Once again it has been a while since I’ve sat down to blog – but this time it has nothing to do with my fear of being redundant, but rather my total lack of time to sit down at all. Everyone has heard the phrase “when it rains it pours”, but with Steve and I it is usually a monsoon. Why I ever thought this posting would be any different, I have no idea.
I could go on and on with the details of the last week and a half but lets be honest here: none of us have the time or the patience to endure that. Suffice it to say that after four long, highly stressful months of having our house on the market, it finally sold – the day before Steve moved to Ontario. It all seems like a blur now but that week was both the most stress-filled and joyous week of our adult lives, all at the same time. After a long, nerve wracking day of negotiations, when we finally had a signed agreement, everyone exclaimed, “Wow, you must be so relieved!” But to tell you the truth, I wasn’t. A month ago I would have been, even a month down the road. But to have that all happen when he was preparing to roll out of town, after having made all the arrangements and preparations to live apart for a while, we just ended up trading one set of stress and problems for another.
We had long since planned that I would drive up with Steve on his move and then fly home alone four days later. It was always a bittersweet trip in my mind; it would be so great to have four days alone road-tripping with my hunny (something we hadn’t done since our honeymoon almost 12 years ago) but at the end I would fly home and begin life alone and single-parenting for who knew how long. Then in just a few short hours that trip became an essential part of the process: a way to get me up there to find us a house ASAP. There were high points to the trip (the call on the road to tell us we had an offer for a PMQ, thus relieving some of the pressure to buy) and there were low points (when we saw the Q and realized it was not any place we would ever willingly make our kids live). We had the added stress of having the inspection done while we were gone, the hours to think about what could possibly go wrong and how we would deal with it over such a distance. But it was important to have all conditions met as soon as possible to enable us to purchase once we arrived at our destination. The nail biting was worth it though when we got the call in Fredericton that it was all good and the sale was final, making our evening out with old friends a much needed celebration as well as a wonderful reunion.
House hunting proved to be an exercise in self control once we arrived and began working down the list of available houses. Some were ok, some were down right nasty, but the overall impression that became clear early on was that Steve and I were looking for very different houses and were not going to agree easily. That is why when we walked into 21 Selkirk Drive we were both stunned when we looked at each other not halfway through the tour and said at the same time, “I want this house.” We were elated, and then quickly deflated when we found out the house wasn’t available until October 30th. It would take me far too long to get into details but lets just say that after some very fancy footwork and an offer they could not refuse (I mean after all, what are the chances we would ever again find a house we BOTH loved?) we finally ended up with a signed offer. A mere hour before I jumped on a flight back home. STRESS! There were some hairy moments – viewings arriving while we were filling out the offer, approaching our buyers and asking them to change the closing date here that we’d already agreed on and signed for, some conditions they wanted that made me nervous but couldn’t really rightfully refuse – but in the end we all got what we wanted.
Phew.
Well of course it isn’t over yet: we still have to meet our conditions. Although we have no reason to expect any problems, I still find it hard to relax until it is finalized and the house is officially off the market. We could have met all requirements by week’s end but in order for me to fit in an “official” house hunting trip we had to extend it until Monday so I could travel on the weekend. The military will not pay for it if you have officially “secured accommodations”. That is the part that makes me nervous, its not definite yet. I would have turned my weekend adventure into a HHT but of course work simply would not give me these three evenings off. So I came home to work three 4 hour shifts and am flying back Saturday. See what I mean? Nothing is ever cut and dry with us.
Of course I have lots to say about the actual drive up and the great adventure we had together, but I don’t really have the time to get into my uncharacteristic fascination with the wildlife fences throughout New Brunswick or my opinion on the only redeeming quality of the drive through Quebec (the availability of beer in gas stations) so I’ll just say this: things seem to finally be falling into place and although I will likely never stop stressing over something, at least now it’s the positive kind of stress.
My dear friend said it best when she said, “Michelle just keeps pulling horseshoes out of her ass.” So here’s to a few more of those lucky charms and then a couple weeks of worry-free summer before we pack up all our worldly possessions and bid farewell to Nova Scotia.
In the meantime, perhaps I will go buy an lottery ticket...
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