Homeowners and It Feels So Good

We've officially been homeowners for one week!  If God created the world in seven days... well, okay, we can't really compare. But we've done a lot.

The day of the closing was the wackiest day; we will never forget it for so many reasons.  We woke before the crack of dawn to get Emmie ready and drop her off with my brother.  We then drove out to the house to meet the realtor for an 8 a.m. walk through.  In Illinois, we had mad rain for days and days.  Towns with rivers running through were overtaken.  Roads were washed out.  Schools were cancelled.  We were trepidatious about the state of our beautiful, finished basement.  Would it be a dirty swimming pool, like so many others on the news?

*Our* flowers

It was as dry as a bone.  We ran through the rooms in the house, opening cupboards and inspecting medicine cabinets.  The sellers left the house spotless - a huge relief for me.  Even better, on the outside, all the snow from winter had been replaced with perky green grass.  We were about to have our own lawn!  On one side of the house, blushing hyacinths and shy daffodils bowed at our arrival from their beds.  I was in love.

When we left to go to the closing, we started to have our doubts as to whether fate intended for us to really buy the  house.  What should have been a 25 minute drive turned into over an hour.  All the roads into the town of our destination were closed due to flooding.  Traffic was backed up for miles; we'd sit in traffic for aeons and then face a detour.  Bruce and I started to get cranky.  Then it started to hail.  Little pebble sized balls pelted our car.  While this chaos was going on, the manhunt in Boston was playing out over our radio.  Was the world ending?  We perversely joked that if we had to endure the terrible traffic and wild weather, at least we had something interesting to listen to.

I won't go into details about the raging emails that were flying back and forth between our lawyer and our broker.  To put it gently, our lawyer felt like our broker was unprofessional because the closing documents were late.  But to be fair, our broker secured a loan for us with a low rate and little money down in less than 48 hours from being rejected for the other loan. 

We all sat down and then we were told that the sellers would be joining us.  Awkward!  I got a little nervous.  I have this thing where I always want people's approval.  Would they like me?  What if they were weird and then I couldn't get their faces out of my head?  When they arrived, I immediately liked them.  They - honestly - could not have been nicer!  Oh, I forgot to mention that they left us a "Welcome to your new home" card and a box of good chocolates on the kitchen counter for us to find at the walk through.  They even wrote down their phone number in case we might have questions.  How sweet!  Turns out, they loved the house, too.  They had two of their three children in the house.  Their littlest daughter, they told us, was so sad to be leaving her "favorite" (only) bedroom.

"Oh," I murmured. "Well, tell her that our daughter, Emmie, will take good care of it."

They stared back at us a moment.  "Your daughter's name is Emmie?!" The wife exclaimed.  "So is ours!"  All four of us laughed at the strange and fitting coincidence.  Now they could tell their daughter that a "new" Emmie was moving in to the room.  It felt like a sign.

It wasn't smooth sailing from there, unfortunately.  The problems weren't done yet - our wire transfer didn't come through to pay the sellers.  We couldn't get the keys until the title company got the money.  Normally, we were told, it takes roughly 40 minutes for the wire to go from the mortgage lenders through the Federal Reserve Bank and into the title company's account.  We waited for three hours.  Our realtor told us to go to lunch and come back.  So we did.  By then, everyone had left, including our realtor and lawyer. 

Bruce and I sat in the title company's waiting room for two more hours.  I exchanged many phone calls with my impatient brother/babysitter where I pleaded, "Just a little bit longer, I swear."  I really wanted to have that moment, like on the HGTV shows, where Bruce and I are handed the keys, and we kiss, and are so happy because we bought our first house!  But instead, I started pacing.  I practiced my breathing exercises.  What the hell was going on?  Why was it taking so long?  The lawyer and realtor came back after their afternoon meetings.  Our lawyer, a bossy Italian lady, got on the phone and started yelling at people.  In that moment, I really appreciated her brashness.

At 4:15 p.m., after over six hours of excruciating anticipation, the wire transfer came through.  We got our keys!  And kissed.  And we were so, so happy to be first-time homeowners.


As good as a five-star hotel

Since then, we've spent many nights sleeping on an air mattress in the new place.  We go to Bruce's parents' house, fill up the cars with boxes, and come back.  We've gone to every home improvement store in a 15 mile radius.  Every night.  We've bought a fridge and had it delivered.  That was seriously so exciting!  The same day, we had internet installed.  That's how I'm writing this right now.  Bruce is currently taping up the kitchen so he can paint.  We picked the colors earlier this evening.

Bruce Almighty

Every time I unpack a box, I marvel at our things: "My coffee cup!  Our towels!  Ooh, our garlic press!"  We went to the storage unit and rolled the huge metal door open.  It was like a revelation.  There was our patio furniture, my china cabinet.  It's all new again.  It's all wonderful.  Because they're ours.  Slowly, this house is becoming familiar to us.  We are making it our home. 

Every night, we go to bed exhausted.  Between our jobs, taking care of Emmie, moving and fixing up the house, we are left with just a few hours for slumber.  We have bags under our eyes.  But it doesn't matter.  We might feel a little like zombies, but we feel more like ourselves than we have in a year.