Hello Darkness, my old friend. Nah, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here though. Sorry about that. Who am I even apologizing to anyway, dust bunnies? So what’s been up with you? Since my last post I’ve finally moved. For about the past two and a half weeks I’v been in my new house. I didn’t get my fenced in yard but hopefully that will come with the next place. It’s quiet here. Too quiet at times, though I’m grateful to not have to hear roaming bands of unsupervised kids screaming, cussing, and making me consider self castration with a rusty butter knife and scissors.

I like moving into a new place and slowly making it mine but everything else pretty much sucks. The home shopping experience was interesting. Saw a couple of houses that left me scratching my head and just wondering, “Seriously, you expect someone to pay for this?” I’m talking shit like holes in the walls, broken windows, dangerously loose banisters, and smells that even made me and my iron stomach almost gag. A couple of the places looked like someone started to rehab it got overwhelmed and said fuck it let the next people fix it. Might have been willing to take on a fixer upper but they were pricing it as if it were move-in ready. A couple of them had potential but it was too much that needed fixing or updating to make it livable so they were passed over.

I had hopes on living in Raleigh proper but it’s a seller’s market. The ones I really liked got snapped up quickly. It was pretty much if you liked it you had to be ready not only to make an offer that day but you pretty much had to be ready to make your best offer then and there. Lost out on a couple of places because so many people were interested in them and the competition was insane.

There were houses I liked but I disliked the neighborhood and neighborhoods I liked but disliked the houses. I got discouraged a lot. If only it was easy and cheap to move the house you want to the neighborhood you love. The whole experience was stressful. I had a guest visiting me from out of the country and the plan was to have everything done before she got here. Well, you know what the say about the best laid plans, right? I wasn’t happy that I had to change things around or cut things short so I could go look at houses and be disappointed. Fortunately, she was cool with it. Me? Well, if you didn’t already know there are two things I excel at. I can always get more stressed out than I am and I can always become angrier. Stress and anger just build up and boil beneath the surface, slowly searching for cracks in my exterior to escape from before finally exploding. And explode I would several times during this process.

The real estate agent kept suggesting the suburbs which I really wasn’t feeling. On the map some of them seemed a lot farther away then I wanted to be. They weren’t necessarily unreasonably far from where I lived but it was hard to gauge true driving times and distance when you’re going to house after house after house. Sometimes they were all in the same city and sometimes each house I looked at were in different cities. I kind of regret my anti suburb stance because there were a couple of places that looked nice and seemed to be in nice subdivisions. By the time I was open to it the ones I like most were already sold. *shrug*

The place I’m in now was one of the last places I looked at. In the end it came down to three places. The place that grew on me because of the yard, the place I’m currently at, and a place with a huge bedroom for me. The place with the yard was occupied by a heavy smoker. Soon as you opened the door to walk in you knew. Part of the condition for getting that place was for her to remove the odor. She was out of town and was taking too long to decide so that house got crossed out. The house with the big rooms and two car garage needed some repairs and updates but I liked it and I was tired of looking at homes. The one that won out actually was the smallest of the three but it was the newest house and most move-in ready so the offer was made.

Things really got sucky from there on out. The realtor was cool. I’d probably recommend him with a caveat. That caveat being don’t go with the people he uses for the finance part of it. They weren’t very good at communicating in a timely or informative manner. All of this wasn’t necessarily their fault, I’d find out after the fact. The mortgage lenders were the most nitpicky, last minute information needing, annoying motherfuckers I’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Our finance people said the original end of the month closing date might be cutting things close but that it was doable and should give us enough time to get everything done. The lender was dragging their asses on things and our finance people misplaced things causing delays. The closing date was pushed back three times.

The lease was ended and new tenants had already been found for the townhouse. Management had plans to do updates to the unit so getting more than a few days extension was out of the question. At this point most things are packed and ready to go but since closing kept getting pushed back there was nowhere to go. Everything had to go but there was nowhere to move to. By now nobody had any answers of when or if closing was going to happen and now I didn’t have a place to stay.

The movers came and they were straight ass clowns. No other words come to mind. Moving day was a hot fucking mess from beginning to end. They didn’t have blankets, wraps, or boxes. for things. Mattresses weren’t wrapped, they had to use our stuff to wrap the glass dining room table, and they didn’t wrap the washer or dryer (so even though they’re less than a year old they look like Freddy Krueger tried to snuggle them). They were slow as hell too. Also the people hired to remove the stuff that wasn’t making the move showed up late and while the movers were still here. Chaos ensued and things got thrown out that shouldn’t have and some stuff made the move that should’ve been thrown out.

Pissed off, mentally and physically exhausted, sometime just before midnight, I think, we checked into a hotel. Stayed there for a few days trying to figure out what to do. The furniture and stuff went to storage. Started looking for apartments with immediate move-ins. Wasn’t really having a lot of luck. Around day two Val said we could stay with her while looking for a new place. I really didn’t want to take her up on that offer but eventually I did.

The seller of the house was getting tired of all the delays so they made an ultimatum. If the sale didn’t close by that Friday then it was off. That seemed to light a fire under the lender and finance people’s asses because they guaranteed a date and asked what time we wanted to close. The lender still was being an annoying nitpicking son a bitch fucktard asking for last minute shit that they should have already had or asked for well before now on the day before closing. Anyway, long story short, got the keys that Friday afternoon. Stayed at Val’s that night and left early Saturday morning.

Didn’t get the furniture and stuff until the following Tuesday. The unloading was almost as big a fuckery as the loading. One of the movers had an ankle monitor. Things were scratched up, damaged, or flat out broken. Boxes marked fragile were loaded upside down and under heavy shit and ended up broken. I’m going to write the meanest, most scathing review I have in me of that company soon. Still haven’t unpacked everything (about 50-60% maybe) and I’m not in a hurry to. Well, actually I’m tired of looking at the boxes but I don’t feel like it so they’ll stay as is until I do. 

So that’s me, what have you been up to?