nine hours and closing

At 8:00am tomorrow morning we will be closing on our first house. Starting late last night I started to get the faltering countdown panic. I was thinking about how my main goal in the next day was to get out of work early enough to get to the bank and get a cashiers check made out to myself for the closing costs that are not covered by the sellers. It starts small, then grows sometime in the morning when I realize that I am in a bit of a haze because A) I'm a tad wigged out and B) because I slept like shite (see article "A"). Well, the work thing was no big deal. On my drive to the bank I thought I was going to break down. You know, standard responsibility anxiety. Not quite the same as having the baby (which hasn't happened yet, but is on the way) because given our current situation I know with some certainty that we can afford to have a kid. But, moving from renting to owning and paying almost twice in mortgage what we pay in rent (but hopefully/luckily much less on utilities, or at least getting a hell of a lot more bang for our buck), and at the same time losing one somewhat steady income (though hopefully saving money on eating out and child care to balance that out), well you can see why I got a little jittery dealing with all those unknowns.

Anyway, I just about lost it on the way to the bank. I mean, I think I was probably a little bit on the "weird freaky guy" side of things when I was IN the bank, given that I walked in, asked for a bunch of money in a cashiers check made out to me, then chuckled nervously and said, "Yep. I'm buying a house tomorrow." To which the teller girl replied, "Oh. Well. Good for you."

So, check in pocket, I called my agent and set up the meet for our final walk through. I got there about 10 minutes before he did and sat in the air conditioned car. Then I got out and started wandering around the property as I usually do until he usually shows up, as he did this time. I dunno...you walk around a horse and look at its teeth, in its eyes, check the bottoms of the hooves to see how much tread is left, or something. So I wander around the house and try to look like I know what the hell I'm doing.

We walk through the house, test out the faucets, opening all the doors and cabinets, looking for that one "Ah ha!" that will be worth $20,000 but never comes. Everything seems to get pretty good. I'm getting a bit lighter in the stomach. We poke and prod and shake and rattle every damn thing that's nailed down, then we look over and under everything that isn't, making note "Yep, this thing is still nailed down!" or "Whew, this thing hasn't become unexplainably fused to the floor!" when appropriate. Everything was starting to look pretty good. The house still smelled a little of paint, but not horribly. They fixed the broken step in the basement (from when they put in the new boiler) and, unbeknownst me us, fixed the gouged tiles on the side landing (which also was done when they put in the new boiler). All in all, I started to feel pretty damn good about things.

By the time I left, I couldn't wait to sign my life away and enter into a whole new level of adult responsibility hell that is mortgage ownership.

Then around 9:40pm tonight I just happened to check my email and see that our landlord has notified us a mere 20 minutes ago that she has arranged a showing at 2pm tomorrow. Yep, can't wait to not have to deal with a landlord again!!!