-image-House Go Round

April 29, 2007 | Just Me

This weekend has been consumed by a blur of kitchens, entrance ways, and bath tubs.

“Which house do you mean? The one with the the great front entrance way or the one with the tiny lawn?”

We went to see 10 houses on Saturday. TEN. (We were scheduled to see 13 but we made a few adjustments due to cicumstances. Thank God, I don’t think I could have handled three more houses.) All we did from 10:30 am to 4:00 pm was look at houses. Which was really a waste of time because I knew, standing on the second floor of house #3 that that was the house we wanted. I did suggest ditching the rest of the showings and just putting in our offer, but everyone else (read Wakizashi, his mother, and the Goddess of Real Estate - aka my SIL) thought we needed to go see the others.

So we did. And then we ended up going back to House #3 where Wakizashi and I declared our unending love for it. I could’ve told you from the beginning and saved all that time and effort. (In fact, come to think of it, I did!) On our way home we stopped off at Walmart to buy a printer (no, we didn’t own a printer until now) so that The Goddess of Real Estate could write up and print off our offer in our presence. Last night we offered, today we waited.

And waited. And waited.

Based on the MLS listings Wakizashi dubbed the house as “The Ugly House”. It is an oddly shaped house, but it’s exterior isn’t nerely as ugly as it’s picture makes it appear. Despite actually being the gorgeous house inside (except for the one room, that teal color has got to go!), Wakizashi insisted on calling it the Ugly House for the rest of the day.

We saw a lot of other nice houses, but I knew before we even left home that this was our house. (I don’t know how long the listing will stay up now that we’ve purchased it, but if you’d like to check it out it’s still up for now: The Ugly House live and online.)

This evening we bantered back and forth for a bit; our 30 day closing was causing a bit of a problem, but just as Wakizashi and I were trying to work out how to house us, two dogs, an assortment of small animals, and all our belongings for fifteen days it all came together. Which means we bought a house today!

Oh my! We bought an ubber house. And now, I’m so excited what with the whole thinking about it, I can’t still my mind enough to sleep. It’s all a little surreal. One week ago today we had signed our papers to list this house and were stealing ourselves for months of showings and waiting and showings and waiting. Today, our house is sold (one more week to remove the final conditions though) and we’ve purchased a new one (ditto the conditions thing). Not only that, but one month from now we’ll be living in that house! Surreal.

Beyond real. My mind really hasn’t been able to grasp it all. And now, I’ll be spending the next day or two on the phone. Call the bank to ask a few final questions and finalize the mortgage. Call the lawyer. Call the insurance. Rental trucks. Dumpster. The Goddess, the inspector - and that’s just a few of them.

I don’t even know where to begin thinking. But, on the plus side, we’ll be having a house warming party in early June, and you all are, of course, invited to come!

The moral of this post: Remember, the phrase “This or something better…” (when used in prayer or your general asking) leads to sometimes surreal, often surprising, and always positive results.

-image-OH MY GOD!

April 26, 2007 | Just Me

(Yes, I meant to yell. And yes, I meant to say God, for no other reason than a lack of something better to say in this instance.)

I managed to overcome the wallpaper fiasco in my room (with new wallpaper); and it looks lovely, even if I do say so myself. My Sister-in-law came on Saturday, and we went through all the boring drone of listing and paper work etc.. etc… (In case you didn’t know, selling houses requires a lot of signatures and initialing here, here, and here.)

Tuesday The Goddess of Real Estate (that’s what we’ll call my sil from now on, she’d be so proud) emailed me the MLS listing for our house. (We didn’t list with her the first time through because she lives out of town and she thought it would be better for us to use a local agent, but this time we insisted - it was her or private sale.) Tuesday evening we had a Wednesday appointment and a Thursday appointment set. By the time we got to dinner last night the Thursday appointment was moved to Saturday and we were being forced to stayout for over 3 hours because we had FOUR showings for that night.

Needless to say, this morning The Goddess of R.E. called to tell me we had an offer on our house. (Yes, you all officially have my permission to rejoice, our house is sold!) I told you the woman was a Goddess (though I’m not sure how much credit she can actually take beyond being really good at signing things).

So, half my Oh My God! is due to the (almost literal) one day turn around. The other half is a new wave of panic, even more terrifying than the selling of the house:

We have 30 days till closing!

Thirty days! That’s ONE MONTH!

I don’t have a mortgage. We haven’t even looked at other houses. Thirty Freaking Days!! (Don’t mind me while I have a small panic attack.)

I think I might throw up.

Why does it take banks 2-3 business days to decide if they are going to give you money? I mean, really! Don’t they know I’m freaking out over here?

I thought having my house sold was supposed to reduce the stress.

Now I know why other people drink.

So, it’s good news, I think. I’ll let you know when I have some idea where we’ll be living in June, in the meantime, don’t mind me if I occassionally lose my mind for a few minutes.

What? Did you say something?

Never mind.

-image-Getting to Being Well

April 24, 2007 | A Pick Me Up

The other day I was pondering Emotional Well-Being (I don’t remember why) when it occured to me that sometimes, we just can’t acheive Emotional Well-Being on our own. The fact of the matter is, sometimes we just need help.

The next day when I was thinking about developing that thought for a blog post I realized that that’s not the only area of acheiving Wealth that we need help with. Look at your Physical Well-Being; how many of us are capable of loosing weight, starting to exercise, or to change our lifestyle habits without the advice and support of someone else? Sometimes we all need a little help here and there, and that doesn’t diminish our successes in any way.

After all, if no one else ever needs help then, what will you have to contribute to the community? We all have something to give, because we all need someone to give us something too.

Interestingly, I find myself most frequently giving out the same lessons someone else just handed over to me. I was just talking to someone today who mentioned how interesting it was that the lessons she’d been working so hard to learn the last five or six weeks, are now the self-same lessons she’s handing on to a new protoge in her life (I don’t know if that’s the right word, protoge, but it conveys the right ideas so we’ll keep it). That’s always the way of the world (Universe, God, whatever - that’s the way it works).

When I did my coaching training they talked about picking your niche: finding the small corner of the community that you are passionate about and best suited to serve. The best way to determine that, ask yourself, what life lessons have I recently learned, what area have I grown in that I can help others pass through? It’s because we all, occassionally, need a little help on our path to healthy well-being (I was very excited last week when I read in a book that to be healthy can be defined as having all-around well-being. Cool, health and wealth are interchangable terms!).

My job is to be of help; I help guide people, I give them support, encouragement, and objective insight - that’s what I do. But, sometimes we need a bit more help than that. We all have things to heal and get over. What I had realized when pondering the state of Emotional Well-Being (actually, I was trying to figure out which of the six you need to work on first, I still haven’t answered that question) was that I had gotten over that hump (relatively) on my own. It took years and years (maybe getting help would have speeded the process), but with God’s help I managed to move on from most of my major roadblocks. But, what really hit me is, sometimes we need a counsellor, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

So, if you are really trying to travel the path to wealth in your life, don’t be ashamed to ask for help (which is not meant as a weak-butt advertisement for my services). We all need a little help now and then. And the rest of us are really very happy to give it.

-image-I’m Famous!

April 20, 2007 | E.R. News & Such, Just Me

Ok, maybe I’m not quite famous, but I was interviewed for the Story Circle Network’s Podcast - so I’m more famous than I used to be anyway. Story Circle is an organization based out of Texas for writers, particularly for Life Writers, and I was truly flattered when Becca invited me to be an interviewee. (In case you don’t know this, I was a writer in my (one of my) former life.)

The podcast went live earlier this week (oops, I was waiting to hear from Becca to announce it, and it was actually a listener that let me know it was up!), and I was so excited I thought I’d share it with all of you. Because of course, you must all love me so much that you want to read and hear everything I’m involved in, I knew you’d all be desperate to hear the podcast once you knew I’d done it! So, please, go listen, tell me you love it, share it with others. How else will I get more famous?

Oh, and, in case you were wondering, I haven’t solved the wallpaper problem yet. Wakizashi says to just let him deal with it (it’s stressing me out). Yesterday, I had a bath (I just learned why a hot bath works when you are stressed by the way, apparently, the hot water dilates your blood vessels and so lowers your blood pressure) and then went to look at wallpaper. We’ve decided that $300 for wallpaper is unreasonable, so Wakizashi’s going to paint over it. The house lists this week! I’ll keep you posted.

-image-Stupid House!

April 19, 2007 | Just Me

Sigh… The time has come to relist our house.

I’m working on being positive.

We’ve decided to do very little work beyond cleaning (which I’m paying someone else to do), but, despite that, we’re still having a big problem. Some… (I’m choosing to allow you to use your imagination for the adjective to describe this person) wallpapered our room, God knows how long ago, without priming the drywall. We have a hole in the wall now (oops, my bad) which means to repair the hole the wallpaper has to be replaced, changed, removed. Except, it doesn’t want to be removed.

Stupid wall paper.

No matter what I (we, Wakizashi tried last night) do, it’s simply not coming down. There is no way we’ll be able to get all the paper down and the room painted in time for the listing. (Grr…) Now we are left with no simple options. Wallpapering is annoying and time consuming (not to mention expensive), but painting over the paper will mean oil primer, tidying up seems with plaster, and then painting.

I have decided that my house must hate me!

I will be ok, I will be ok, I will be ok. (Wait, aren’t we supposed to say those kinds of things in the positive?) Oh well, I’m back to the consuming world of plaster, wall paper remover and a wet butt.