Things in my life are crazy and exploding in tiny multi-color fireworks across the backs of my eyeballs, making it hard to focus completely on anything directly in my field of vision.
Due to said lack of focus, I’ll just go in medias res here: we bought a house.
Well, it’s not officially bought. It’s bid for and inspected and on the verge of being paid for by a bank that we will in turn pay for the privilege of living in it, if it is turned over to us in livable condition.
Now that I have you hooked, allow me to flash back to last week.
Last week was the busiest, craziest week of my life, culminating in the most balls-out insane fuckery day of my life, ever. And to appreciate the insanity of our home-buying experience, you have to appreciate the week that began it.
It all began two weeks ago on Thursday, April 29. That day I went to work, went to a goodbye party for a coworker, attended a Social Media Club of Philly event, dined with Cecily and Anniemal, rolled home around midnight to sleep, shot a social video project for work, drove to Atlantic City to see Paramore (always AWESOME), drove back to Philly, kinda slept, attended MarketingCamp (during which I unexpectedly presented a session), warmed up, played a three-hour long gig with Arcati Crisis and Filmstar where we each essentially played our entire repertoires, kinda slept, was at the finish line for the Blue Cross Broad Street Run at 7:30am taking photos and tweeting, and pretty much did run-related stuff for the next 36hrs less a few bits of sleep here and there.
I finally got a decent night of sleep, and Tuesday when I got to work I was like, “Back to sanity. I love sanity!” However, we all know that is a lie. I do not love sanity. I don’t even kinda like it. I like bugfuck craziness and constant deadlines. Hello, it’s called Crushing KRISIS. There’s a reason I like the word – because I function best when I am a hot mess with unrealistically lofty goals and no sleep.
That night E and I were scheduled to look at two houses. We had no intentions of buying either. It was an academic exercise – we did an 80/20 on the range of our potential house spend and were seeing two homes priced around those landmarks to figure out if we had enough liquid cash amassed to buy a home.
The first house was the 20%. Cute, backed up to a state park, and needed a wall knocked out of its kitchen. Rooms were a little too reflective for music. An educational look at what 20% of our buying range would get us.
The second house was the 80%. Single, Tudor, blue outside – all things I enjoy about a house. Hardwood floors, I like that. Shaded side patio, very cute. At that point it was still an educational excursion. Then we saw the kitchen, with its brand new everything and pocket-door powder room and permanent wall mounted a/v system and I was like, Hmm, this visit may not be solely for educational purposes.
And, oh lordy, it was not for educational purposes. Imagine that being a first-time home-buyer is like being a virgin, so our excursion was really like learning about sex, with no intent of having it anytime soon. Working from there, if the first house was like learning about sex in 8th grade from your gym teacher in Health class, this house was like learning about sex in 8th grade by visiting a brothel with a pocket full of hundred dollar bills.
Basically, I am saying the house jumped our bones and quickly deflowered us. It had every single thing we said we wanted in a house. Like, even unusual things like radiator heat for E and her sensitive vocal cords and central a/c for me and my first world aversion to temperatures higher than 80 degrees. Oh, and speakers installed IN THE CEILING of the room that would be my recording studio.
We went home Tuesday night, reeling. Were we just enthused to be re-embarking on the home purchasing adventure, or was this the right house for us?
That was how we arrived at the apex of the most insane week of my life – the single most ridiculously intense, entirely unexpected day of my life
And this post is already too long, so let’s add a cliffhanger to my in medias res.
[…] Where I last left our intrepid first-time home-buying heroes (i.e., E and I) we went on a financial fact-finding outing that unexpectedly also found a house that met all of our …. […]