And now I can, you know, start living in the house I bought. Here’s part of a poem about it:
Hold on, dear house,
(from Robert Creeley’s “This House”)
And now I can, you know, start living in the house I bought. Here’s part of a poem about it:
Hold on, dear house,
(from Robert Creeley’s “This House”)
As you read this, I am on my way to CLOSE on my HOUSE that I bought by MYSELF.
Up until yesterday afternoon, I was fully prepared to have everything implode (and then this would have happened), but the closing costs stayed as estimated, the mortgage insurance didn’t increase, and I ordered a cashiers check, the heavens opened, and I could only shout, like Elwood, “The house! The HOUSE!!”
Because YES! YES!! JESUS H. TAP DANCING CHRIST, I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!! I’M A HOMEOWNER!!
And god bless the United States of America!
Let me just start with a house update: I have a closing time set for tomorrow. This is a step farther than I got before, when I had a day but no time, but I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop and by god, if anyone tries anything funny with the final closing costs, I am walking. (If that happens, I’ll just pretend that my construction deposit was for a vacation. A vacation that nearly gave me a stroke.)
But going to back to last week, when I was going to close and didn’t, I was trying to sleep Friday and ended up on the Fashion Fabrics Club site, where they had some really great stuff for spring, and I thought, “Maybe I can’t buy a house this weekend, but I CAN buy fabric.” And I did.
I bought some big print sateen for a shift dress, inspired by a Lily Pulitzer dress:
I bought some big dots to make a skirt for that Cynthia Rowley bodice I abandoned in the summer (it should work out to be similar to this dress from Boden):
And I bought a Japanese print knit, because I will take anything in a Japanese print.
Now it just needs to be spring. And I just need to unpack my sewing room.
Today things will either go smoothly with the revised appraisal and my loan will be squared away–or I can finally yell at someone on the phone the way I’ve always wanted to. I really don’t know which scenario to expect. I didn’t expect any of the loan drama over the last month, so maybe I’d better expect the worst. Should I even expect….the Spanish Inquisition?!
As it turns out, I am not closing today. Or Monday. I’m “probably closing next week.” (The appraisal, which came back MONDAY, did not have enough comparables to satisfy the mortgage insurance company, a fact which the loan officer didn’t notice until YESTERDAY.) I know I shouldn’t be surprised by more drama and misinformation and mendacity* with this house purchase, but, like Charlie Brown, I keep expecting it to be different.
On the bright side, it was supposed to snow this weekend anyway and now I have some more time to pack. With the delay, I may even have a real mailbox installed and waiting! Stay tuned!
*My gay best friend and I are having a good time quoting Tennessee Williams lines about “mendacity” to each other: “Mendacity is the system that we live in!” “What’s that smell? Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?” It’s a good time.
I had the inevitable moving meltdown last night: I ran out of boxes again (and still have all my books and most of my dishes to pack); I learned that I may not close on Friday as planned, which would give me just Monday to not only get into the new house but to get out of the apartment and clean it; and as of right now I still don’t have a mailbox at the new house–the builder insists that the postmaster isn’t returning his calls, but until the postmaster comes to the site and orders a mailbox, I don’t have a recognized address. Which means that I can’t update any billing information or get utilities turned on.
However–this is all temporary. I hate moving (and uncertainty) with the fiery intensity of a thousand white-hot suns, but I will find more boxes, most of my bills are online anyway, and if I have the weekend to pack, I won’t feel as rushed. I saw this image making the rounds on the lifestyle blogs, and you know what? Everything IS going to be amazing. I’m going to be a homeowner!
Oh yes, this week I am packing for a Saturday move.
Toby is helping, of course.
While I pack, I have the Semisonic “Closing Time” song in my head, but I’m making up new lyrics.
moving time,
pack up all the boxes
and stack them up in your house
moving time
time for Dad to rent a truck
and drive everything across town
I do like a line of the original lyrics, though: every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. Oh, the profundities of 90’s pop.
Here’s another veggie hat for another coworker’s expected little girl. This one is a tomato, because I had red yarn leftover from the owl sweater and green yarn leftover from knitting for my impending nephew.
I’m still all over the place for sizing baby things–I was in a store looking at newborn sizes and they looked impossibly tiny. But I guess babies are, indeed, small. This hat is on the small side, just in case.
Saturday would have been Edward Abbey’s 84th birthday. (I think he’s still waiting for someone to take out the Glen Canyon Dam.*) Here are two of my favorite quotes of his:
“Completely passive, acted upon but never acting, the desert lies there like the bare skeleton of Being, spare, sparse, austere, utterly worthless, inviting not love but contemplation.”
and
“A drink a day keeps the shrink away.”
Amen, brother.
*dear FBI, if you are monitoring the interwebs, I’m not a terrorist. That was just the plot point of The Monkey Wrench Gang.
1. The latest report from people in the know tells me that I may be closing on the house as early as February 4th. That’s next Friday. The Friday one week from today. Oh my god.
2. Look at this fabric that has flying squirrels and Sphinxes on it. What a shame I need to buy appliances instead of fabric.
3. Let’s all think of this quote from Ayn Rand, because Ayn wouldn’t panic at the thought of moving:
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.