finally!

All right. I have been way, way, way too worn out to write about anything whatsoever for the last couple of days, but last night my mom called me in a panic because she’d sprained her index finger clicking ‘refresh’ too often to see if I’d updated anything about the house (okay not really but she did say she’d been checking it a lot) so I figured I’d better bite the bullet and start typing. The welfare of index fingers the world over depends on it.

So. As you may or may not remember (if you’ve forgotten, scroll down. Duh.), we were supposed to settle on our new house on Friday. The 13th, if it matters (portent of DOOM, anyone?). Our homeowner’s insurance policy (and all of our other policies, incidentally—discounts ahoy!) is with Allstate. Our agent, the fabulous and ever-helpful Tola, was out of town last week, on some sort of fabulous and helpful vacation. So when we needed to provide our lender with proof of insurance—did you know they make you prove it before they give you money? The nerve—we called the generic 1-800-Allstate number. They got us a policy and promised to fax it to the lender. This was on Thursday night. It took three phone calls to these people before they sent anything at all. The lender finally got a fax from them at about seven PM Thursday night. He was out of the office by then, of course, so only got a notification that he’d gotten something, not the fax itself. He told us he’d gotten it and that we would settle on the morrow (okay, I don’t think Frank has ever said ‘on the morrow’ in his life, but you know what I mean). Our realtor set up a 1 PM settlement.

The next morning, at about nine, Frank called. The Allstate people had sent him a BLANK FAX. Four phone calls to them later, they helpfully sent him ANOTHER BLANK FAX. By this time it was almost noon, and we had to push back the settlement time to 4:30. Finally, the Allstate people got it together enough to send Frank our policy. But there was a problem—the policy didn’t have a premium attached. They informed us that it would take them 2 to 3 days (!) to put together the premium, and that our actual agent would be the only person who could do it any faster.

So we called Tola. The poor woman was in the doctor’s office, having blood drawn. She helped us ANYWAY, because she’s that cool. She called her office, and had them work out the premium and send the binder (it’s not actually a binder like the three-ring kind, since those don’t go through fax machines so well, but that’s what they call it) to Frank. The dutiful Wally (yes that’s his name), her assistant, did this. By this time it was 2 PM and we were beginning to sweat. See, once the lender has everything they need for the loan, it gets taken to ‘Docs’ (not doctors, documents) to be processed. This takes about an hour. Then it gets sent to the title company (aka the middle man slash notary), where it takes another hour for them to PRINT IT ALL OUT because it’s so freaking huge. So Wally sent our binder over, and then Frank called us. Wonderful Wally had forgotten to include a COVER SHEET, with all of the contact information for Allstate on it. Okay, simple. Right? Wrong. Through a series of bathroom breaks, miscommunications, misunderstandings, incompetence, and sheer stupidity, it took TWO HOURS to get the damn cover sheet faxed to Frank, at 4:10. The title company closed at six.

I’ll wait a minute while you do the math.

That’s right. Everything was finally ready for us, FIVE MINUTES after it was too late for us to settle that day.

Worst. Day. Ever.

So Saturday was spent rushing around making sure that we could stay in our house until Wednesday (we had to pay a rescheduling fee for the guy’s movers), since our new settlement appointment was at 2:30 on Tuesday (too late for our movers).

Sunday and Monday, we lived out of boxes and ate a lot of frozen pizza (virtually the only thing sold in the grocery store that is inexpensive and does not require kitchen utensils). Finally, Tuesday afternoon, we settled. It took two and a half hours. The sellers were nice enough (okay, she was—he didn’t say anything, since he wasn’t speaking to her since the divorce and seemed like a surly sort anyway). We got the keys, went back to the townhouse, and got all of the stuff we knew the movers wouldn’t move (the lawnmower, propane tanks, the weedwacker, gasoline, etc.), and took it over to the new house. We stowed that away, stopped by Home Depot to pick up a couple of things, and went to the Olive Garden to use the gift cards my mom had given us for just that occasion. Mmm, ravioli.

Wednesday, I had to go back to work (though it really sucked, after having five days off! I can’t wait until I start making enough money writing non-technical things to do it at home!) While I was working, Don stayed home and supervised the movers while they lugged our stuff to the new house. Which cost—hold your breath—seven hundred dollars. Which is, incidentally, seven hundred dollars worth of him not having to listen to me complain about having to move the stuff ourselves, or how I’ve just dropped the couch on my foot, or how this was all his idea anyway and why should I have to do any heavy lifting, or how I really don’t feel good and isn’t it hot? He said it was worth it. I think he would have paid more if he had to.

So I left the townhouse yesterday to go to work, and came home from work to the new house. It was a little surreal. Mostly so far I just keep wandering around going “It’s so BIG!” over and over again (actually my first reaction was to point out that the dining room furniture was in the wrong places, but that’s not important). The cat seems to feel the same way I do. We picked her up from Don’s parents last night, and she spent a good half an hour running from room to room on the main floor meowing piteously and looking confused. Then she figured out that there was an upstairs. Poor kitty. I think she’s mostly gotten over it, though she needed some reassurance this morning and will probably need a good solid snuggling session this weekend. Hopefully the cable will be turned on by then and we can indulge in some Jamaila-and-kitty Food Network-watching slash snuggling time. It’s her favorite thing to do on weekend afternoons.

Of course, that assumes that we’ve put the couch cushions back on by this weekend.