You know how as soon as you light up a cigarette your bus comes along? (Not that I would know first hand, of course, because I don't smoke and never have. Hi Grandma!) Or how as soon as you get up to go to the bathroom in a restaurant your food arrives? Or when you've finally had it and send a scathing email to someone demanding to know why they haven't done so-and-so at the exact same time an email arrives from them explaining their dog just died?
My last blog about house-hunting was very down-in-the-mouth, I-don't-want-to-play-anymore, because it was written just a couple of days after we fell in love with a house only to find out that mere HOURS before we saw it, someone else had made an offer and was already under contract. The house had been on the market for TEN MONTHS and the day we saw it, someone else made an offer. That is just wrong. So I threw myself a full-blown pity party complete with pointy hats.
Then, the day I posted that last blog, our realtor called to let us know the other buyers pulled out, and were we still interested?
Wood eye, wood eye!*
A flury of action ensued during which all emotional thought processes were shut down in an effort to Get That House before anyone else could. We offered. We shook with anticipation and fear. They counter-offered. We debated. It was about $15,000 more than we said we'd spend. Well, more than we said we'd spend the last time we raised our limit. Technically it was, oh, $42,000 more than we wanted to spend. But why split hairs? The house was so close, so close... so we said yes.
HOLY SHIT.
We just went over-budget to buy the ugliest house on the block. While I understand this is a good position to be in when it comes to real estate value, well, it is the UGLIEST house on the block. But I love it. I love it like we all love E.T. and pugs. In a roomful of Miss USAs it is the woman with a hare lip. But like the hare lip our house was just victim to genetics. The houses around it had the good fortune to be born during the Victorian era with gingerbread touches and wide porches. Our house was born during the architectural short-bus decade: the 1960's.
There are a few other concerns as well. After all, you can't expect to have everything when you go only $42,000 over budget. For example, the driveway is so steep that climbing it could be a new Olympic sport. We can't get the car up it, and getting ourselves up it requires considerable effort. If we are in this house more than ten years we will have to rig some sort of pulley system to deliver our groceries to the front door. We ain't spring chickens anymore, after all.
But that was nothing compared to the issues that came up during inspection. Well, one issue in particular. Well, no, I correct myself again - dozens (hundreds?) of issues: RATS.
When I think of rats, I think of the boat-sized monsters with whom I shared New York City begrudgingly, and only because they were bigger than me and had sharp, nasty teeth. I've seen rats the size of footballs. I can't stand rats and I don't even want to think about them burrowing in my new, really expensive house.
When I was living in New York I had a mouse infestation. At first I thought it was only one mouse and I thought that was sort of cute, and I would hear him rustling around under the sink and enjoyed having what I thought of as a second pet. Knowing me I probably named it, but I don't remember. But then somebody with a sharper intellect than mine explained, "Karen, there is NEVER just one mouse."
This encouraged me to brave foraging under the sink to see just how badly my hospitality had been abused. It had been REALLY abused. Like, beaten to within an inch of its life abused. There were droppings everywhere. They had gotten into the oven and burrowed condominiums into the insulation (typical of a New Yorker, I never used my oven, so they were able to enjoy their home completely unmolested). I called an exterminator in a panic, and he brought even worse news - they were all over the apartment. They had chewed up the mattress in the pull-out couch. The entire place had to be completely taken apart, cleaned, fumigated, plugged up... it was beyond nasty. But the worst part was perching precariously in the middle of the living room (I was too grossed out to sit on the couch) watching TV in the evenings and hear a sudden SNAP. And I knew one of the little mice had just lost its head and, worse, I was going to have to dispense with the bloody mess.
Now, imagine that whole scenario but with a rodent ten times bigger and with red eyes. Yeah, I don't want to, either.
The inspector went on to list for what seemed about two weeks the myriad of other issues with the house that, as Proud Homeowners, were now our problem. I started to break out in a cold sweat; it seemed awfully daunting to me. He assured us this was "perfectly normal" for a house this age but I didn't see how that was any comfort. Let's see, I just offered to pay a crapload of money for the honor of spending every spare moment doing things I hate, like yard work. And things I anticipate I will learn to hate, like unclogging a 45-year-old toilet.
Remind me again why I wanted to be a homeowner? Why is this part of the American Dream? Why wouldn't I just keep renting so that whenever anything goes wrong it's never my problem? Why not - wait, what's that? You say it has a japanese soaking tub in the master bath?
Wood eye, wood eye!
** A man with a wooden eye is unable to get a date. A friend of his encourages him to come along to a dance.
"Nobody will want to dance with me," the man lamented.
"Just find a girl who also has some sort of affliction and ask her to dance. She'll probably be grateful to be asked," the friend suggested.
The man agreed to go to the dance. He looked around the room and saw a woman with a hare lip and got up the courage to approach her.
"Uh, ahem," the man said shyly, "I was wondering if maybe you'd like to dance."
"Would I? WOULD I?" the woman cried happily.
"HARE LIP HARE LIP!" the man yelled.
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