I woke this morning, watched the news and took a walk/jog over the golf course that my backyard borders. Finished that I stepped inside all sweaty. My wife exclaimed,
"Don't be coming in here all sweaty'
"you use to like me sweaty"
"No I didn't"
"that was just a ruse??"
We have been in our new home going on 2 weeks and things are settling down. We still have boxes to sort through, but the garage has been vastly thinned of such things. The lay of the land looks like this-I have claimed the upstairs, which was always the plan. The 2nd floor bath is darker granite, tiles, and cabinets for a more masculine look. The "bonus" room has been turned into a man cave with a sports theme, with a flat screen and couch, one of the 3 bedrooms is now a office sporting memorabila from my fire dept career.
I sit in my office looking at the brown accordion folder that contains all the documents of our mortgage process. Not opened it in days, I couldn't tell you what the interest rate is, I use to check that everyday. I ride by the model home office and see the agent's car outside, and think of all the people who were involved in the process. They have all moved on to other clients, and soon I'll be long forgotten.
For 7 months I concentrated on what needed to be done next to make sure my file gets through, but in reality mine was pretty straight forward. I think they call that a "clean file" in the business. For those with blemishes on their file don't lose sleep over it. In fact, best advice I can give is live your life when you go in the process. Mine took 7 months because we were building a house, it started in mid Fall and ended 2 weeks before the Fourth of July. All through Christmas, and the dark days of winter, we watched our home being built. By spring they were inside and trimming it out. All the while the money people kept a eye on my file.
During that time we enjoyed the Holidays, made 2 trips to the beach, and enjoyed our friends and our last days on Primrose Drive. I left the everday things to the people that do that stuff for a living. If they need something, let them call me, otherwise I got stuff to do, like ride my motorcycles.
We have a lot of new furniture, to blend with the old. DW has a excellent eye for decorating and already our home looks like we've living here 3 years. At the walk through our builder told me-
"look here, we are going to miss things. Living here you will find things that need fixing that only living in house you will notice. Its just the way it is. I've been building houses 25 years, million dollar homes to govt assitance deals, and stuff always need checking. All we ask is you notify us first. We will be in the community for at least another year, so I have crews nearby. "
We had NO hot water in the master bath, and low pressure. I called my agent, and he called one of the building supt. and a plumber was on the scene 2 hrs later. The dryer connection was upside down, and fixed the next day. Our home is beautiful and we are very satisfied, a lot of nice things were standard and we added touches (= more money LOL). A steady stream of friends and family keep stopping in to see us and the house.
At the closing we had oatmeal cookies, peanuts and cold drinks per my request. Lawyer said that was awesome. After signing all those papers we were hungry so DW and I went to Longhorn where we split a T bone and soaked in what we had just done. She had a watermelon margarita. I didn't even know they made such. Next day hte agent called and I mentioned-
"yanno y'all made enough money of me, I shoulda gotta gift card for a steak dinner before leaving. I had to buy it myself at longhorn"
"y'all went to longhorn when you left the office?"
"yeah, y'all can give out the card at the end of everything and say "here, enjoy a steak dinner on the company, our personal thank you"
"Thats a good idea"
Next day he called me. "Come by here I got something for ya" It was a gift card to Outback. 50 big ones.
DW is calling me.
"Help me with this box?"
"Be right there"
There is a life after closing.
