The exchanging of keys.

On Wednesday morning, our realtor called & said that all loans went through & we’d be closing on Friday.  After months & months of waiting, not knowing if the deals would all fall through, it came down to a 48-hour window of chaos.

By the grace of God, I was able to book a moving van & crew even though my friends & I would have carried the washer & dryer on our bare backs if we’d had to.  Granted, the skies opened not 5 minutes before our moving truck pulled up but that’s just how this entire process has gone, so nobody was really surprised.  It was a long, tedious afternoon to load the truck by at 10pm we shut it for good.  It drove off & Doug & I did one last tour of our little home.  I wasn’t as emotional as I thought I would be – maybe it’s just that I separated from this house four months ago & it hasn’t really been our home.

On Friday, we waited all morning for news that the first home had closed, the first domino to fall in a long line of we’re-waiting-on-you-bitch.  We pulled up to the attorney’s office & met the sweet couple buying our home.  It was good to put a face with the new family & Jennifer (the new owner, aka cleaner of the toilets & crab-grass puller) said that she knew that someone had loved that home dearly with how pristine it was for her walk-through that morning.  I teared up a little & told her that I simply hoped they’d love it as much as we did & that it would bring them happy memories.  Then she divulged that the bitch-face who nearly screwed up this entire thing, aka the buyer’s buyer, apparently showed ZERO remorse or apology for the cluster she created this summer.  When they asked her about her lein from the IRS that threw this all into a tailspin, she just shrugged & said she “didn’t think it would come up.”  Once again, we all said our blessings that I missed her by about 30 minutes because I was feeling scrappy as hell that morning.

But 15 minutes later, we signed the dotted line & wrote a check to cut our losses & officially gave up our first house.  It was an incredible feeling to simply be rid of such a huge stress in our lives.

But then again we wrote an even bigger check not twenty minutes later to purchase another house, so you know, I will never move from this house.  You will have to bury me in the backyard under the Magnolia tree when I am 95 years old, the end.

ahem.

We spent the rest of the weekend unpacking & doing the general move-in stuff like replacing shelving liner in the kitchen & scrubbing every surface & painting Harry’s room so that it’s an easier transition for him.  The house is gorgeous but definitely a diamond-in-the-rough after a decade of renters.  Like how it doesn’t have blinds for the windows & the spokes on the racks in the dishwasher are snapped in half & several of the light fixtures simply don’t work.  We have our work cut out for us but we are so, so thankful to be closing a life chapter for that little grey house in a small town.

& starting new chapters in a big blue house in a big city.