So, the house situation, oh what a story it is. But first, an adorable picture of yours truly and Miz Poo. Occasionally, I lean very far back in the chair by my desk. Miz Poo sees me leaning back, sees that my chest and stomach form a (somewhat) flat surface, and decides I mean for her to climb upon me and take a nap. As such:
She hadn’t quite gone to sleep yet, but she was heading in that direction.
Okay, back to the house situation. Here’s how the story goes. As I mentioned, Fred made an offer on this house 
while I was in Maine last week. As I also mentioned, there were two other offers on the same house on the same day, and our offer was not the one taken.
On Tuesday of this week, we went looking at houses, and saw one that we really, really liked, especially the back yard. 
This house is in the same subdivision as the one above and had been empty for a few months. You’ll note the cute front porch. We looked through the house, talked about it, and decided to make an offer. The only thing that bothered us was that there was a $5000 "decorating allowance" built in to the asking price, and though most of the rooms needed to be repainted (the living room was a HIDEOUS green color), we were concerned that there was something wrong with the house we didn’t know about. We decided we were being paranoid and made the offer, and commenced waiting. And waiting and waiting and waiting. The guy selling the house was travelling on business and hard to get hold of. Plus, Wednesday was a holiday, and so we waited impatiently.
When we still hadn’t heard anything by Thursday afternoon, Fred called our realtor and told him that if we hadn’t gotten an offer by 5:00, we were withdrawing the offer. We waited and waited some more. Finally, Jeff called and said that they’d accepted the offer, except that it needed to be rewritten so that the $5,000 decorating allowance wasn’t shown on the front page, or some such shit. We made plans to meet him at the house, look around some more, and sign the offer.
Thank god.
We went over to the house, realizing halfway there that we hadn’t brought our copy of the original contract (Fred wanted to compare the two before we signed), and so I dropped him off and ran back home.
When I got back to the house, Fred and Jeff were upstairs looking at the outside of one of the bedroom windows. Fred gave me a disgusted, pissed-off look and tossed something down at me.
I went in the house and found that Fred had discovered that the wooden frame around every fucking window in the house was rotting and would need to be replaced.
$5,000 wouldn’t even begin to pay for that.
"Fuck. That," we decided, and Fred on a whim asked Jeff if he’d show us a house that he (Jeff) was listing around the corner and in the same subdivision. We went and looked at it.
And loved it. The back yard was as good, if not better, than that of the other house.
Jeff had to leave, ’cause he had an appointment to show the very same house to another client. Fred and I came home and talked about it, and decided to make an offer. Well, guess what? That’s right, the client who Jeff had had to go meet to show the house to also made an offer.
We met Jeff at the house again at 9 that night (and y’all KNOW that that’s practically past our bedtime!) and wrote up the offer. Because we knew that the other people had also made an offer, we offered the asking price.
What sucked was that Jeff couldn’t really offer us any guidance, because not only did he represent the sellers, he also represented the other buyers. Our original idea had been to offer $2,000 below the asking price, but because we knew there was another offer out there, we offered the asking price and that the sellers pay closing.
So then what? That’s right, we had to commence waiting once again. The sellers were out of town for the weekend, and though Jeff had called and left a message for them to call him, they didn’t and didn’t and didn’t. Friday went by slowwwwwwly. We decided that a watched phone never rings (witness the fact that Fred always, always calls while I’m out at the street getting the mail), and went out to dinner.
No one called while we were out. No one called for most of the evening, except when Jeff called to let us know he still hadn’t heard from the sellers. We went to bed, and when the phone rang at 10:04, I went flying (naked) through the house to Fred’s bedroom to see if it was Jeff.
It was not.
This morning we got up and did our usual thing, and still no call. Jeff called mid-morning to tell us that he still hadn’t heard anything.
We reassured ourselves that if they accepted the offer, that meant we were meant to live in that house, and if they didn’t, it meant we weren’t. Yadda yadda.
I WANTED that damn house.
At 12:46, Jeff called and said to Fred "I’ve got some bad news."
"What’s that?" Fred said.
"You just bought yourself a house!" Jeff said.
Thank. God. So we did a little happy dance and drove out to look at the house.
The funny thing is that not only are all three houses that we made offers on in the same division, but the second one is about 2/10 of a mile from the first, and the third is about the same distance from the second. And they’re all less than 2 miles from the house we’re in now.
Talk about not wanting to leave your comfort zone.
Not only is it in the same school district so that the spud won’t have to switch schools, but we could pretty much open the back door and toss the spud over the fence onto school property. The spud’s room will be about twice as big as her current room (in fact, it will be bigger than the master bedroom!), and there will even be room for a small guest bedroom.
We have big, big plans for the backyard, to include a rose garden, a bulb garden (that’s more MY plan than Fred’s), some fruit trees, and a small fish pond. We’ll be saving about $200 on the mortgage, and since the house is smaller, we’ll be paying less on electricity, gas, and water. We may or may not eventually put in a pool, but haven’t decided.
I am SO fucking relieved that we won’t be homeless at the end of the month. Though I guess we wouldn’t have been anyway, since we had a sweet offer from reader Terry in Texas, who offered to let us live with her.
Would’ve been one hell of a commute though, I’m thinking.
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The spud and I, in the bathroom in the Bangor airport. See me gritting my teeth? I grinded (ground?) my teeth so often that day that I’m surprised I didn’t grind them down to little nubs.
This is a former church in downtown Lisbon Falls. A family now lives there. Wouldn’t it be cool to buy a CHURCH and fix it up right? Talk about your big-ass living room!
The Kitty Korner, home of the best damn Ham Italians in all of Maine. Trust me. They have some damn fine whoopie pies, too.
The spud, my dad, and Brian. We went out to breakfast at the Country Buffet in South Portland (mmm!), and my dad and the kids wore matching Old Navy t-shirts.
The spud, my mother, me, Brian, and my sister Debbie. Still in front of the Country Buffet. I believe we were all ready to go home and take naps.
The spud and Brian in the back of Debbie’s car. She’s selling it; that’s what the sign in the back window is for. Let me know if you’re in or around Maine and have need of a 5-speed Toyota Corolla. Only $1500, and it’s in pretty damn good shape.
The 
My parents’ dog Benji, and my brother’s dog, Cola. Cola is one seriously hyper dog. And Benji was feeling particularly amorous that day. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any pictures of the little dog humping the big dog, damnit.
My mother, the spud, Brian, and Debbie. They were showing off the size of their feet and hands. My mother, Debbie, the spud and I all wear size 9 shoes.
