Not even El Chapo could stop me
My dream house is mine!
That’s it. That’s the post.
Okay, I have a bit more to say. And that is this: closing on a house was not the magical experience I imagined it would be.
I imagined tea and cookies and a posh, private room maybe with some lovely, calming art on the wall. A cushy place to house my bottom while I signed. Perhaps a masseuse on stand by to work out the tension in my neck and shoulders whilst I signed. He perhaps had an uncanny resemblance to circa 1988 MacGyver.
This is how it went in my mind, once the last page was signed:
Me: “That’s it?”
Them: “That’s it.
Me: “It’s mine?
Them: “It’s yours!”
Me: [can’t help but ugly cry]
More tea, more cookies. Maybe someone (likely me) broke out some whiskey they’d smuggled in and everyone enjoyed a celebratory drink amongst all the smiles and congratulatory back-patting and hand shakes.
In reality, I signed the next 30 years of my life away in the musky basement deed room at the Erie County Clerk’s Office. Standing. With a dusty file cabinet as my table.
There was no art on the walls, calming or otherwise. Not a cookie in sight.
There was some hand sanitizer and, considering it is flu season and the building was jammed packed with people, I suppose that was a good thing.
A man I’d never met or even spoken to showed up 30 minutes late and thrust a fistful of papers at me. He quickly explained what each paper was as he flipped to the page I was to sign but all my brain heard was “Lawyer speak, bank, sign, escrow, payment, sign, lawyer speak, sign.”
I can only imagine he’d snorted some cocaine off a can of Red Bull that he then immediately consumed on his way to the Clerk’s office. Kind of jealous, to be honest. I had skipped breakfast because I was so excited for my big day and had only managed to drink a tiny can of Dr. Pepper on the way in. Had I known there would be no cookies I might have had some oatmeal or something before I left.
It was all over in less than an hour. No tea. No cookies. No whiskey.
I signed the purchase agreement on October 2nd, and then headed off to play volleyball in the sand in a tank top. It was today’s high temp of 12 degrees (F) with sub-zero wind chills when I took this picture this morning, and it was windy. You can tell by my nose.
My fingers and face are still numb and this was over an hour ago.
However, I am now a homeowner and it is my dream house.
It was worth every bit of aggravation, in the end.
