A DONE DEAL

Alright...I've already lost this entry once this morning...I'm NOT losing it again.

It looks like we may have sold the house.

Of course, this little adventure hasn't been without its share of stress and heartache and demands for our blood along with our savings account.

According to the two realtors, the gal who's buying our house HAS signed the contract that we presented to her. The one that said we will meet her financial proposal BUT she is buying the house "AS IS" because she has taken every penny of profit away from us in this deal and we have no money to put new carpet or a new stove or a new roof on the house. These are things that we WOULD have done had she not low-balled us to a point where we have to dip into savings to help her buy the house.

We haven't actually SEEN the contract yet to see if she added anything to it. But as I told Susie...if she had adjusted anything on the contract, her realtor would have told our realtor about the changes and we'd know about them.

I'm still kinda wary about this because we have found out that the woman has backed out of another deal at the closing table. She was supposed to buy a house, the people boxed everything up and moved everything out...and then the girl changed her mind.

Soooooo...I'm not holding my breath until we all sit down at the closing table and I watch her cross her T's and dot her I's.

At that point, I plan on making my dramatic speech on why we sold her this house at such a low price ...because God told me to do everything I possibly could to help this woman get her feet on the ground and start a new life for her and her child.

But I think even God himself would say "Whoa dude! I didn't mean to dip into your savings to help the lady! What are you....NUTS?!?"

But Susie and I have no regrets about what we're doing. We're not gamblers. We don't like taking risks. We have a girl who genuinely likes our home and she's the ONLY person who's looked at the house in the last three weeks.

Even though we have three months until our new home is completed ... we don't feel real good that someone else will come along and want to live here.

Our realtor is kinda ticked. But as I told her yesterday that unless she could GUARANTEE that her company would buy our house if it didn't sell in time, we had to sell to this woman.

She couldn't guarantee anything.

And this is the closest thing to a guarantee that we've had.

So...we're outta here.

NAN MOMENT OF THE DAY

After our little debate on Saturday, Susie went out to water the flowers yesterday.

NAN must have sensed she was outside, threw on her trusty robe to hide her skanky naked body and flew outside to spew her venom.

"I sure hope you guys sell this house soon," NAN told Susie. "Maybe then Uncle Bob can quit being so stressed."

She thinks that because I told her that the neighborhood is turning into a ghetto (something she refuses to open her eyes and admit....but the car three houses down from her that's on cinder blocks with its windshield shot out is enough proof for me), that this means I'm "stressed".

I think my exact quote to Susie concerning NAN's "concern" for me was "Fuck that nasty assed 'ho with a flaming rusty coat hanger."

I sure am going to miss NAN.

We had a feeling that we would be moving yesterday morning, so we made plans to go Apartment Hunting directly after church yesterday.

This was going to be tricky because Andrew normally takes a nap from 1-4 on Sundays.

All apartment complexes are open from 1-4 on Sundays.

Meaning...Andrew's nap would either be late or non-existant.

Anybody that has ever had a child can tell you what happens when you don't give a toddler a nap.

They basically turn into miniature werewolves. They howl, they bite, they are out for blood. And the only thing to put them out of their misery is to shoot them dead with a silver bullet.

So after stopping at the pawn shop for our silver bullets, we began looking at apartments.

We went to the first complex on our list. This was what we had originally considered the "ritzy" complex because they had a waterfall on their pool. Christ. I'd feel like Hugh F'n Hefner in that pool.

They had a one bedroom apartment with a study that closed off and could be used as a second bedroom. However, this "ritzy" apartment looked suspiciously like a normal apartment.

No big deal. We were only going to be there for three months. We'll take the ritzy apartment.

Ummmm...no we won't. Our dog weighs more than 20 lbs. No dogs over 20 lbs.

I begged. I pleaded. I sobbed.

No dogs over 20 lbs.

This fucking dog has been a thorn in my side for the last two years. If it's not her cancer-filled ass reeking up the house, it's her ripping her doggie door out of the wall with her teeth. If it's not growling and snapping at my child, it's racking up vet bills because it gets a pimple on its eyelid. If it's not scaring off potential home buyers, it's keeping us from moving into the city's ritzy apartments.

The vet won't kill her.

The in-laws won't house her.

And my wife refuses to give her away to a total stranger.

I have fed my dog a steady diet of onions, chocolate and antifreeze because I heard those can kill a dog.

Nope.

They just make her farts smell like the farts of the undead. For all intents and purposes, her insides may be dead. But she's still bounding around like a puppy.

So we say goodbye to the ritzy apartment and move on to the complexes whose pools don't have waterfalls. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to live in an apartment complex with no waterfall at the pool. But dammit, as Celine Dion once screeched...My heart will go on.

We go to number four on the list because numbers two and three are full.

Number four says they'll take dogs up to 30 lbs, but they only have a three bedroom apartment that will cost $100 more a month than we thought it would.

Our dog weighs 50 lbs. She's the size of a chihuahua....but she weighs 50 lbs. I think her intestines are made of lead or something.

I plead with the woman. I explain that our dog is 12 years old and all she does is sleep and fart. She may weigh 50 lbs but it's only because she can eat a shitload of chocolate. PLEEEEEEEEEEASE let us move in.

Sorry. No dogs over 30 lbs.

We get back in the car and I tell Susie that from here on out, if anybody asks...Maggie weighs 2 lbs. less than their recommended pet weight thing.

Meanwhile, it's 1:30 and Andrew is a bit ...ummmm... delerious from lack of naptime. He lets us know this by crying constantly unless he's being held. This is not easy to do when he's in his car seat.

We go to another complex who says that they don't do three month leases.

Andrew's screaming as she says this.

Susie f'n LOSES it.

"What do you mean you don't do three month leases?" she barks.

"Honey, it's okay," I said, touching her arm. "Let's just go."

"WAIT!" Susie says, staring at me. "I want an answer."

"We can do six month leases with a three month lease AFTER the six month lease," the girl said. "But we can't start you off with a three month lease."

"That's insane," Susie said. "Every apartment complex in town has three month leases."

"Ma'am, I'm just telling you our rules," the girl said.

"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH," Andrew wailed.

"Seriously," I said. "Let's just go."

We left with Susie swearing she's going to call the complex today and ask if they do three month leases and when they say they do, she's going to say "Then you need to tell that ignorant bitch that works on the weekend that you do it!" and then hang up.

She's a spiteful young lady, me wife is.

Next we went to a complex that used to be the ritzy complex in town. But after a few murders, armed robberies and rapes, it's not quite the apartment complex of choice that it used to be.

We rolled into the leasing center as a group of Crips stared us down, wondering how fast they could whack me over the head, steal my child and set my wife on fire.

"I don't want to live here," I said.

"But they're the only complex in town that offer basketball courts," she said while gesturing at a basketball court covered in gang graffiti.

As I went to shut off the car, I saw the sign..."No pets".

Christ on a stick.

They'll allow gang members, drug dealers and whores to move in...but don't you DARE try to bring a poodle in here, Junior. We have our standards.

We left.

We were trying to think of people who would take Maggie for the summer. We were trying to think of anyone we knew with a house for rent. We were trying to think of a place where we could take Maggie in the country, open up the door and shove her out of the van while going 60 mph and hope that she'd never be able to find us.

...When we drove past an apartment complex we hadn't even thought about.

Our new home.

Granted...the webpage makes it sound much nicer than it actually is.

It IS a gated community, which gives you a sense of security.

"A sense" being the key word. Or words if you consider "A" a word. I know Spell Check does.

"Sparkling pool and sundeck with tropical landscape" is what cracks me up. It's a freakin' pool with a few potted plants around it.

We ended up getting a three bedroom because that's all they had downstairs and I KNOW my son...if we were upstairs, that kid would be up and down the stairs all day long because he's fascinated with stairs. Almost as much as he is with his penis.

They'll take dogs up to 50 lbs. Maggie is now conveniently 35 lbs.

It's about ten minutes to work for me. It's a little further from daycare and Susie's job, but hey...I can't see why that should concern me.

We didn't put a deposit down because we still don't trust this girl who's buying our house and the deposit is only refundable in the first 48 hours after submitting it. So if we wrote a check today and the gal wants to back out of the house, we're out several MORE hundred dollars.

But the gal said that she thinks the 3 BR will stay open for a few weeks and if someone DOES come to buy it, she will call us first to let us know that we're about to lose it and we can cut her a check.

I dunno.

This whole moving thing is a stressful thing.

No wonder I had nightmares about it for years.

Oh...I thinned out the army ranks on Saturday.

If your name is missing, and you think there's been a mistake, that may be the case. My system for weeding people out of the Army isn't a foolproof one.

So check and make sure you're still there. If you're not, ask yourself "Gee....have I updated that bitch in the last two months?"

Or "Gee...did I password protect that diary so it does no good when people click on the link to it?"

If you answered no to the first question and yes to the second...that's why you were pulled.

But if you have a wide open diary and you still got yanked...email me and lemme know and I'll get you back on the list.

There...I've written this thing twice this morning.

It's time for breakfast.

Have a good one.

I'm exhausted.