Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Random Bullets of Ketchup

  • We are buying a house! It is the house that the Renaissance Woman's boss told her about, that some friends of hers were selling.
  • Unlike my intrepid fellow blogging house-hunter Susan, I haven't been liveblogging the process. We have been too freaked out about it and have been holding our breaths until all the financing was approved and the inspection completed. And now it is done and the papers are signed and we just have to sign a few more papers and then have The Closing, which will be on July 22.
  • Oh, and then we have to move. Again.
  • Can we just have a moment of silence and contemplation as that previous bullet point sinks in?
  • Though this time we're only moving about three blocks, and no international borders are involved.
  • The new house is just over a block away from the Mermaid Girl's school, and a couple blocks from the library and the pool, and maybe even close enough to a co-op car pickup point that it'd be practical for us to join.
  • It really is true what they say about location. We wouldn't have driven ourselves nuts like we have over this house if it had been, say, a few blocks in the other direction.
  • What makes this house even close to affordable for us is that it has a 3-bedroom rental suite downstairs. So we are about to go from being live-in tenants to live-in landlords.
  • If you know of anyone who wants to move to Nearby Vancouver Suburb and is looking for a rental--maybe a family with a baby, or with, oh, say, a 7-or-8-year-old daughter--could you let them know?
  • Also, if you know anyone who wants to buy a sweet little house in the Neighborhood Otherwise Known as the Center of the Universe, in Seattle? It has no hallways. And hardly any closets. But it has new laminate flooring, and the best darned porch swing West of the Mississippi.
  • We all three sat on that porch swing yesterday, on our brief swing through our old town on the way back from a weekend camping trip, and said goodbye to the house.
  • MG cried a little. But then when we explained that we needed to sell this house to buy the new one, she brightened and said, "You mean we get MONEY when we sell this house?"
  • Somehow, despite our previous conversation on the topic, I guess that part hadn't quite sunk in before.
  • Very soon I have to email and give notice to our landlady, who is still trying to sell the house we've been living in for the past year. I am dreading it.
  • Our landlady is a truly Good Person. She's pretty young and I get the feeling she's worked hard and not had a lot of breaks and been a very good girl so far in her life. And she's trying to break out of that a bit, and sell this house, and travel, but the market isn't so great and she might not be able to get the price she wants, and now her best tenants (if I do say so myself) are leaving.
  • She probably would have to sell the house eventually, anyway. Apparently there are termites, which she can't have exterminated as she is a Buddhist.
  • Oh, and we are not buying a car.
  • At least, not yet.
  • We will get along with just the van, for a while.
  • Because, did I mention?
  • We are BUYING A HOUSE.
  • Yikes.