This, That, and Oh Yeah, That Other Thing
So, just because planning a wedding isn’t stressful enough on its own, Mike and I are also trying to buy a house. Great idea, huh? The whole thing is making me ridiculously anxious. I’ve never felt so out of control about something before in my life. There are strangers who have more power than is right over my brain.
And yes, I know, as buyers we hold a much larger chunk of the power.
But whatever.
Due to the time of year when we decided to buy a house and it’s relative closeness to the time of year when our lease runs up, we have been on super-speed. In less than a month, we toured at least 30 homes in 3 towns, including one vicious day of 9 open houses, went back to two houses twice each, decided on house A, decided on house B, decided on house A, decided on house B (thank goodness our agent is patient with us), and finally stuck with house B. Oh, and we put in an offer. And they countered. And we countered, they countered, we countered, they countered, and we all settled on a price that makes no one happy. And we had an inspection. And a plumber come out for an estimate. And picked a lawyer.
And this is where we stand, less than a month from the day we applied for a mortgage pre-approval and no more than a month away from closing, impatiently awaiting a lawyer-approved purchase and sales agreement (P&S for the suave, which I totally am not). I have been assured that I will feel no better when the P&S is handled. That is especially disappointing, because I was really hoping to get some sleep after Thursday.
Speaking of which, we should all be sad for my poor innocent fiance (by the way, that word is totally not in my real vocabulary yet). My inability to sleep is wrecking havoc with his perferred consciousness state.
So, here I sit at my desk, eating half-melted thin mints (not the cookies, the actual mints covered in chocolate), wishing I could (a) sleep and (b) have everything be all done and settled. The concept of handing the majority of my savings account over to someone, even in exchange for a house (which was the purpose of said savings account) is making my stomach do loops. I will feel better when it’s all bought and paid for, and the keys are in my hands.
Well, except for the creeping fear of my house burning down, blowing away, or being burgled…
That ginormous (which is actually in the M-W now) outlay of cash can be pretty daunting. I think it took me 6 months to actually get to the point where I was confortable in the house, but that was mostly due to the mass amounts of construction I had, who am I kidding, have to do and had no time to because of the death march at work. At worst you’ll feel better when you get your tax refund next year.
first, i just love the word burgled.
but seriously, congratulations, even though it is stressful! soon it will all be over and you’ll have a house and be settling in and then it’ll all be good. you’ll know when you cry your first night there because you’re oddly homesick. after that it’s all good. (that happened to me. but i also had a huge pile of trash on my front lawn that the previous owners were jerks about. that won’t happen to you. don’t worry!)
Dave – I can only hope that the tax refund (as opposed to me owing the government which happened this past year… grr…) will make me a little less money-cranky. But luckily, assuming this house goes through for reals, we won’t have too much construction to do initially. Long term? Tons. But only a few weekends of work to make the place, or at least the first floor, feel homey.
Laura – I put that word in just for you! Previous… trash? Ugh! I don’t know, these guys haven’t exactly been super-awesome-friendly about the whole thing, so there might be magical mystery trash. *whimper* Though I really can’t wait for sleeping in a new master bedroom that actually fits all of our furniture…
Silly girl, take it from me (an insurance dork) that if your house does in fact burn down, blow away or is burgled it will suck, but your insurance company will pay for it!
I also liked your use of the word fiance! But, don’t feel too bad for Mike, he sleeps too much anyway.
Trash shouldn’t be that big a deal either. 1-800-Got-junk does a great job cleaning up. I’ve used them twice in the past year and isn’t too expensive. Yay for construction.
Just wait until you spend your first week in the house and you go “I paid for this?” WTF? And then you start the “renovations”. It all goes into the merry land of oz from there.
Kate – Yes, Mike does normally spend quite a large number of hours asleep, but I find it’s best to let him do that at night, lest he take random afternoon naps mid-sentence.
Dave – Thanks for the junk tip. We will definitely be needing someone to remove some old smelly carpets.
Joe – Renovations don’t scare me! I’m Master Paintress! Goddess of all painting and other cosmetic tasks! (And Mike happens to be pretty good at constructiony things.)
I can’t wait to see your “broken things” and “broken things fixed” sections of your blog when you get them ;-)
Oh dear…
Even just making the list in my head of things to get and things to do on the house that we won’t technically own for a month makes me nervous-like. But it is going to be awesome, that I am pretty confident about.