Author Archives: Alison

The Moving Odyssey, part One

The Moving Odyssey, part One

Sometimes you forget exactly how much goes into moving.  Holy cow, I’m not going to have a lot of free time in the next six weeks.  Our offer was accepted in Toms River, with only slight tweaking, and we’re going to have no trouble overlapping by a couple of weeks – signing on the new house on November 4th, signing for the old house on the 18th.  Plenty of time for painting, cleaning, etc.  Packing is another issue entirely, I’m afraid.

We’re using the same lawyer for both transactions, so that’s no problem.

We’re using the same bank for all the sundry bank things that need to be done – so far, so good.

The home inspection here is tomorrow, the home inspection there is Tuesday.

The kids have a four-day weekend because of the teachers’ convention, so we don’t have to take them out of school.

The movers’ estimate came in under what we expected. 

I still can’t exhale, though.  Not until it’s all over, so thank goodness for quick closings.  If I had to do this over 90 days, I’d have to be institutionalized. 

More Real Estate

More Real Estate

We made an offer on a house last night.  Pretty cut and dried, nice and easy as we could make it for the sellers, but they won’t be able to look at it until tonight, so we won’t know if we have it until after dinner.  I’ve had a headache for days.

The kids have been so good about the whole thing.  They understand the idea that we’re dragging them around so that they have a say in picking their new home, but Audrey stayed home from school today, she’s so exhausted.  (Carolyn was determined not to stay home, insisted on finishing her homework at 11:00 at night.)  I’m hoping that at some point in this process, it’s going to be smooth sailing for a change.

Sleeping is still a problem.

Sleeping is still a problem.

We spent hours looking at real estate yesterday.  This one was in a neighborhood we didn’t like.  This one was too small.  This one was too unattractive.  All the houses we saw had things we would need to spend money on to fix (or fix to our liking.)  In a desperation measure, we’re going to look in a higher price bracket and see if there’s anything perfect.  My brain is nigh on exploding.

Back when we bought the house we’re in, we were all ready to take on a fixer-upper, and we fell in love with this one – putting money into restoring it was a labor of love.  Taking a newer house and just adapting it and putting up with what we can afford to do – without being in love – isn’t going to work for us.  I guess we’re old enough now to be curmudgeonly about it.