Susan’s Journal

The title of the post says it all. It’s raining here, solid, for the first time in literally months. It feels wonderful. And though some new home-builders would be upset that rain would slow down the production of their house, it thrills me. Slowing down the building of our new house gives us a little more time to sell the one we have, and the rain will hopefully make a tiny bit more green the dead lawn that we have at our old house. I love the rain.They haven’t done a whole lot to our house in the past week or two, and I found out why; there’s some kind of home-inspection going on today (will it still with the rain?) and then after that, they are supposed to start work on the new breakfast-nook window. I’m leaving Tuesday morning for a week, so I can imagine by the time I get home it will suddenly seem like the house is half built.

That is, of course, unless it keeps raining, which I hope it does.

The temperatures are going to be below 100 for the first time in ages. It’s going to be a very welcome change. Hopefully it will bring more people out looking at houses while we are away for the Labor Day weekend with friends. We’ll see.

Pack, pack, pack, pack. That feels like all I have done for days–and I still think of all the things we need to pack, and I felt like I haven’t even made the tiniest dent in the house.Tomorrow, Thursday, they are coming to repair the foundation. I’m terrified. How many windows will break? What kind of plumbing leaks will it cause? How many more thousands of dollars will it cost us? I just don’t even want to think about it–it makes me want to throw up.

But what makes me want to throw up worse is selling our house period. I feel like no one would ever want it. I feel like it will be impossible to sell. I wish we could board the doggie and kitty for two weeks and pray that someone made an offer on it in that time.

Scott keeps telling me–don’t worry about the old house–I will take care of that–I want you to worry about the new house. But there’s nothing to do on the new house–everything’s picked out, we’ve taken care of the iron gate/grass/sprinkler thing… so what’s left? The old house. I can’t stop thinking about it.

After the foundation’s fixed, a guy’s going to come and paint; after the paint’s done, a guy’s going to come and put down new carpet and tile. Will it even make a difference? Will anyone want to buy our old old house?

I think I’m going to go throw up now.

The night after we signed the contract on our new house, I laid there in bed, too excited (and too nervous) to sleep. I walked through the house in my mind, picturing all the things we had picked out for the inside of it. I pictured sitting in the breakfast nook, in the back-left corner of the house, and gazing out the window at the kids playing in the yard. Then it dawned on me.

The wall just to my left was solid–no window. More than half of the yard, because of its wedge-shape, is on the left side of the house. So the kids could be around on that side of the house, but I couldn’t see them. If only there were a window on that side of the breakfast nook as well… not only could I watch the kids out of it, but it would stream light into the breakfast nook–and into the living room as well.

The next morning, I sent our realtor an email. I told her I knew it sounded nuts, but I wanted to see if they could put a window on that side of the house. She said that since the [plywood] walls were up, she didn’t think they would, but she would ask.

She asked… and the builder said yes… for the low low rate of $500.

I was so excited I about shit myself. This is really going to happen. This is going to be our house!

Yesterday after work, I picked up the kids and fed them dinner while Scott did some work around the house. After we ate, I packed their bikes into the van and brought them down to the new house neighborhood for a bike ride.

Dylan got a little fussy, since he had just learned how to ride his bike without training wheels before going to Maine; but once he finally got it, he took off down the walking trail with Rain. The paths wind around between the baseball diamonds behind our new house. It was quiet, shady, peaceful, and home. We saw a boy a couple years older on his bike, and Rain exclaimed, “Look Mommy, he’s not using his handlebars!”

Rain decided she had to go potty, BAD of course, so we went down to the front of our new house, where a port-a-potty was. She went inside, and as she (and Dylan, who had decided to join her) came out, a van drove up. An attractive young woman came out, and she brought with her the sold sign. Our sold sign! It was so silly, yet so exciting to see her bang it into the ground. I had the kids stand by it, and I took their picture. I didn’t realize until we got home that Dylan had stood in front of part of the sign, making it look like it said “old” instead of “sold.” How classic and wonderfully historic is that. I love it.

We didn’t venture off too far down the trail beside the diamonds (I was carrying three water bottles, my camera, my phone and keys, darnit I should have brought my fanny pack) but they still had fun. The sprinklers came on in one of the baseball diamonds, and they wandered over there and ended up getting soaked. Picture them, standing there, side-stepping to stay in the sprinkler while it went around. It was over 100 degrees outside. Finally I told them it was time to go, so I packed them up in the van with their bikes.

I wanted to see where the walking trail went–if it snaked around behind the baseball diamonds and just came around in a big circle–so after loading them in, we went riding around the front of the junior high school. I saw our house in the distance, and I saw where the walking trail went. I was so thrilled–the walking trail came right around to a huge playground! And a volleyball court! And a basketball court! And picnic tables! I was so thrilled–this goldmine–a huge park, right behind our house, with no streets between our house and this wonderful place!

I can’t tell you all how excited I am about our new house!

I guess now would be as good a time as any to get back into blogging, right? With all this information swirling around in my head?

Last night, we signed the contract on a new house. We put a thousand dollars down and signed a million papers. And on approximately October 13th, we will be the owners of a brand spankin’ new house.

A new house. A dream come true. This will be the first brand new house we have ever owned. Though I only had a small selection without upping the price, I was able to pick out the countertops, the paint, the carpet, the vinyl, the tile, all that stuff. It was pretty freakin’ awesome.

Now the big scary part is that we have to sell the house we’re living in now. I’ll clean it and pack it and stuff, but the selling it part I’m leaving up to Scott. This whole situation is extremely nerve-wracking, but with a little luck things will go okay.

This is the first of what I’m sure will be a slew of pictures you’ll be seeing around here in the next few weeks. Enjoy!