I had been sleeping better for the past couple weeks. Well, kind of. Instead of lying awake for hours making and remaking 1000 mental lists related to our real estate adventures, sometime about 10 days ago I began falling immediately and deeply asleep, not waking until morning, and then feeling as though I had only slept for half an hour or so. I’m not as exhausted as I had been, but neither am I feeling 100% rested like I normally would have 8–10 hours of deep sleep.
I say had been because I’m typing this at nearly 1:00 AM Monday morning. I don’t know if it is the heat or my brain getting wound-up for what promises to be a crazy-busy week, but I could not sleep tonight. So seems like the perfect moment to get all ya’ll caught up on what’s gone down over the past week and what’s on the calendar for this week.
Our main home remains unsold. Although Sunday night we heard that a potential buyer requested some more information about our house, whatever that means. We went ahead and scheduled a painter to come in next week, after we move, to make some changes that our agent believes could help us. Yay, spending money for other people to enjoy!
Thursday I went down to the lake house and met the buyers, who wanted to take the boat for a test drive before deciding whether to buy it. That went well on several levels. The test drive went well and they decided to buy the boat! Granted, we had to drop our price a bit, but we set the original price high anticipating that. Negotiating 101, fools.
The other aspect of the night that went well was learning about the family that is taking our place. Just the wife came, with two of their three kids. After we introduced ourselves and started toward the dock, she asked, “So, which one of you is the Jayhawk?” Turns out she has two degree from KU – we were on campus at the same time although she was in law school when I was an undergrad – so that gave us some immediate common ground. She had seen a couple KU things in the house and said, although she already loved everything about the house, that’s when she knew it was the house for her. Her husband went to IU. Those of you who have been to our lake house know that each weekend we spent down there, we hung IU and KU flags from our dock. With a Hoosier and Jayhawk taking our places, S and I decided to leave our flags for them. We laughed at folks who know us stopping by when they see the flags and then getting confused when there’s a completely different family there.
One bad thing happened that night: I lost my wallet. Or at least I thought I did. On my way home that night I passed an Indianapolis cop shooting radar on I–465. I was going about 77, as was the car in front of me, but the cop must have been hunting bigger game, as he didn’t even look our way. I chuckled to myself and thanked the traffic gods for their help. A couple hours later, as I was getting ready for bed, I realized I couldn’t find my wallet. I searched through S’s car, which I had driven that evening, and couldn’t find it. I looked in all the stuff I brought back from the lake house, no sign of it. I looked everywhere I had been in the house before and after my lake trip. Nothing. I went to bed for 10 minutes, got back up, searched through S’s car again. No luck.
So I stressed through the next couple days knowing we would stop at the lake house Sunday when we took C to camp. Sunday we looked all through the lake house, up and down the yard, checked every nook and cranny of the boat, and again nothing. I was deeply perturbed. We hadn’t had any strange charges on our credit cards, so I figured it was safe, but had no idea where it could be.
When we got home I took another look through S’s car. After about five minutes, wouldn’t you know it, I found a “secret” shelf in the central console that I had apparently pushed my wallet into at some point in my drives. Stupid. I say secret shelf because neither S or I knew it was there, and she’s had the car over a year and had one almost exactly like it for three years before that. Apparently the engineers at Jeep are cleverer than we are.
Dropping C off at camp went well. She was super excited to get down there. Two classmates are in her cabin and at least one other St. P’s girl is too. It looked like there was a group of 4–5 girls from another school together in her cabin as well. Hopefully they all get along. It looks like she’s going to have a hot, muggy week down there.
As we were driving down S looked at the car’s temperature display, saw it was 95 outside, and wondered, “Why does it always have to be in the 90s when we drop them off at camp?” My response was, “Well, at least it’s not pouring,” and we laughed.
So of course on a day when there was a 20% chance of rain, there was a pop-up storm that sat right on top of camp and unleashed heavy showers from the moment we parked until the moment we got C to her cabin. Seriously, it was rain stupidly hard. We were thoroughly soaked, but at least it was rain and not sweat like normal.
Oh, last Thursday we also had our home orientation. It was a two-plus hour walk-through where we learned about the home warranty program and then went room-by-room through it pointing out things that needed attention like nail pops, paint touch-ups, etc. I guess that’s the good thing about buying a brand new house: everything should be in perfect shape when we move in.
Friday L got her new bedroom furniture. She bumped up to a queen bed and added a new dresser and side table to replace the stuff we bought for her sisters when they bunked up 10 years ago. She was very excited. We haven’t gotten her a new mattress yet, so we have an air mattress on the new bed frame. I kind of think she’d be just fine if we left it like that.
We have a steady flow of other Amazon deliveries bringing various items for the new house. And we have a long list of big furniture purchases that we are actively searching the perfect piece to fill.
Now comes our big week. Wednesday two of my sisters-in-law have rented a Uhaul to come clear a bunch of stuff out of our home that they’ve either been storing here or that we are handing down to them. Thursday we have a final walk through at the house, close at 1:00, and then will start taking stuff over on our own. Friday C comes home from camp; one of her friend’s parents volunteered to bring her home so I can work on moving stuff. And Saturday the movers come to do all the big stuff. Next Saturday night we’ll be sleeping in our new home.