Good Luck Movin' On 'Cause I'm Movin' Out

According to Science Daily, the average time from ovulation to giving birth is 268 days. According to MLS, the time between the day I listed my home, sold it and moved out was 6 days short of that at 262 days. Unlike any of my pregnancies, there was nothing “magical” or exciting about trying to keep the house clean and look like I didn't live there with an adult son with allergies to vacuum cleaners and a big old hairy dog. Having the home inspection was similar to the unfounded fears in amniocentesis and praying the buyers didn't find anything majorly wrong. And just like a woman whose water breaks unexpectedly in the grocery store and goes into quick labor, I got a call that the buyers wanted to close in just two short weeks after waiting 5 months for them to get a contract. Delivering my 10 pound, 12 ounce second son without an epidural was less painful.

Speaking of the dreaded home inspection, the house IS 40 years old. I didn't appreciate the 20 page report with the "problems" they wanted fixed. You don't like that the garage door opener runs on an extension cord? It works, doesn't it?  You want me to replace the entire Master Bathroom shower because there are a couple of chips on the floor from slippery shampoo bottles? A bottle of epoxy paint fixed them right up. You worry that your kid's head will go through the living room railings that have been there since the house was built (and that at least 3 other families have lived through)? Teach your kid not to put her head there. Because if my guys couldn't or didn't do it, trust me-yours can’t either.  In the end, I gave them the washer & dryer in exchange for replacing two fogged windows and cash for the unknown lump under wall to wall carpeting in a bedroom. (I saw the lump-it was worth paying them).

Wingman was so much better organizing our moves than I was with this one, of course, not without his much-loved George Carlin's "seven-words-you-can't say-on-TV-but-are-perfectly-acceptable-to-use-when-moving". He got the mortgages, the movers, threw out the stuff he didn’t think we needed, boxed the rest and left me to take care of the boys.  This process has been so different.  I had to qualify for my own mortgage. Find my own mover.  Box everything-including a bunch of stuff that I know I will probably never use again. Do it without the seven words (but with a few tears). It might have been worth it to enter the witness protection program just to have get some extra help to get me out in a hurry.

A week before the closing, the buyer called, begging me to let them move-in yet an additional day early, since it would cost them a lot of money to store their belongings.  Wingman would have told them to pound salt in a George Carlin-esque way, but being the almost total wuss that I am, I conceded. I instructed my attorney to schedule the closing for the end of the day (like 5:00) to give me the maximum time to get out. As I was to find out, he obeyed me like my dog and my kids. On closing day, my extremely efficient movers showed up at 9:00 and had the truck loaded with everything going to storage by 1:00. I still had a couple of hours of work to do including emptying the fridge & freezer and doing general cleaning. To my surprise, at 2:00, their movers showed up, and my son, a prodigy of his father, not-so-politely told them it was still our house and where to go. At 3:00, the buyer's mother showed up and tsk-tsk'ed me for not having the refrigerator cleaned out yet. I handed her a sponge and bucket and said "start washing." At 4:00, an email was sent to my phone notifying me that the closing ended at 3:00 and I had to vacate the premises immediately. (I'm not sure if it was the buyers or the attorneys who ignored me. Probably both.) Fortunately, I couldn't find my phone so I never saw it until I left at 5:00.  Wingman and George must have been looking down (or up) and were both using all seven words as the day progressed. 

The house is now someone else's problem, be it with nor'easters, frozen pipes or clogged toilets. Wingman would be heartbroken because he really liked that house and loved his perfectly mowed grass, his flowers, his vegetable gardens.  So I left him there in the yard.  Well, a little of him anyway. Right under the only tree in the yard that survived Sandy. The one that he planted himself. The one he never used the seven words on.