Are we at all sure that it's not secretly Friday the 13th?

Yeah. It's been one of those weeks. I'm thinking that instead of having the bottle of wine when we look at the amoritization chart (as my dad jokingly said) I should just cut to the chase and start drinking now.

Because, for a 24 hour period, there was a situation in which we had committed to buy a house but had no funding lined up. None. Because the bank our broker went with did an about-face and decided that no, they weren't going to adhere to the guidelines of our first time home buyer's program after all (and how nice of them to tell us a month before closing. /sarcasm off.)

It does look like things are looking up, but slowly. Our broker is hot on the trail of another bank who actually will write the loan the way it needs to be written. Now if he can just do that before our first-time homebuyer's program runs out of funds....yeah, who, me worry? :-P

The one upside of this is that I'm finally starting to hear the family horror stories behind when my parents bought their first home. (I was four or five, so yeah, I missed a lot of this.) It's been pretty funny by turns, and strangely reassuring to know that no, this isn't really that unusual. Odd. Annoying. And damned inconvenient...but not unusual.

So now, we wait. As of now, our COE is May 18th. That date may change, but that's where we are now. And in the meantime, we hope. :)

Well, now about a month from closing...

..yeah, our close of escrow (COE) got extended due to the requirements of our first time homebuyer's program. Which is fine, but frustrating...still, we plan to be in that house for many years to come so a few more weeks won't matter. On the upside, First Unethical Bank of California decided to go ahead and fix the few things that needed to be fixed (like the water heater, the leaking pipe under the kitchen, and the toilet. YAYYY) All in all, not too bad for a house that's almost 70 years old.

Today we had such plans---we were going to take the wee one to the zoo. Except that a) the wee one and some killer indigestion kept my hubby up last night and b) hubby on three hours sleep does not a pleasant day make. So he slept in, I kept the wee one off her daddy, and we went to a garage sale instead this afternoon.

We really hadn't planned on the garage sale--it was one of those "Hey, they're having a garage sale, let's stop" things, so we did. I scored with a $2 CD of an Irish artist named Sinead Lohan and a scarab paperweight. (Who, me, eclectic? :-)) And we had a good time, which is more important.

We also had company today...of the sort that makes you go, "Huh?" My friend Alwyn's (not her real name) ex-husband (or husband, I'm never sure what's going on with those two) was on some sort of long distance bike ride today and called us to see if he could come down and visit. Mind you, a) the house wasn't clean and we weren't really prepared for company and b) when Alywn and her husband hit the skids, things got pretty nasty pretty quickly between her husband and us and c) are they together or not? Who knows? And why did he want to see us, really?

So...yeah. It was a little awkward, but I called Alwyn before he came down just to make sure things were fine on her end, and they were...and the visit wasn't bad. So while this was all totally unexpected (to say the least) it hasn't been a bad day at all. Whew. :)

16 Days to Closing and Counting....

...yup, that's right. We are thisclose to closing escrow on our first house. And I'm sitting her shaking my head, because I literally cannot believe it's really going to happen for us.

But still, I'm nervous, because things just don't happen this smoothly for us. Ever. (In fact, about the only thing that's ever gone smoothly was the wedding and the honeymoon--after that, it was a rollercoaster. Which is fine---I like rollercoasters, but I could have done with some warning first. :)) So, we're working on crossing our t's and dotting our i's and maybe, just maybe, things really will work out.