Step Number 906 in the purchase of a new house: A home inspection, in which you pay a qualified professional three hundred dollars to spend a few hours investigating your intended purchase. He examines every inch of the property, top to bottom, inside and out, and then presents you with a detailed report on his findings. I wish I’d had this guy’s number when I was still dating. I would’ve been spared a lot of frustration if I’d had him check out a few of my old boyfriends.
After you get your report, you send a little note over to the seller, with your requests for what needs to be fixed before you take possession of the house. Then the seller writes you back, either agreeing to take care of those things, or telling you to go screw yourself and buy your own damn outlet covers.
After that, it’s only a matter of time until your Closing Date. Anytime Preppy or I mention we’re buying a house, that’s the first question a current homeowner asks: “When’s your Closing Date?” It’s shorthand for, “I know this is the most stressful and mind-numbing experience you’ve ever been through. You lie in bed each night wondering how there could possibly be more to do and additional money to pay, and you can’t remember when the hell you had a conversation about anything but the goddamn house. What day have they assured you this shit will finally end?”
Our Closing Date is in two weeks. On that day, my boyfriend and I will receive the keys to the new house and retrieve the pod with all our stuff in it. On the Closing Date, these frustrations will pay off. There will be sunshine and blue skies. A herd of unicorns will frolic in our front yard on the Closing Date. If for some reason this does not happen, we will quit our jobs and become gypsies, selling elixirs from town to town out of a brightly-colored wagon.
This week, I took a much-needed break from house hell to celebrate my former roommate George’s birthday. When Preppy and I moved to our temporary digs in Smyrna, George got a little apartment in Decatur, which might as well be three states away considering how seldom we now see each other.
“How’s the apartment?” I ask, assuming my customary seat at the bar.
“Oh, darling,” sighed George. “Despite Virginia Woolf’s claims to the contrary, a room of one’s own is most overrated. No one visits, no one calls. I have a neighbor who drinks malt liquor out of a measuring cup, and I don’t think it’s to monitor his intake. And even worse, I have all this time… alone… with my thoughts. There should be a restraining order in place preventing that. Remember my old boyfriend from college? The man that got away? We’ve been e-mailing.”
“Ooh. That could be dangerous.”
“I know that! Now I sit there thinking about how I’m another year older, and I haven’t found anyone who made me happy like he did, and maybe it was just bad timing back then. Things didn’t really properly end between the two of us. Maybe I should go see him.”
“You’ve said that for years.”
“Yes, but now I think about it nonstop, because there’s too much quiet in my house. I need the clutter of people around to keep me from getting introspective! I don’t know what to do.”
“You should set a Closing Date on your relationship with him. Just mark a day on your calendar. By that date, you have to go see him and find out what happens. Or you’ll let him go and keep his memory to reflect upon in your twilight years. The Closing Date will either motivate you into action, or force you to drop it and move on.”
“You know, darling, there’s some logic to that.”
“And here’s the best part,” I continued. “After you set your Closing Date, if he’s interested, you get to submit your list of requested improvements.”
“I don’t know that he needs improving. Of course, I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Got it covered. I know a guy who can check him out for three hundred bucks.”
After you get your report, you send a little note over to the seller, with your requests for what needs to be fixed before you take possession of the house. Then the seller writes you back, either agreeing to take care of those things, or telling you to go screw yourself and buy your own damn outlet covers.
After that, it’s only a matter of time until your Closing Date. Anytime Preppy or I mention we’re buying a house, that’s the first question a current homeowner asks: “When’s your Closing Date?” It’s shorthand for, “I know this is the most stressful and mind-numbing experience you’ve ever been through. You lie in bed each night wondering how there could possibly be more to do and additional money to pay, and you can’t remember when the hell you had a conversation about anything but the goddamn house. What day have they assured you this shit will finally end?”
Our Closing Date is in two weeks. On that day, my boyfriend and I will receive the keys to the new house and retrieve the pod with all our stuff in it. On the Closing Date, these frustrations will pay off. There will be sunshine and blue skies. A herd of unicorns will frolic in our front yard on the Closing Date. If for some reason this does not happen, we will quit our jobs and become gypsies, selling elixirs from town to town out of a brightly-colored wagon.
This week, I took a much-needed break from house hell to celebrate my former roommate George’s birthday. When Preppy and I moved to our temporary digs in Smyrna, George got a little apartment in Decatur, which might as well be three states away considering how seldom we now see each other.
“How’s the apartment?” I ask, assuming my customary seat at the bar.
“Oh, darling,” sighed George. “Despite Virginia Woolf’s claims to the contrary, a room of one’s own is most overrated. No one visits, no one calls. I have a neighbor who drinks malt liquor out of a measuring cup, and I don’t think it’s to monitor his intake. And even worse, I have all this time… alone… with my thoughts. There should be a restraining order in place preventing that. Remember my old boyfriend from college? The man that got away? We’ve been e-mailing.”
“Ooh. That could be dangerous.”
“I know that! Now I sit there thinking about how I’m another year older, and I haven’t found anyone who made me happy like he did, and maybe it was just bad timing back then. Things didn’t really properly end between the two of us. Maybe I should go see him.”
“You’ve said that for years.”
“Yes, but now I think about it nonstop, because there’s too much quiet in my house. I need the clutter of people around to keep me from getting introspective! I don’t know what to do.”
“You should set a Closing Date on your relationship with him. Just mark a day on your calendar. By that date, you have to go see him and find out what happens. Or you’ll let him go and keep his memory to reflect upon in your twilight years. The Closing Date will either motivate you into action, or force you to drop it and move on.”
“You know, darling, there’s some logic to that.”
“And here’s the best part,” I continued. “After you set your Closing Date, if he’s interested, you get to submit your list of requested improvements.”
“I don’t know that he needs improving. Of course, I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Got it covered. I know a guy who can check him out for three hundred bucks.”
