Hello blog world, and sorry for my absense. The last week has been really surreal, with packing everything I own into boxes I didn’t think I had, buying a house, moving, and now unpacking and cleaning. I’ve been too busy with “Real Life” to live my online life, and for the 9 of you that follow this, I apologize. (However, I’ll note that no one else has really been blogging in my absense.) So, here’s a rapid fire overview of my last week or so.
On to packing. It sucks. Worse than packing is unpacking, in a place where you don’t know where anything is (when it’s packed,) and anything went (after it was unpacked, or, rather, moved out of the way so you can unpack something else.)
On to closing. Things I didn’t know before I bought the house… When you escrow taxes and insurance, your bills go to the mortgage handler, not you, and only the bankers really understand escrow math. The good news is that, with the tax credits the sellers paid me, less the extra money to seed the escrow account, I didn’t need as much money as I feared to do the closing. That’s good. Busey gave me a pen I got to keep at the closing. I also got a copy of the deed, the appraisal, and a bunch of copies of papers. Everyone else in the room got a check but me. That part was depressing. But I got keys and a garage door opener, and that’s cool too.
On to parties on the deck. I had a blast Thursday night entertaining people in my empty new house. The booze, the comraderie, the poker. I think people had fun, and I was having fun that they were having fun. That feeling continued through the weekend while the movers were helping me, and that’s a good sign this place is going to rock when I’m done moving in.
On to moving. I had an amazing moving crew, and we did an insane amount of work on Saturday in a short amount of time to move a bunch of stuff. Thank you thank you thank you. Thanks also to the ‘b list’ people who I didn’t need to call because the ‘a team’ kicked ass. UHaul trucks are scary, with their picky manual transmissions and slippy clutches. I was very thankful to be back into a car that shifted gracefully.
On to homeownership. It’s pretty neat. Because of the stress of moving, and the fact many things are not unpacked, and the general buzz of the week, the homeownership feeling hasn’t really sunk in yet. I ordered trash service and they gave me a large tote, and that makes me feel good. Odd how it’s the little things that give you that feeling. Also, I learned that no matter how much you ‘kick the tires’ before you buy a house, there are also things that are going to surprise you. Things you didn’t think were that bad when you signed the contract but you move in and are disappointed. Like the paint jobs in a few rooms, or the state of a few problems that got bigger after the home inspection, but not big enough to bother with the lawyers. I also have a big list of things to buy, and there has already been one trip to Lowes. (But it took over an hour of just aisle to aisle, and we ran into Stuck/Marc/Beth who were running errands separately.)
On to cleaning. It’s not like renting, where if you don’t hand it back clean, you don’t get your deposit. I thought I lived dirty, but these people really didn’t clean well at all, and the whole place is really bad. We’ve been working at it, but it’s pretty gross when you see all the dust and junk that was just in a small bathroom. (Tonight’s project.)
Basically, this whole home buying event is a whole lot of work and effort that, in the end, shouldn’t look like I did anything at all. *sigh* I’ll try to have moved-in pictures in the gallery by the end of the week, and I’ll also try to blog daily letting you know what little projects I’ve started and how I’m doing.
Oh, and the Cardinals rock. Good night.
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