#89 - Daily life April 13-28

Saturday, April 28

Today I am thankful for permanence.

It has been about 2 weeks since I last wrote.  I don't expect to let it lapse that long again.  In the past 2 weeks, we have signed a contract to buy our home, had it rejected by the bank, taken our signed contract (the one the bank rejected) to the school to apply for residency to get the kids started in school, and finally scheduled our home inspection, appraisal, and survey. 

In addition (meaning everything that is not work or house-buying related) Paul Hawkins came to visit us, we've been invited to eat with several families in the ward, and we've started buying things for our new home.  With restraint - we have many large items to acquire, and no space for it all to stay.

So first things first - the house process is moving, finally a little more quickly than glacially.  We signed the contract on the house after we attached a rider.  The initial contract put all the risk on us, and we are not willing to commit to the purchase blindly.  The risks are specific to NY real estate, so I won't elaborate, but the risks were unacceptable to Katrina.  As usual, I wanted to plow ahead and she wanted to stop.  And she was right.  So we put a rider on the contract.  The bank took a few days to reject it and to inform us that they would accept no changes to the contract. 

So we proceeded with mitigation.  Once we have the home inspection complete and we're confident that we are buying what we think we are buying, we'll sign the contract without addenda.  We did find some broken heating registers, so we had to verify that the repair would go forward.  Without a working heating system, a home inspection loses a lot of value.  It should be done on Monday, so we scheduled the home inspection for Wednesday.  If the inspection comes out reasonably clean (and we expect it will), and the inspection paperwork for the home's recent addition comes back ok, then we'll sign the contract probably on Friday.  On the following Monday (the 7th) we'll have a survey done on the property.  There are no official surveys registered with the town or county, so each home owner has to have a survey done to verify the property lines.  An appraisal needs to be done, and title information needs to get to our attorney.  Both of these are ordered and should be done by May 7.

At that point, everything on our side will be complete - for the contract, the bank's loan requirements, and the seller's requirements.  And we'll just be waiting for the bank to sign the papers to sell us their property. 

The waiting has been maddening.  The impermanence, the constant shuffle of papers and emails, the ebb and flow of information against a background of no progress at all.  From a legal, pragmatic perspective, we have made no progress on the house in the last month.  We have negotiated in vain and filed some paperwork that was rejected, and that's it.  And yet we are hopeful.

Being thankful for permanence today is really because, despite the lack of progress on our new home here, the fact that we are here in NY and that is the deal has finally settled in.  It's often windy here.  The low might be 28 one night in late April, and the high may be 75 a couple days later.  Going to do things requires a drive.  Paperwork is done manually, by hand here.  Aria is the only Beehive in our ward.  There are lots of things for families to do here that are not free, but not expensive.  Sales tax is a nuisance, but we can live with it.  Pumping gas must be done, and complaining about it is not productive.  The entire area is phenominally beautiful in the spring.  Nature gets a complete makeover once Spring really arrives. 

On the fmaily activity front, we've started to do our Saturday thing - we get out every Saturday to do something.  Today, we (Katrina, Liberty, and I) went to the dog parade and festival in Beacon.  I've never seen so many dogs at one place in my life.  Main Street was closed off, the street was packed, and there were as many dogs as people.  Then we went to a park by the Beacon train station again after wandering the old city streets for a bit, and then we hit Kohl's for some school clothes for Liberty and a waffle maker. 

Last weekend, I took the kids to see "The Lorax" at the drive-in in Hyde Park.  Good movie, great time.  We parked Gortja backwards, opened the gate, and snuggled together in the back.  It was perfect.  We had left the hotel at 5:30, went to Petco where we looked at fish a lot, stopped to pick up chap stick for Libby, and to see a cool park between Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park, and got to the drive-in just a few minutes after it started.  Perfect.  Katrina was working on a lesson for church, so we left her in peace. 

Last night, Christian and I saw the new Pirates movie.  The Wallace and Gromit Pirates, not the Disneyland Pirates.  Decent movie, but not nearly as good as Chicken Run or the Wallace and Gromit shorts.  Then we got dinner for 2 at Pizza Hut, which was surprisingly good. 

I think Katrina has finished tying up loose ends in Oregon, and those are all done.  I still have work to do on school paperwork (about 2 hours per kid per year - blah!) and there are some odds and ends on the house purchase I'm working on, but that kind of work has started to calm a bit. 

So that's it for this entry.  I need to file a couple more on specific topics, so I must move on.