a smug detective

In just over two weeks we will be moving! Finally, we are confident that we will own our own house soon. We have been camping, staying with friends, or staying with family for over eight months now. The changing of the seasons has been melancholic, because each change represents a chunk of time that has gone by while we still haven't accomplished our goal.

What were we thinking??!

Actually, I know what we were thinking. We were thinking that it would be cool to take a super-long road trip all around the continent (and it was). After that, we were thinking that we could buy a place with only a bit of stress and no heartache, in a reasonable amount of time. Alas! You should all send sympathy cards to my poor parents who had dealt with us for so very long.

Anyway I've done some real, concrete things to get ready to move, like calling to set up utilities and junk. It's exciting to have made it to this stage without disaster striking.

Every time I call someone in the town of Bridgetown (where we are moving to) I find I'm talking to a really nice, friendly person. It bodes very well and it's awesome! Like, I phoned the post office to set up delivery, and the girl I talked to was funny and chatty. She told me to pop in once we were physically there, but when I asked her where the post office was she was surprised. I had to explain to her that I wasn't from there, and she found it hilarious that I didn't know where anything in Bridgetown was. She gave me the address for the post office, and their address on Court Street is: 2. But don't worry, there is no number one, so I'll see it, she tells me. As though if there was more than one building I would get confused! Two. I love it.

I'm bracing myself for some annoyances when we do finally move. The current owner of the house seems to have treated it like a rental property - there's obviously been no upkeep done in the two years she has owned the place, and there are things she SHOULD be doing that I strongly suspect we'll have to deal with as soon as we get there. When we viewed the place in late summer, all of the storm windows were stacked in the basement. I'm willing to bet that, even with the sub-zero weather we've been getting, they haven't been put on the windows. I suspect the yard will look like a hayfield and will need to be mowed over before the snow hits. I'm CERTAIN I will have to scrub every surface of every room, which I'm willing to live with, but if the place smells distinctly of cat poo I'm going to put up a stink. Get it??! Ha! Ahem. Sorry.

Mark thinks I'm being mean by assuming all that stuff about the current owner, but I can't help it. Have I mentioned that we found out she's on the welfare brand of mortgages, for people who 'may have had bad credit in the past'? I had predicted something to that effect before we found out, and when we saw the mortgage information I felt very satisfied that I'd guessed correctly. Mark told me I was mean to be smug about the fact that she's got a "special" mortgage, but in my defense I am really only smug about the fact that I deduced correctly! Really!

In all honesty I'm not hoping for anything bad to happen to the current owner or anything. I'm happy that she was selling her house right when we wanted to buy it, and if she is respectful enough to leave it in a decent state when she vacates, I will write about it here and then Mark will be smug.