THE THRILL OF VICTORY AND THE AGONY OF DEFEAT

Man...yesterday was what I like to call one topsy-turvy day.

I went from being thrilled to depressed to thrilled to bed.

First...went out to the lot at lunchtime and they were putting a frame up.

Yep. Putting a frame up.

I shit you not, Junior.

Proof?!?

You want proof?!?!

HERE!!

If you look closely, that's my boy tooling around by the "Sold" sign and that's Mattie Gee's house behind our house, all insulated or whatever.

They've only got the bedroom parts of the house done so far...but it's a frame and we can walk through it and that makes us happier than pigs on crack.

So anyway, that excited me and kept me excited all through the afternoon.

Then Susie gets home.

"We've sold the house!" she says.

"Are you shitting me?" I asked.

"I shit you not," she says with a grin which means she's shitting me.

Turns out, Little Miss God-Told-Me-This-Is-The-New-Owner-Of-My-House made us a counter offer.

...An incredibly insulting counter offer.

Basically, she could have said something like "Here's twenty bucks for your house and I think your mother's a human dildo warehouse" and it would have been less insulting than what she offered us.

So I grit my teeth and tell Susie that we must counter-offer this offer. That's what she wants...a counter offer.

But first...let's go take pics of the frame on our house!!

So we go out and take pics, one of which you've already seen.

And we walk through our house and that's when I noticed it...they hadn't properly framed the house for my fabulous marble shower like Julia Roberts probably has in her house because it's just so damned fabulous.

Instead, they had a frame up for a smaller shower that normal people would have and Julia Roberts would scoff at.

This must be corrected. I refuse to have a simple peon shower. My shower must be marble and five feet long and have dual shower heads on either end of the stall. It must, it must, it must.

So I'm a bit ticked about that. I mean...everything may be fine and simple to repair....but I'm still a bit ticked.

So then we come home and I'm just damned depressed.

Susie's telling me that we can't come down much on our price of the house. As it stands now, we'd make about two grand if we sold the house at our asking price. So we can come down two grand and walk away without a penny.

There's basically no room for fluctuation in counter-offering.

So I'm bummed. I told God I'd take care of this woman and work with her and make sure she got this house and save her from a life of being a crack mama on welfare.

Now, I can't exactly work with the woman.

Enter Former Scumbag Realtor.

FSR calls us up and asks what we'd like to counter offer. Susie gives her a figure two grand less than the original offer.

"That's what I was going to suggest!" FSR squeals. "I've got the contracts right here, can I come over and have you sign them?"

Sure. It's only 8 p.m. and the kid hasn't had his bath yet. But yeah...sure.

She gets there about 8:15.

Now...keep in mind....there is no WAY that we can just sign some papers and have FSR out of the house in less than five minutes.

That ain't go' happen.

Bless her heart...she asked me how I was doing and I said "I've been better".

So she spent two hours trying to convince me that everything's going to be okay.

She says that she feels good about our counter offer and that the girl is going to accept it.

Here's what we've got going for us...

A) The girl wants to be in a house by June 28th. That's two weeks from today.

B) The girl only wants our house. She has no back-up plan because her back-up plan fell through.

C) We put a stipulation that this contract is null and void after tomorrow at noon.

Basically, she has about 24 hours to either accept our counter offer or she's got to start looking for another home and hope to find one within the next few days.

FSR SWEARS that the girl will go for this offer. She'd be shocked if she doesn't.

So we make adjustments to the original contract and get all that written up and signed and initialed and all that jazz.

What's really, really strange is ... in a little more than 24 hours, I will find out if I have two weeks to box up everything in this house and stuff it in storage for the next three months.

I'm not used to quick judgements like this. I like to mull things over and take my time with things like moving.

This is all moving too fast for me. It's like a roller coaster ride...it's fun and all...but I don't have the time that I think I need to ride it properly.

I feel like I've been shoved in a roller coaster car head first with my legs dangling out.

Today, I have the top three ritziest apartment complexes in town that I need to call.

We've decided that if we've got to spend the summer in an apartment, we want to stay in the best. Which is still about $500 a month less than what we're paying on our mortgage now.

So we can save $500 a month by moving into a nice apartment.

With no lawn mowing.

No cleaning the house every morning.

No making sure everything's perfect and wondering if anyone would come see the house today.

All my worries would be gone as far as selling a house.

It will be a stress-free summer.

...You know...if you don't count the stress of building a new home and getting moved into it in time before your rent is due on the apartment.

I guess I'm excited.

I know I'm tired.

Went to bed after midnight and got up at 4:30.

I'm tuckered out.

I guess it's a good kind of tuckered out.

If there is such a thing.

I really hope this woman accepts the counter offer because there's not a whole lot else we can do for her.

We don't want to go into the hole for this woman. We can't afford to right now.

Arrrrgh.

I guess we'll know tomorrow what the deal is.

Stone Cold Steve Austin has apparently left the world of professional wrestling in a huff.

Whew.

I sure am glad that we DIDN'T name Andrew "Stone Cold Steve Unclebob" after all.

That was my first choice. Have "Stone Cold" be his first name and "Steve" his middle name.

Man.

Think I'd have trouble explaining THAT in 10 years?!?

I guess it's a good thing I'm no longer on drugs.

That's it from me.

I've got a day of stress and worry facing me, wondering if I'm going to sell this house and have to spend the next two week frantically boxing up junk haphazardly while trying to line up a place for my family to live.

Or if I'm not going to sell this house and have to keep improving it and cleaning it and praying that someone will eventually buy it in the next two months.

Man.

My stomach's knotted.

Might be the remnants of those spicy peanuts I ate on Wednesday.

But I have the feeling it's stress.

Arrrrrgh.

Rawk on.