically trying to a) find a lawyer and/or b) figure out how we should counter.  Because we wanted to counter.  It was a reasonable, very fair counter.  Anyway, I found a real estate lawyer (through my gym again) who gave us great advice, and then at 2:45 (because that’s when I heard back from our new lawyer) I printed out the offer, made our changes, initialled and signed everything, scanned in the signed copy, emailed it to John, who printed, initialled and signed, scanned it in, and emailed the whole thing back to the agent.  At 2:50, I emailed her to let her know it was coming.  She got it by 3:15.  We gave them until 5pm Tuesday (a whole 26 hours) to get back to us.

Silence.  Just nothing.  No response.  Wednesday morning, I emailed the agent to confirm that their lack of response meant they weren’t interested in countering or accepting.  She replied quickly to tell me that was correct, and that was the end of that.  Except that we plan to email the buyer directly (because we have her information and I kind of know her) just to check in and be friendly.  There’s really no reason we haven’t done it yet.  Anyway, even though it didn’t pan out, it was exciting, and we feel good about it.  We do NOT regret not taking her initial offer.

Tuesday night we showed the house to a guy who seemed positive but is in no hurry whatsoever.  We made a deal with an agent we really like (he’s given us all kinds of advice on how to sell on our own, how to deal with buyer’s agents and the whole commission thing, and lots of other things) to have him list our house on the MLS for a flat fee, so we’re out there for agents to find us.  We’re having an open house right now (and clearly so overrun with people that I don’t have any time to write….oh, wait a minute), from noon to 3, with a showing between 3 and 3:30 and a guy who’s going to come by around 1.

It’s been busy.  We’re still homeowners, Riley is in a slow decline (his x-rays Monday morning were not positive), work sucks and is about to get suckier, and it’s the one-year anniversary of Roxy’s death, but hey – I had a milkshake for dinner last night and the weather is beautiful.  It’s not all bad.

I expect buyers to magically appear

Our ad is now on Zillow and ForSaleByOwner.com, too.  The craigslist ad has generated two emails, one from a property management company asking if we’d rent it and one from a buyer’s agent.  The open house started 90 minutes ago, and we’ve had one person stop by.  She lives in a townhouse in the area (she walked here) and is looking for something bigger.  Which is not us.  She was nice enough, but it’s still depressing.  And yet!  It’s silly to feel this way.  Our ad has been on craigslist for barely over 24 hours.  We didn’t advertise our open house anywhere else.  We have signs at the top and bottom of our street and a sign in the yard.  Why would I expect anyone to know about it?  So.  I’ll get over this right now and enjoy a quiet afternoon.

House for sale – take 2

It’s official (again).  Our house is on the market (again).  The difference this time?

We’re doing it ourselves.  We did the bathroom remodel (floor, vanity, sink, paint), and we’ve gotten rid of more stuff (last weekend included a garage clean-out, more donations, and a trip to the landfill), we’ve rearranged the house (again – the dining room table is back in the dining room and the family room is back to being largely empty), and we’ve CLEANED.  Today, we put an ad on craigslist and bought the sign (and replaced the rear struts in the car, cleaned the house, and mowed the lawn).  Tomorrow, we have an open house.

I hope people come.

The Riley Report

Five weeks ago, Riley had his first x-ray after finishing chemo.  His last x-ray was on Halloween, and it showed clear lungs.  This one was not clean.  They took three pictures, and on one of them, they could see a shadow that they were pretty sure but maybe not but probably is a lesion.  So Riley’s cancer metastasized.  When we got his diagnosis at the end of last summer, they told us that with the amputation and chemo, his odds were 50/50 that he’d be cancer free in year.  Looks like Riley fell into the wrong 50.  They couldn’t tell us anything else (like how bad, how fast, how much longer) without a second x-ray, so that brings us to today.  His second x-ray was this afternoon, and while there’s still only the one spot, it has grown by 38%.  That only brought it to 2cm, so it shouldn’t be affecting him yet.  The vet says it probably won’t bother him until it gets to 5-7cm or unless more appear.  We started the metronomic chemo (low doses by pill) yesterday, in the hopes that it will slow the growth.  Our next x-ray is in 7 weeks.

John is upstairs trying to make an L-shaped cut into a porcelain tile with a hacksaw, I just finished cooking Riley some chicken, and he’s hanging out on his dog bed looking at me.  (I feel judged – I’m not being entertaining enough.  Or I’m in trouble for not giving him the chicken yet. It’s too hot, buddy!)

He’s still okay for now.  We are, too.

Freedom!

We are free from our manipulative real estate agent!  Hooray for us!  She actually fired us.  🙂  It was kind of awesome.  She said she couldn’t sell it at this price, we said we weren’t willing to change it, and she suggested we sign a release from the agreement.  We win!  And now we’ll take a little time, maybe enjoy the holiday season, and do it on our own soon.

I was doing so well with keeping up here, and then last week started.  It was a horrible, crazily busy, totally exhausting week.  Work was nuts, our evenings were not our own, and we just got back from a whirlwind 36-hour trip to PA and back for Emily’s engagement party.  I can barely keep my eyes open.  We braved Wegmans to get the basic pre-Thanksgiving shopping done, mostly because I have pies to make.  Lots of pies.  This year I actually need to double my recipe.

I’m too tired to make any more sense, so I’m going to shut down the computer, heat up dinner (we scored leftovers from the party last night), and watch TV with John.  I might last another hour, max.  I will try really really hard to post regularly again.  I like it.

What I should have said to our real estate agent

The relationship between a real estate agent and her client is purely business (or should be).  Just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I don’t like you, but please remember that I hired you.  We’re not friends.  I don’t have to like you, and you don’t have to like me.  It’s nice when we like each other, sure.  And we certainly started that way.  But I reserve the right to stop liking you when you don’t listen to what I’m saying, completely disregard my opinion, assume I’m greedy, and then try to manipulate me into doing what you want.  EVEN THOUGH WHAT YOU WANT IS NOT IN MY BEST INTEREST.  It’s in YOURS, certainly, but not in mine.

Emotional blackmail will get you nowhere.  This is no longer a relationship (business or personal) I want to be in.  Luckily, we only have to wait a few weeks before we are free of you.