Progress.....I think.

*gasp*

Two blog posts in two days? Can it be????

Seriously though, I want to do better about this, plus use this as sort of a journal of the last leg of this house-buying journey.

Alex and Daniel didn't have school today, so we slept in a little bit. I had to get Alex to Wichita this morning for an allergist appointment, so when I woke up I knew we had to get moving fairly soon. I checked my phone to see what notifications I had, and there was an email from Mortgage Lady. I read it and quickly grabbed the laptop.

Basically, what she said was that the Rural Development people had already gone over everything, and there were a couple of things that I needed to do. One was to pay off a really really old bill - back in my past life, an old cable bill had gone to collections and stayed there. When we started working on my credit report, we ignored that one for several reasons, but we knew that it would probably have to be paid prior to closing on the house. When my file went to the underwriters, they made me pay off another one that was in collections, but never said anything about this one - so we hoped that they were going to ignore it. Long story short, they didn't ignore it, and I had to pay it. No biggie - I was prepared, plus today was payday from work so the money was already in my checking account. I dug up the number for the collection agency, called them and paid it in full before I even got out of bed.

I emailed Mortgage Lady to let her know. She would need verification as soon as they processed the payment so I called the collection agency back and they said that they would fax her the info.

The boys and I hopped into the GrandpaCar and took off for Wichita. The appointment went well and we grabbed a quick lunch afterwards. Another email from Mortgage Lady arrived - the "dirt work" has to be done.

"Dirt work" - another long story.

Shortened version - structural engineer inspected the house and it passed with flying colors. On his report, he put a disclaimer that he puts on every single one of his reports saying that there should be dirt put around the foundation sloping away from the house to help with drainage. Rural Development now decided that this HAS to be done. We had a feeling that this was going to happen too, so Realtor Lady already had a spare load of dirt dumped at the house (the woman is awesome). I tried unsuccessfully to locate a wheelbarrow on my way back from Wichita, and instead stopped and bought one. Seriously - I've been wanting one for a while (who in their right mind wants to buy a wheelbarrow? and do you know how expensive those things are? and how hard they are to fit in the trunk of the GrandpaCar?) so I just bought it. Boom.

Came home, changed clothes, bought lunch for The Dude, took that to him, tossed the wheelbarrow in the back of his truck, threw him the keys to the GrandpaCar, and took off to the house.

I spent the next 3-4 hours moving wheelbarrow loads of dirt from the driveway to the side of the house, as well as battling the boys to NOT throw piles of dirt in the driveway, and to stay out of the truck, and to stay where I could see them, and no I'm not driving across town just to get you a drink, yada yada yadaaaaa......

Suddenly another truck pulled into the driveway. A man and a woman got out and the man introduced himself to me as the seller.

Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh......so YOU are the man who has been a total pain in my ass since this thing started? I had to stop myself from saying it out loud. The woman with him was his mother-in-law, who also happens to be his realtor.

Great.

We actually had a very nice visit. We chatted about the house in general and I told them how I had immediately fallen in love with it. I told them about some of our plans, and as soon as I mentioned putting a clothesline in out back, I immediately got on the mother-in-law's good side and she joined in on the conversation. They shared a little bit more about the history of the house and I told them that I was interested in learning anything that they want to share about it. It was awesome, and they admitted that they were relieved that someone wasn't going to just buy it and flip it, but was instead going to fix it up and live in it and love it. I told them about how I had lost everything and was days away from being homeless a few years ago, and how that made this whole process so much more important for me. All in all I think that it was a great little chat and having that face-to-face interaction was a nice surprise prior to meeting over the closing documents.

I did find it amusing that he is planning to pay someone to move the pool table out of the basement just so that he can sell it. I told him that he is more than welcome to leave it there, but he really wants to sell it. I'm curious to see if it actually happens or not - it honestly doesn't bother me one way or another. It would be nice to have, but I can use the added floor space just as much as I can use the table.

Oh, and they're taking the rocks out of the one flowerbed. Yes, the rocks. But, in his defense they're from various camping trips all over the country, so they do actually have sentimental value.

He also warned me that the neighborhood can be kind of competitive when it comes to yardwork.

Ha. Bring it.

In the meantime, more emails back and forth. Mortgage Lady was having trouble getting the verification that she needed from the collection agency, so I called them again. As it turned out, I had to fax them something with my signature for them to release the information to her (and you didn't tell me that this morning because...............?????) and since The Dude's truck isn't equipped with a portable fax machine, I had to cut my dirt moving short, drive back to town, stop at my bank, scrounge up a piece of paper, write out the authorization, and have them fax it to Mortgage Lady. I emailed her to let her know that they now had the authorization - so hopefully she got what she needed from them.

Back to the house to dump the wheelbarrow into the garage, then to The Dude's work to swap vehicles with him, then out to grab something to eat. Then home again.

Baths. Cleaning. Laundry. Preparing to go back to work tomorrow. Hoping that The Dude is over his stomach bug enough that he can handle the boys all day while I'm stuck in Fast Food Hell. Still trying to figure out how to deal with this whole job thing. Making lists of things that need to be done in both houses before/during/after the move. Hoping to win the lottery just to make life easier.

Just another day.....