The reason for no posting is simple: I’ve been very busy transitioning to a new life. The buyers from hell finally signed the purchase and sale agreement and deposited a big fat check. B2 and I are now officially moving on to our separate lives. They took their good sweet time coughing up the money for the agreement. We were hearing a lot of excuses about them being in Belgium and the additional delays it impose but frankly the Mayflower could have gotten the money here sooner.
The total time from offer, to inspection, to getting a signed purchase and sale was about five weeks. B2 was ready to commit herself. I was preparing a rope for myself in the basement, but stuck on what dieing message I would leave. I finally figure out what it would be:
“Welcome to your new home! While I was leaving I noticed a peculiar smell in the basement. When you have time could you have one of your kids go downstairs and check out what is wrong? I think I might have left half of a ham sandwich down there. And let me offer my congratulations. I’m sure this house will provide you with many lasting memories!”
While the time-line to get these cretins to sign kept slipping, the closing date stayed the same, which meant I had to scamper to find a new place to live.
When I divorced B1 I left all my furniture with B1 and the kids. B2 brought all her furniture with her when she moved up to New Hampshire and filled our house.
So this is what I have: a few antique chests, photo albums of Jaywon and Adie, some crappy clothes, a ridiculously elaborate set of heavy duty tools (lathes, band saws, table saws etc) and cabinet making equipment, and Lucy my eighteen month old Aussie.
I initially wanted a cheap low maintenance condo. But it would look weird with no furniture and a nuclear powered table joiner sitting in the living room. Compromise one was to bag the garden style condo and upgrade to a townhouse. Probably this would be more expensive and give me more room than I could use, but at least I could find a full basement.
My realtor took me around and found lots of great places, but nothing fit for Lucy. She needed a small patch of yard to at least go outside and sniff on her own. She and I both go nuts on a leash. I could have easily bought something nice, but my instincts were telling me that I was heading for a disaster.
Lucy is a fabulous animal. She is a beautiful tri-colored miniature Australian Shepard who has a sweet temperament. But she is still an Aussie, which means that she has herding instincts that can’t be broken. She goes berserk wherever she sees legs moving at a fast clip. Joggers, bicyclists, and baby carriages send her over the edge.
So things were starting to get difficult. I wanted a condo with a patch of yard, out of view of other people doing athletic activities. My realtor was starting to think I was nuts.
Compromise two: Look for a condex. More expensive than a townhouse, but for the additional money you get the worst of both worlds: all the headaches of homeownership coupled by hassles with condex associations.
With a condex, you own half a house, and have to maintain it but you are captive to having a working relationship with the owner of the other half of the property. This means they need to agree with you on when to repair the roof, paint the house, and mow the lawn. It also means that they have to love my dog, Lucy, a lot. This seemed like it could be a stretch.
The final compromise: I bit the bullet and suggested that I start looking for a house. Much higher cost and taxes, lots more maintenance, but we are talking about Lucy, my soul mate.
The next day I got one of those Thoreau moments of complete madness and did an MLS real estate search for something way out in the sticks. Escape has been an undercurrent of my existence for a while. Amazingly something showed up: a cute looking open concept house on a lake in Greenfield, New Hampshire. I called up my real estate broker and we drove off that evening to look at the place. Greenfield is “Deliverance” country, but I was up for an adventure, conjuring the sociological implications of conversations with folks about the benefits of sleeping with sisters.
We get to a dirt road leading to the lake, take a few turns and see the house. A crappy looking mud colored ranch sitting in an unkempt lawn that looked like former wetlands.
But there was a bigger problem: there was no lake to be seen.
For grins we decided to go inside and look around. Apparently, “open concept” means that the washer and dryer greet you as you enter the front door. To get into the full basement you needed to crawl under the dining room table and lift up a hatch.
What a great idea for an icebreaker.
“Let me get you another bottle of wine in the cellar, excuse me for a moment. My that’s a lovely pair of panties you are wearing tonight!”
My realtor now knew I was certifiable.
She had a suggestion. There was a small bungalow across from where she lived in my town not more than a mile from our current house. We drove up a high hill into countryside I had not seen before. The house is on a high hill overlooking a valley.
It had an odd shaped piece of property with a guest cottage and an outhouse (for the cottage). The property had been for sale for a year and was at a great price. I offered 10 percent less than the list, which was accepted in a day.
So in a matter of a week I morph from a metro-sexual bachelor to Green Acres redux.
Inspection reveals carpenter ants, radon in the water, a fireplace that needs relining, and a septic system that is locked up like Fort Knox. And I need a huge fence put in to prevent Lucy from becoming road-kill.
I don’t care. I brought three of the five kids up to see it and they all love the place.
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