Day: May 22, 2018

I have been struggling with insomnia lately. Several nights a week, despite often being absolutely, physically beat, I will go to bed, fall asleep for 30–45 minutes, and then wake up and be unable to go back to sleep for hours.

This is mostly because my brain has been working overtime of late. I’ve been teasing you with references to a big family project for a week or two. It is that project that has my brain unable to shut down at night.

At last I can reveal what it is that has been dominating my life and keeping me from sleeping.

After almost 15 years in our current home, we have purchased a new house. The B’s are moving!

It’s a long and likely funny story, but I’ll cut to the chase for most of you. We are moving ever-so-slightly south into the Nora area of Indianapolis. We purchased a spec home that was built on a 3-acre property that has been split into three parcels. Our house was built first. On the opposite side a house is currently being built and has already been sold. And in the middle is a third lot that will likely break ground any day.

Exactly a month ago we went and looked at the spec house. We loved it, but were not totally sold on the location, so we kept looking. We also had our eyes out for empty lots where we could build exactly what we wanted. The area we’re looking in is pretty much saturated. We realized that it might take us months to find a lot that both fit our budget and construction needs. So about 10 days ago we began seriously looking at the middle lot I mentioned above. We toured a model home of the design that is slated for that lot and absolutely loved everything about it.[1] So a week ago we were reasonably certain we were going to bid on the lot and build that house.

But after going over the builder’s pricing sheets, we realized that building the house of your choice is often a budget killer. The spec list they gave us was already beyond our means, although our realtor claimed we could make some easy changes to knock the price down significantly. Problem is we wanted to make some other changes that, unfortunately, would have wiped out those savings and added plenty more spending.

So last Wednesday we changed approach and decided to go after the spec home we looked at a month ago. Saturday we walked through, made a list of things we wanted to have done, and submitted a bid. The builder had an open house scheduled for Sunday, so we knew we wouldn’t hear back until after that was done. Sure enough, 15 minutes after the doors closed, we got a pretty reasonable counter. We countered right back and just after noon on Monday we received the builder’s acceptance.

We looked at our first house on April 20. We are set to close on June 21. That’s some fast real estating! We are hopeful we have the same luck with our current home as our next door neighbors just had. They listed their house on a Tuesday and had two offers that night. Our house will likely go on the market a week from today. The area we live in is super hot right now, so we’re hopeful for a quick resolution.

So that’s the big news.

Why has this been keeping me up at night? Because when I hit that magic moment after 30–45 minutes of sleep and wake up, I start running through lists. I admit I’m a little overwhelmed by all that is involved in moving. So I start running through what all needs to be done to get our current house ready to sell. I mentally pack. I mentally purge old belongings we don’t need anymore. I think of all the changes in address that need to be made to utilities, etc. Then I think of all the work that will go into setting up the new home. And so on. Next thing you know it’s 2:00 AM and I finally give up on sleeping and come downstairs to have another beer and read for a little bit to try to re-set my brain. I think I’ve been averaging 4.5 hours of sleep over the past couple weeks, with an hour or so up front, and hour in the middle, and then two-plus hours of exhausted sleep before the alarm goes off. Luckily the excitement of all this keeps me going during the day. I figure I might start relaxing and sleeping again sometime in July, assuming we get this house sold promptly. If not, I may not be able to sleep at all.