You'll have to excuse me, because I had to hold off on several posts. The main reason why was because I have been busy as effall, and my brain hasn't managed to stop staying in Harried Mode on the days that I actually get a chance to rest. Which is to say, hardly ever.
But on top of that, one one particular day last week, had I blogged, I'm sure there would have be this regrettably fanboi feel to the whole post. Like at any second I was gonna break out in schoolgirl squeals or start screeching like a 60's teenager watching the Beatles on the airport tarmac-- or a prepubescent and her mom at a Flavor of the Week Pop concert.
Because on that day, I closed on our brand new house.
Cue the applause.
Over the course of the last few months, our house has gone from being a bare patch of dirt to a house atop a bare patch of dirt. (To be fair, it would have been a house atop a wonderfully green front lawn if Indiana had decided not to have the most retardedly precipitous weather since Noah. Our front yard currently contains a retention pond that is nowhere on the subdivision map thanks to the rain.) It was amazing, seeing the little bits and pieces begin to build up-- the foundation, a few pipes, a sudden jarring jump into particle-board paneling over the skeleton wood frame, the Tyvek, the windows, the roof and shingles and siding-- and thinking to myself, this is truly the American Dream-- to have my wallet scream in hideous uncontrolled agony as it realizes that I will be paying for this three months of labor for the rest of my life.
I was a busybody during the construction phase, I freely admit. I stopped by the house almost daily, just to check in on the progress, to watch the wiring, the plumbing, the insulation and drywall go up, to see the rooms take shape. And especially to get to know the building crew. I'd read that a very important step that I could take toward assuring that my new house would be of good quality was to build a good working relationship with the construction crew. So I bought them coffee and doughnuts, and chips and pop, and although the language barrier tended to inhibit conversation, I thanked them effusively for the fine work they were doing. They, in turn, sort of made me their mascot: they greeted me often with a wave, smiling and saying El Green Go Es Tupido, which I believe is "Our new home is the tops," or words to that effect.
I was nervous throughout the whole process, but never more so than when we started going through the walkthroughs with the project manager. I have never owned a house, and there are an awful lot of technical things to keep track of, from the simple "This is how to make sure you don't end up with a downstairs full of water" to "This is how to keep your energy efficient heater from consuming your attic." This was all a first for me: I'd never had dilligently paid close attention to home maintenance before, and as has been noted before, when it comes to some systems-- like automotive ones-- I have all the mechanical aptitude of a crustacean. So I filmed both walkthroughs, took notes, and in each case brought someone much more conversant with the happenings in a new house than I. And then I used them. Constantly. Swear to God, my friend Bob finally ended up writing cue cards that said things like "Nod Knowledgeably" and "Chuckle As Though That Makes Sense to You" and flashed them at me whenever I gave him a panicked look.
Our project manager was fortunately a very wonderful person. He never spoke down to me, never acted as though I was a complete tool because I didn't know what a flowtrap or a GFI outlet was, never once listened to my questions and gave me the "Are You Fucking Kidding Me?" expression that I'm sure my Lovely Fiancee™ is practicing feverishly as she prepares for daily life with me. He was an utter godsend.
In fact, the whole team at Ryan Homes/NVR Mortgage was unbelievably nice, which made me breathe easier, because like every major national business, they have their detractors on the 'net. This is not altogether surprising, because whenever people have gotten what they feel to be a raw deal and complain loudly and vociferously, and someone agrees with them, it suddenly begins to whip up with hurricane force. Someone's uncle's cousin found a mosquito larvae in a can of Mason's Freshest Kidney Beans, and a couple other people had less-than-stellar meals with Mason's canned foods locally, and that suddenly equates to a firestorm of "Everyone that has anything to do with Mason Foods are lowlifes and thugs" internet riots... which are like real riots, only by much more pitiable people. Google it, Ryan Homes and NVR Mortgage have their fair share of horror stories... kind of like every home builder that we could reasonably expect to afford and half of the ones we couldn't.
Even though I subconsciously knew that, however, it didn't stop me from having my stomach tie itself into pretzel-dough knots, because I haven't gotten to be the cynical, glass-is-half-empty, worst-case-scenario pessimistic bastard I am by expecting everything to work out with sunshine and roses in the end. I envisioned everything possible going wrong, and all throughout the process, my Lovely Fiancee™ got to hear everything that was causing me to think our house dreams were doomed, because I felt that with only two kids and an imminent pack up and move to a new state, she didn't have enough to cause her acid reflux to start eating away the lining of her stomach.
And yet.
Doom.
Just.
Didn't.
Happen.
I was sure that my credit report would pull up some forgotten charge that hit a credit bureau ten years ago, possibly even a damning one involving something vaguely pornographic. And then I'd have to stand in front of a bunch of women in business suits and explain why I had an outstanding overdue line of credit at Harvey's House of Hedonism and keep a straight face besides. That wasn't the case at all. Nope. Nothing. My credit was actually fairly good. Nothing spectacular, but good enough that they only had to make a couple suggestions to ensure that I would get the loan.
I was sure that during the actual 'picking things out' process I would forget something utterly indispensible, like we'd skip over the roof or something, and I would only learn about it later, when I asked why it was raining on our new carpet and they waved a paper in my face like Satan with a soul-contract, saying I'd signed without asking for it. But nothing like that happened, either. There were things I completely forgot, like the fact we would get snow-- and would therefore need a covering for our front stoop-- but I was able to add those on after the initial consultation. There were things that I never added on, that we have figured we'll find away to work around and fix with tax checks after a couple years, like a fence to keep the small armada of animals (which we seem curiously insistent on someday owning, despite the fact the male half of we has consistently said no, no, no, fuckoff, no when asked) from running off to freedom. But nothing horrible has yet come of this.
I was sure that getting Homeowners Insurance would be an agonizing process, filled with me getting the phone equivalent of walking into a By-Commission Furniture Store, where you have just enough opportunity to look at your first ottoman before fifteen sales reps gangtackle you in an effort to get their card to you first. But again, it was very painless. I was offered a few good deals to start out, and then an agent from a reputable company offered us a deal that we would have to be certifiably insane or clinically brain-dead to turn down, and it didn't require either of us to change our car insurance dealers. No worries there.
And finally, as closing approached closer and closer, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I waited for some sort of sudden jackup of our price, or a sudden last-minute bunch of "we need all these forms that you didn't give us" or a call that explained that something had come up and we would have to twist in the wind for another couple weeks, or cancel another credit card, or get notes from our parents, or donate three quarts of plasma before we could finish up. What happened was I went to a place on the northside, filled out paperwork for about 35 minutes, and was handed a set of keys with a smile. That was it. In fact, I looked at the Loan Officer, looked at the keys, and said, "That's it?" It was over so quickly that I had no idea what to do after that. I spent five minutes unsure whether I was actually allowed to stand up. Part of me wondered if she would suddenly yank the keys out of my hand and say "Gotcha!" like a fifth-grade prankster, or if she would snicker as I left, knowing that she had given me keys that wouldn't work.
But that didn't happen, either. I made my way to the house that My Lovely Fiancee™ and I will be living in for the next few years, growing old together, raising a family, and no doubt having nonstop fights over the cat in, and I unlocked the door.
And all of a sudden, I have a new chapter to my life.
Just like that.