How two idiots buy their dream house...

That's right, dear readers, Mean Mommy is moving! Finally, finally, finally, I can end my days in the world's smallest house and give up my title of The Woman Who-Will-Not-Yet-Call-Herself-Old Who Lived in the Shoe. Yes, I have kept you in the dark about the whole process since I am, apparently, as superstitious about real estate transactions as I am about revealing a pregnancy and only let the cat out of the bag when the danger of things falling apart has passed. Take solace in the fact that stress migraines a-plenty were the result of my not being able to overshare with you.

Hubby and I went about buying our new house in our usual way when it comes to finding a new dwelling - rushing in on a whim, wholly unprepared, depending on fate, God, or whatever you want to call it, to make things turn out right. In addition, H and I took on our usual roles of enthusiastic dreamer and skeptical nay-sayer respectively so it seemed we were off to a good start.

One Friday in early March, H emails me a link from one of the real estate websites he obsessively trolls (why he has so much time to be on the interwebs and yet claims to be "too busy to leave" in order to make it home in time to give baths is a mystery to me). The place looks cute enough, but we really aren't ready to buy a house yet, and despite my protestations, an appointment is made. I am so not interested in this place I decide to not even bother finding a sitter and will bring the offspring along, sure their antics will cut short any long-winded realtor talk. Hubby gets home from work and will not stop blathering on about this place. "Don't get your hopes up", I tell him as I go to bed. His response? To run a late-night-recon mission and scope out the joint as I slept. Oy.

This whole thing reminded me of the day we found our first apartment in Hoboken the month before we were to be married. On April 1st, flush with the tips I had been hoarding in a empty cottage cheese container, and the dazzling starter salary Soon-to-be-Hubby was raking in, H planned to go to Hoboken, alone, since I had class and shift a the restaurant, to find our first abode. Fast forward to the end of the work day and it begins to pour rain. H, in his one good suit, gets drenched just walking to the realty office and the realtor, who was just about to pack it in for the night due to the rain, took him to see a place that had just been listed and no one had yet seen. Without talking to me, H puts in a deposit and when he does reach me, is so hyper he's barely speaking English. Once I got beyond asking him if he was, in fact, insane, leasing a place without me, plans were made for me to see said palace the next day. It. Was. Perfect. And only the lack of a second bedroom drove us out of it for #1's arrival.

So I was secretly hoping this would be the case with this house, not that I told H. We arrived at the house and...I was in love. Shit. We were so not ready. Our house wasn't even on the market yet for Christ's sake! The realtor shows up, the lovely Cindi*, who would become our gift from above in this whole process, and as we walk through the house I try not to let her see the looks I am shooting H that read, "If I don't live here I will die". Hubby takes the kids into the backyard to check out the matching wooden playhouse - I know! - and while I am in the family room leaning against the fireplace - yay! -talking to Cindi, I look out and see H holding Little Man, the girls running and laughing behind him, and I tear up, knowing, like Miranda in that episode of Sex and the City, that I am home.

H comes back in and we start talking about the deal. Here's where the idiocy begins. We don't even know how to put in an offer. Plus, I have no poker face whatsoever and am gushing about how much I love this house and will include one of the children in the offer it makes any difference. And did I already mention our house, that we need to sell in order to buy a new one, is not actually up for sale yet? Cindi, bowled over by our stupidity, but kind enough not to show it, talks us through the steps, kind of like teaching your grandma to use the internet - explaining a frustratingly simple process to someone completely out of touch.

We pry the girls off the porch swing (squee!) and pile everyone back in the car. I turn to H, saddened by the fact that someone is sure to buy my dream house before we can sell our apartment-with-a-yard and tell him, "Get that house for me".

Cue Benny Hill-style zany music. H and I spend the next twenty four hours cleaning, organizing and making it look like three kids don't actually live in a space sized for two adults, all so we can get our house on the market by Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day**. We took breaks only to scan furiously through chapters of Home Buying for Dummies and Home Selling for Dummies. Am I joking? Sadly, I am not.

And this is where it gets really crazy. Remember all that bitching I did a while back about having to drag the kids, and the dog, out of the house for each showing? Well, I not only had to get all living beings under four feet tall out of the dwelling , I had to make it look like a spread in the damn Pottery Barn catalogue as well, complete with flowers and artfully arranged magazines on the coffee table which, on most days, is covered with pulverized goldfish and sticky with the residue of a thousand juice boxes. It is super fun having to lock your children in the basement so you can clean your house for complete strangers. Then where do you go with three kids and a dog? Mommy and Me frowns upon canines and he's too much of a spaz, other wise I'd pretend he was a seeing eye dog for the baby, which might work as LM walks into walls with great regularity anyway. Thank God I only had to do this for TWO DAYS.

Um, yeah, all that bitching I did? Well, we got an offer the first night we had the house listed - and it was a good one. Cindi called that evening (my apologies to her for my first reaction which was, to quote, "Shut. Up."), and much to my father in-law's chagrin, we accepted it***. What did an extra five thousand dollars matter if I WAS GETTING MY HOUSE??!! The kids were in bed by the time H got home and I literally knocked him over as I ran out the front door and catapulted myself onto him in the driveway. After dancing in the street like ridiculous fools, we continued to dance like ridiculous fools in the house as I had the theme song from The Jefferson's *****playing as we walked through the door.

Dear readers, I have been out of my mind not being able to write about this, but I really had to wait until all the t's were crossed and the i's dotted (waiting for a mortgage commitment letter is as close a feeling as you can get to waiting to get past the first trimester of a pregnancy, minus all the throwing up and constipation). I feel like all these great forces were at work and we are so, so lucky. H said the night we sold, "Maybe this church thing works!" I had, in fact, gone to the creepy religious store in town (is there any other kind?) and bought and buried a Saint Joseph statue in the lawn. With all the hoops I'm jumping through getting the kids baptized, I figured I could benefit from some Catholic voodoo and if beheading a live chicken on the front steps would have helped I'd have the beak marks to show for it as well. Our other lucky charm? A truck Little Man had left behind during our showing in the new house. The sellers kept it for us after accepting our offer hoping we would sell quickly and he could come back and get it when the house was his home. That? Made me cry.

So look forward to lots of posts about the joys of packing, unpacking, and the lack of air-conditioning that comes with hundred year old houses. I think, sadly for you all, you will find the snark level a bit low because how snarky can you be when, after a lot of hard times, you've been given your dream? Pictured above.


* I have to give a major shout-out to our realtor, Cindi Stadulis. Thanks, Cindi (who I hope actually read this instead of deleting the email from "that nutjob in Waldwick"), for all your good advice, sense of humor, and hand-holding. I owe you a drink, lady.

**The irony that I had good luck selling my house on the day I hear "Luck O' the Irish" so many times I want to slit my wrists, is not lost on me.

***In the days after our sale, we continued to show and actually received another offer. We went with the first family without starting a bidding war because we couldn't bear the thought of someone doing that to us and losing our dream house. Karma is a boomerang.

****Click either of the links, they both work. Boooo! to whoever disabled the audio on the Youtube clip!