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8:24 a.m. - 2002-06-27 Sigh. There is no way to make this saga amusing. Believe me, I have been trying to see the humour in it for the last 10 days. Actually I have been trying to see the humour in it for the last four months if you count our other two negotiations with these people. Although it got to the point of being absurd, there was nothing funny about it. I'll try to make it short to spare you some of the pain and suffering. Basically, the seller got a bee in her bonnet a couple of weeks ago and switched agents. The new agent is an obnoxious cowboy type who convinced the seller that the house was not worth the asking price, but it would be worth a lot more if they fixed it up with the finest in Home Depot remodeling! If they put lots of money into cheesey linoleum they could sell the house for a vast fortune!! The new agent is a specialist in quickie, yicky renovations. Before we could march over there with a new bid (which actually would have been our old bid, at which price the seller would have made a whole lot more money than she is going to make now) they had torn up all the carpet and cut down the holly bushes in the front yard. David, bless his heart**, smelled blood. He immediately sprang into action, calling the agent and telling her that we wanted to buy the house and we wanted to buy it without a thick layer of cheeseyness thank you very much. The agent went into fight mode, obviously wanting to prove to the seller that she could get her a really good price, that she could negotiate a hard bargain. (They even wanted us to accept the detached garage without a termite-free certificate! Now that takes balls!) Instead she just wound up alienating us so badly that they wound up compromising on everything and we actually are only paying $2000 more than our previous deal, and in exchange we are getting several thousand dollars worth of repairs which they originally didn't want to make, and a $2000 flooring credit at a local carpet and flooring store (hardwood floors, here we come!). And the seller is paying all the closing costs. All of them, every single one, including our home inspection and first years taxes and insurance - about $4000 of fees. We still have the home inspection and the mortgage to get through, so it isn't over yet. It could still fall through! Isn't that a joyous thought! The home inspection is Monday morning, and we're already pre-approved for a mortgage so hopefully we won't be in torturous suspense too long. And there's the post-contract signing emotional nuttiness. All our friends are baffled that we didn't buy a house in trendy Five Points, where they are all able to live because they bought their house before the trendy Five Points housing boom. They don't seem to understand that we are getting a 3000 square foot house in good condition with a two car detached garage on an acre of gorgeous, albeit jungle-esque, land in a dead-quiet neighborhood. For that price in Five Points we would get a 1500 square foot house in charming but terrible condition, with possibly a garage but probably not, on a postage stamp sized piece of land, with some cool people for neighbors but also some really noisy, drug-dealing students and rednecks with dogs that bark incessantly at 3 am. I am just at a point in my life where I want a sanctuary, not an all night rave. And I'm tired of being cool. It's expensive! It's funny, too, but I feel the same way I did before I got married, like I know it is the right thing to do and what I want to do, but yet...I hate commitments. I shouldn't be making a big commitment, I should be wandering among gypsies in Italy! I should be helping stray cats in India! I should be wandering the English countryside looking for remnants of Celtic culture! God forbid I should actually settle somewhere and be happy for a few years! My mother called me a couple of days ago and told me she and my Dad are thinking of changing their will. They are thinking about giving the store building to my two sisters and giving me the land their house is on. "Because we know you'll take care of all the dead cats!" chirped my mother, referring to the fact that their land is basically a big pet cemetary. This is just fine with me - I really love my parent's land and I've wanted it for years, but it did give me a strange jolt about my future. If my parents live another 20 years (which I hope they do, because I love them even though they drive me stark raving crazy at times) then I'll inherit the land just in time for Bruce and I to retire. I had this somewhat uncomfortable vision of living in Huntsville for another 20 years and then retiring to, and dying in, the town where I was born. The part about retiring in Mont Vernon didn't really bother me (after all, I could be buried in the very cool Mont Vernon cemetary!)as much as the part about living in Huntsville, or living anyplace at all really, for another 20 years. I don't know why. I lived in Boston all those years and felt ok about it. I guess buying a house has just made me restless. Also, I have become rather worrisomely materialistic the last few days! House buying does that, too! I found a great doorknob at Anthropologie that I just HAD To Have! And some cabinet pulls! And I can't wait to go to the carpet store and blather at them about what stain I want on my hardwood floor! **Now, there's a Southernism! 0 comments
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