A Homeowner Once More

Things got a little crazy right at the very end, with the inclusion of a federal holiday that we all forgot about (whoops — it’s Presidents Day!). But now I can finally say that Apple and I are homeowners again. It feels like it’s been forever, but it’s only been a couple of months.

This past week has been quite a trip. While we were pseudo-vacationing in Florida, I received word from the mortgage company that our approval had come in. However, the lender still needed to coordinate with our title company on getting the settlement statement prepared. Because they waited until Friday — one business day before closing — to do this, there was some question whether it was actually going to get done on time at all. It did, thankfully, but by then it was too late for me to wire the money to the title company and have it fund on the same day. This caused some concern for a while, but in the end, funding the transaction one day late didn’t cause any grief at all.

We went to our closing appointment on schedule at 9 a.m. Monday morning, where I must have signed my name about a hundred times…no surprise there. After a pretty painless hour of document-signing and paper-shuffling, during which I mostly just re-read the same pages that I’d read draft copies of a dozen times already during the approval process, it was all said and done. Later that afternoon, the sellers came in and did their own signing, and our wire transfer finally went through on Tuesday morning. At lunchtime today, I dropped by the title company and officially picked up my key. The place is OURS!

I’d like to give a special mention to our realtor Gene, and the folks at the title company, for being about as pleasant as imaginable to work with during the whole affair. (Similar mention does not go out to the mortgage lender for having very poor communications skills, but what the hell…I got their money now, so I’m not holding any grudges.) It was really a breath of fresh air after what I believe were two very unpleasant (or at least mediocre) experiences with realtors in Florida.

Anyway, we would just move right in, but of course the sellers wanted to lease it back from us for a few days. However, I hear that they may not even be there for the full length of the four-day lease term; apparently they’ve packed everything already and their movers are coming tomorrow. They’re contracted tenants until Thursday evening, but if we can get in sooner, we will — if only just to wander through the place and enjoy our first taste of our new home. Although I only have the one key right now, I’m told that the rest of the keys, garage door and gate openers are inside on the counter, which will be the first thing that I verify when we get there.

Since the closing, I’ve spent the intervening day and a half on the phone (and Internet) with just about everybody, setting up utilities and services that we’ll need. The electricity, gas, water, sewer and trash pickup service begins on Friday. I’ve got Time Warner coming to install RoadRunner Turbo Internet service on Saturday evening. Our PODS with all of our belongings also arrive on Saturday, and then on Sunday the movers show up to help us unload all of the big stuff.

To cap it all off, this evening, we went down to Fry’s Electronics and officially ordered our new refrigerator, clothes washer and dryer, for delivery next Tuesday. In Texas, these appliances don’t convey with the property, unlike in Florida, so a buyer has to supply their own. We didn’t bring ours, which means additional expense, but at least for that price you get to pick the exact appliances you want. We picked out all Samsung stuff: A 26 cubic foot French door refrigerator with stainless platinum finish, and a Samsung front-loading steam washer and steam dryer set. (Those who know me will no doubt be unsurprised to learn that I’ve already read the manual for the fridge, and the washer/dryer manuals are coming tonight.)

I also got the car insurance transferred over, so that next week I can officially get going on that next odyssey. First thing will be to replace the Florida-grade (read: illegal) window tint on the Mazda. Then get the car inspected. Then take the inspection certification and insurance info to the Lewisville DMV office and get the registration and plate. Then take that to a state office to get Texas driver licenses. Then, finally, get Toll Tags from the NTTA. The whole process is probably gonna take a week or two…and then when the GTO finally gets here, I’ll have to do some of it yet again. But it’ll be worth it, for sure. I’ll feel legit!

Tomorrow’s my birthday, and it’ll be a decidedly more pleasant birthday than last year’s, wherein my declaration of “Fuck it” was basically the only thing that saved my thirtieth birthday from being just another humdrum day of stress and worry with no real outlet or perspective. Even though some of the same things that were irritating me in last year’s birthday post again reared their head this year — chief among them, issues with our health insurance — my reaction to them today is vastly different, because I have context. I have more friends, I have other perspectives and I have a blanket of optimism I can look to whenever shit hits the fan. I didn’t have that before, because we essentially lived in a vacuum, seemingly surrounded by incompetence. No longer.

I’ll go into my thirty-first year with a much, much greater sense of happiness, purpose and inspiration than I’ve had in at least ten years, and that is really saying something. Something awesome.