I Own My House

i own my house
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Well, I'm still sick - in fact, celebrating the other night made me far, far sicker and I'm deeply ashamed of myself to boot, but more on that later. For right now, I'd just like to say: I OWN MY HOUSE! IT IS ALL MINE AND NOBODY CAN TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME UNLESS I DO SOMETHING REALLY MONUMENTALLY STUPID - EVEN MORE STUPID THAN USUAL LIKE NOT PAY MY TAXES OR FILL IT UP WITH DRUGS I MEAN MORE THAN USUAL OR, ACTUALLY, I GUESS THAT'S IT! So now I can do whatever the hell I want and since I think I want murals, hee, watch out neighbors. Yes. Murals and more gardens and yay, hurray, my god, what a long impossible insane thing this has been.

It only - only! hah! - took six months from initial offer to final settlement. I haven't been blogging much about it because I was afraid I would either jinx something or get sued - my temper ran rather high there a few times - and so only a very few people know the whole story. I was also afraid because one psychic told me that I would never live here and another psychic told me that if I lived here it would be nothing but terrible horrible endless lawsuits forever, so all I have done has been flying in the face of psychic advice and even the I Ching was not completely helpful.

It is a long story and I don't really feel like telling the whole thing, but in synopsis form, I offered to buy this house in July, the offer was accepted, the deal fell through the day before the closing in September due to several unpaid mortgages that the seller had sort of forgotten to mention. Well. Then there was much flurrying about by everyone while the agents attempted to mastermind something called a short sale, which is when you get the banks to accept a bit less money than they are actually owed in the interests of the damn deal being closed. In the middle of this, as you no doubt recall, the economy collapsed. You would think that this would make the banks more anxious to close deals but alas, you would be wrong. It just threw everything into even more confusion. The banks were slow and horrible and every day the numbers changed.

In October, I talked at great length with a lawyer and then I went ahead and moved into my house with an odd lease which put all my "rent" money into an escrow account so it could be used against the purchase of the house. And I got ready to buy the house on the courthouse steps in that delightfully medieval ceremony called a foreclosure auction. For the next several months there were occasional sudden bursts of activity on the part of the banks but nothing ever amounted to anything and frankly, I had given up hope. In the middle of all this I got several sets of foreclosure papers which scared me since it was always possible that I could suddenly get evicted and, in fact, if I went to the auction and got outbid, I'd be summarily kicked out. I am not a gambler by nature - no, I have every other damn vice in the world, but not that one so much.

However, this did not come to pass, because 48 hours before the foreclosure auction was scheduled to take place, both the involved banks suddenly announced that yeah, okay, they would take the short sale, but it had to happen by the end of the day or their offer would no longer stand. Yes, that is ridiculous but there you have it and everyone ran around like a maniac, including me, newly risen from my sickbed and heavily medicated. I went off downtown to the banks and to the lawyer's office clutching my kleenex and there I found my friend and real estate agent D who gave me a big package with nifty glasses and a bottle of vodka in it and the seller's agent who gave me a bottle of wine and the paralegal, who gave me a cup of coffee and a lot of papers to sign. And they took all my money away and wired it to these banks and ta da, ta da, that was it and the house actually finally totally and truly belongs to me.

I duly went out and celebrated with friends and of course I hadn't eaten all day or really for a couple of days and so drinking very heavily was very dumb and I hereby apologize for my total drunkenness and general revelry and oh god, oh god, I paid for it yesterday, oh yes I did and it wasn't until about 4:00 that I was well enough to walk the dogs down the hill to the Admiral and get my car. Huge thanks to J who carried me home and to my long suffering friends for being there and yes, yes I have, I swear, learned my lesson. And as soon as the weather warms up, I'm painting big murals, hurrah.