"If It Seems Too Good To Be True..."

...it probably is. At least that's what my -- oh, whatever. Just about everyone has said that.

The house inspections were a bust. Poor patch job on the roof. Inoperable fireplace. No cap on the chimney, from however long. Termites. And two of the toilets were never bolted down after the guy redid the floors. They're just sitting there. Like, loose. Too bad that wasn't a house Olivia had to go to the bathroom in while we were looking at it. And a couple of the bathrooms had loose tiles where you shower. Other little things done poorly, not readily apparent to the naked eye.

Did I mention termites? Maybe "things" can be fixed, ok. Even big things like roofs. But how do you ever know for sure that you fix all the little buggers? There's only evidence on one wall in the garage, not adjoining the house, but still. How can you be sure that they're really gone? And that they didn't do like a search for a holy grail in the maze of your walls that you just can't see? I don't know and I don't want to find out. We just want out of this house -- or to never be in it. We put in the request through our realtor to terminate the contract; now we have to wait and see how jerky this guy's going to be. In retrospect we obviously should have paid for the inspection before we made an offer. Who knew? Not us. Future note: always have flips professionally inspected before you fall in love. And I did like that house. On the surface. "Sell the kitchen and you sell the house" seemed to be the one thing he did right.

We are so disappointed. Everything seemed to be falling into place so well: really, to land in a new city and start house hunting and find a house and make an offer and sign a contract and close --all within one month! Sounds too good to be true! Oh, wait. I already used that one.

No, Conner did not start school today. Really, the writing was on the wall, although we didn't officially request to terminate the house contract until today, after our realtor received her copy of the inspection and could go over it with us: You know, maybe we're overreacting. She did say, in response to my asking, that she routinely sees inspections this messed up. (My words.) Color me naive that I can't believe someone would try to sell a house, at market value (ok, maybe a little below market: see above, "If it seems too good to be true...") without first getting rid of the termites. Ok, say he didn't know they were there... but not bolting toilets to the floor? I mean, come on. And, if you're trying to flip a house you've never lived in and aren't intimately familiar with, wouldn't it be worth a few hundred dollars to hire an inspector to give you a head's up on anything that might be wrong with it? I guess not, when you've got suckers like us to do that for you.

I'm giving it until the end of the week before we just put Conner in school anyway, somewhere. We really were liking that school, too. It was tempting to just take him anyway and keep him there regardless, but what about next year if we're not in that zone? And what if we end up in Beavercreek? What, I'm going to schlep him all over kingdom come?

I do believe there is a higher purpose to all of this. Something we may or may not ever see. It may not even have anything to do with us, at least not directly. But, really, we've been pretty low, pretty stressed out -- then I come across something like this:

http://susandg.blogspot.com/2007/08/rosalia.html

And I get perspective. I mean, we're living in a hotel, but it has rooms. And walls. And a toilet. (That's bolted to the floor.) And beds. Even a full-sized fridge. And we're healthy. We're not rich, but we're not paupers, either. We may not have a home, but we're not homeless.

John and I aren't the only ones tired...


On another note, John just finished our taxes tonight. As I'm typing. Yes, as in the ones from last year.

John: "I just finished the taxes!"

Silence.

John: "Isn't that exciting?"

Me: "It's, like, September."

John: "Yea! Where are my props?"

More silence.

John: "That takes a huge weight off me, you know." Pause. "Why didn't you tell me to do this sooner?"

(In his defense, you get a big-time extension when you've been deployed. Technically, they're not even late.)