The movers were in and out quickly today, done by noon. Now we just have to open all of the boxes, unload the PODS, make another trip to the old house tomorrow to clean up the loose ends, and then try to search for a new normal and something resembling a routine.
The sunrises here are amazing – a pity that they happen at 05:45!
I am deleting emails from Zillow as fast as I can, with the desktop computer set back up online and no need to try to do everything on the phone. It’s the little things…
Like cancelling emails from Zillow. No need every again.
Like turning on the phone’s setting to send unknown callers to voice mail.
Things aren’t normal yet, but you can see it from here.
One final morning waking up at the West Hills home where we’ve been living for the past 7+ years.
Tonight, after yet another exhausting and very long day, I’m at home in our Forever Home. It’s a little odd still since all of the furniture and dishes and clothing and STUFF is in various trucks and containers and storage, but we’ll be pulling things back into shape starting tomorrow.
Today was a good news day. The PODS containers got picked up and delivered successfully. Tomorrow I start to unpack.
The movers showed up and got all of the “big stuff” into their trucks, and they’ll be here delivering and re-assembling starting at 07:00.
The holes in the front yard which exposed the septic system for inspection ten days ago got filled back in and the landscaping was (more or less) repaired.
Tomorrow I also need to get my office and computers back online. Yes, I know I’m an “addict” to my electronic access, but it’s really a pain trying to do tasks that take 45 seconds on my desktop but 45 minutes to do on my phone with a really slow connection.
And as tired as I am, I took five minutes to go out in the back, look at the stars, and listen to the trains about a mile away. There’s so much less light pollution here. It’s not Joshua Tree or Bryce, but it’s a BIG step up from Los Angeles!
Zillow, probably my most used website for the last four or five years, says our dream house was sold yesterday. Fortunately, I have loan docs (and a mortgage) that says it was to us.
Today the “fun” began. PODS was scheduled to pick up their two containers, ready or not, at 07:30. Unfortunately at 07:15 they sent a message canceling that pickup and rescheduling for tomorrow. Since I had been up until 04:30 making sure that both units were fully packed and ready to go, I had bad words to say.
I try really hard not to yell at customer service folks on the phone since that doesn’t motivate them to want to help or problem solve and they’re not the ones who caused the problem, but when it takes five calls to get through to an actual human and then all I get is a “shit happens” attitude, it’s hard to be the adult in the conversation.
They SWEAR our PODS will get picked up tomorrow. Let’s hope so.
The next crisis of home ownership was the water, which got turned off, despite the fact that I filled out paperwork online last weekend. Now they need the recorded Trust Deed before they can begin service.
What? Is there a problem in Hesperia with people setting up payment accounts for properties they don’t own or rent? I must be missing something…
Get that document from the escrow officer, send it over, we’re set? Well, do I want the water turned on TODAY? There’s a $90 charge for same-day service…
Interesting setup arrangement… How many folks say, “No, I’ll save the $90 and just live without water in my brand new house for a week or two?”
Paid. The Long-Suffering Wife has water.
I spent my day on less than three hours of sleep packing more & getting ready for the “real” movers to show up at 08:00 tomorrow. Another case of simply doing the best I can and learning to let go of the self-imposed stress.
If I have to make another trip back down here on the weekend to tie up loose ends, then I’ll have to. Stressing myself into a stroke or heart attack won’t let me enjoy the Dream Forever Home.
And dealing with getting the internet connected (critical since I’m still working from home) and finishing up packing and preparation for the movers tomorrow and Thursday has me plumbing depths of exhaustion that I didn’t know existed.
Of course, when we got there, it was immediately obvious that there was still an ongoing issue with the septic inspection. They need to get this back to the original condition!
And tonight, back at the old place, packing, I have no internet or TV other than my two bars of 5G on my phone. Just as well, fewer distractions!
Interesting times lead to a need for flexibility. Today’s our 24th wedding anniversary, but there was no nice dinner or evening out. We’re up to our asses in alligators with the packing and prepping and OH!, YEAH! I needed to put a few hours in for my job, so we’ll delay the anniversary celebration for a couple of weeks and then find something to do in our new hometown.
Our mortgage loan funded today, so all that’s left to do is close escrow and record everything. That should happen first thing tomorrow, and by noon tomorrow we’ll have keys and be homeowners again. And heavily into the task of UNpacking at the other end. It’s all a little bit unreal, but I’m grateful that we’re just a day or two from the point where it truly will be all downhill from there.
While our new home doesn’t have a pool or jacuzzi (might have been nice, but not a deal breaker at all) it does have a nice jetted tub. I’m bruised from head to toe and feel like I’ve gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson, so come Thursday night when I’m at the new house, this will get used regularly!
In the here and now, we’re getting down to the final stages of our home purchase and moving adventure. We signed loan documents on Friday, and the escrow company should have all of the wet-signature and notarized copies Monday morning. The mortage company is supposed to fund early Monday, so early Tuesday we should close and record. Right now we’re on schedule to spend Tuesday in the new house dealing with utilities and the first stages of unpacking, with the PODS units going up on Wednesday and the movers on Thursday.
The packing and preparing for the movers while loading as much as we can into the PODS units has been exhausting for days. We’re taking damage…
Sometimes when trying to push large objects (in this case, a large shelving unit) they might stop suddenly and have blunt objects (a leg) sticking out that jabs HARD into my arm. Thirty-six hours later, it’s tender but not terribly painful, but the purple and black coloration is impressive.
“You should see the other guy!!”
More practically a pain, my Apple watch got knocked off of a counter onto the tile floor and what started as a couple of small cracks in the corner has now turned into a much larger web of cracks. Like a crack in a windshield, it’s gradually spreading and growing, while continuing (for the moment) to work. I don’t think that SafeLite comes out and repairs this. If/when it stops working, I’ll probably have to bite the bullet and buy a new one. This one is about five or six years old and I sort of depend on it a lot, so just going without isn’t realistic at this point.
At least it’s not my phone that’s dying.
Thirty-five hours, thirty-three minutes and counting to home ownership.
You know who’s really going to miss having these two PODS units out in the street and in the driveway?
The lizard folk! Since about two minutes after this unit got put into the driveway, they’ve been loving it!
I’ve noted in the past that they love to lay on the warm concrete in the shade under the car since it also gives them a bit of cover from hawks and crows.
This huge thing is all of that and more. I don’t think the neighbors will mind their departure next week, but our favorite lizard dudes will be sad!
We signed loan documents today. I sent wire transfers for more than $80,000. It doesn’t get much more real than that.
We should fund on Monday, and close escrow on Tuesday morning. After five years of living on Zillow for hour after hour and looking at house after house, it’s a bit unreal to actually be at this point.
We still have to get everything packed and ready to bug out on Wednesday and Thursday next week. It will be an exhausting weekend.
Another “last” tonight, as SpaceX had an almost perfect launch out of Vandenberg after sunset.
A couple of minutes before the launch, the light fading, a bit of color in the clouds. (That white, comet-like thing above the wire isn’t the rocket, it’s a lens flare from the neighbor’s security lighting.)
The launch was fantastic, complete with four or five teenagers pulling up mid launch with one girl screaming about “that thing in the sky,” some dude telling her it was the Moon (it was not the Moon), and some olde phart (me) yelling across the street to tell them what it really was.
Packing and moving is like the world’s biggest 4-D game of Tetris. Trying to get all of this…
and this…
into this while also trying to keep track of what’s where so that when we get it all delivered back to us next Friday we can unload it and start living in our new house as quickly and easily and efficiently as possible.
Why 4-D Tetris? Because there are plenty of things in the house that I really don’t want going into these bins out in the 90º sun and heat for a week, so they’re getting piled up in the living room for loading in the last couple of hours. And I have to leave space for those items in the PODS units. There are also things that have to go up in the cars on Monday or Tuesday when we close escrow and get the keys, because at least one of us will be living there for two or three days before all of the furniture and boxes arrive. And we have stuff that the movers are taking, and stuff that’s going into the PODS units.
4-D Tetris.
Not a fan. But I can see it being a new competition on The Ocho. We could have 4-D Tetris, Slippery Stairs, Cornhole, Omega Ball, and the Cherry Pit Spitting Championships as sort of an Ocho Pentathalon event! Sign me up!
I have inspectors, vendors, insurance agents, utility companies, etc all calling me and I really need to take those calls ASAP. So all calls are allowed through.
It sucks. About half of the calls are spam.
The other thing I’ve found is that these days, as soon as you say something witty and snappy that indicates that you’re fully aware that they’re lower-than-whale-shit spammers, they start insulting and swearing at YOU, and then they hang up before you can start insulting and swearing at THEM. How is that fair?
The chandelier in the entryway is nice – wait until I install the lasers!
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 