CLOSURE

It's officially official.

Our old house is officially "closed" on. It belongs to us no more.

Our dealings with the buyers are over.

We are currently homeless until 10:00AM on Monday.

I haven't been this happy in months.

Gotta Love Closure.

CASE CLOSED? WELL...NOT REALLY

At 4:30PM this afternoon, we got the call that the closing on our old house was set for 5:00PM.

Anthony and I raced from our separate workplaces to the attorney's office where the closing would take place.

But, we're still sort of waiting to exhale...

See, naturally this couldn't go smoothly. Nothing about our dealings with these buyers has gone smoothly yet, so why would the closing be any different?

There is a problem with their insurance binder, and it is not sufficient. Until it is corrected in the morning, the attorney cannot release the funds to us.

Fortunately for us, we lied and said our closing on the new house is tomorrow. Thus, they will be scrambling in the morning so that we can pick up our check by around noonish.

We have a built-in buffer, so that when they call and say "we can't release the check until 2:00" we can yell at them and yet still know that we aren't ACTUALLY closing until Monday morning on the new house. We had to play this way, based on the history with these buyers, we HAD to lie.

So.....I feel slightly better. But I don't feel quite relieved yet, because a) it hasn't quite sunk in yet, and b) it isn't quite OVER yet with these people.

But.....we're 99.99999999999999999% there. And that is a good thing.

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY!!

My blog is officially one year old today.

One year ago today, I started this blog with this entry, and although it took me a long time to actually get going and get into the swing of things, it became an important part of my life. A ritual, if you will. A place to vent and finally start to get all these “things” off my chest. A place to journal and to virtually scream about my issues, without screaming at my husband.

I love my blog. It is the only form of therapy I have time for these days. And lately, there has been very little spare time even for blogging.

So much has happened in the past year, so many things that I never could have possibly anticipated. When I sat down and began typing into blogger one year ago I never could have known how tough this year would be.

And, ironically, at the time, I was complaining about what a horrible year 2003 had been. What a fool I was!

In my defense, at the time 2003 had been pretty bad. It felt as though all we did last year was attend funerals. There were several deaths in Anthony’s family, with elderly relatives, all one right after another. In fact we cancelled our vacation in Kennebunkport last year to instead fly to Kentucky for one of those funerals. That was the extent of any sort of “vacation” we were going to get. And substituting a funeral for a vacation, my friends, is not so good.

Other than that, nothing happened last year. We bought my devil-car in January of 2003 and have regretted that decision ever since. I started a new job in February which I despised immediately on day one. When I walked in and learned that the woman who hired me had been fired three days prior, I should have just turned right around and walked out the door right then and there. But I didn’t. And I stayed and remained in a position that I hated for the entire year. I also was sexually harassed by a coworker for months before he was finally let go. Workwise, it was a bad year.

On the positive side, I saw Bruce Springsteen in concert last year for the first time in my life, and was converted. I now “understand” what all the fuss is about. We saw him five times last year, following him around New England as much as our schedules would allow.

But other than that, NOTHING HAPPENED.

I dare say we were bored? Restless? Whatever it was, we were both annoyed and unsatisfied for most of 2003. We kept saying “2004 will be better, it HAS to be.”

Right after Christmas last year, Anthony started hinting about possibly moving. Should we just start looking in the paper and going to open houses, just in case we see something we like? We discussed it and right around New Year’s Eve we said “Well, maybe 2004 won’t be a GREAT year – but let’s call it a transitional year – a year full of change and hard work to get us into a better 2005.”

Little did we know at the time just how much transition we would go through.

In 2004, I switched positions at my company from a job that I hated to one that I dislike immensely. (A move temporarily for the better, but now not-so-much.)

In 2004, we went to Aruba. (Okay, admittedly that was a GOOD thing, but at the time we didn’t realize that this would not be the year to be spending lots of money on a vacation.)

In 2004, my sister got pregnant. (Another GOOD thing, but understandably a difficult thing for me to deal with, what with jealousy and emotions and whatnot.)

In 2004, we decided to build a new house. (Also, a GOOD thing, but an undertaking that we knew would be both expensive and stressful. But we figured, foolishly, that it would be the only REAL stressful thing we’d have going on this year.)

In 2004, my husband got promoted to Vice President of Finance at his company, complete with a nice raise and additional reassurance that this career of his was really on track.

In 2004, the house I grew up in was sold and my parents moved into a brand new house. I lived in that house since I was eight years old. It is still weird to think we’ll be celebrating Christmas elsewhere this year.

In 2004, I decided I was going to inform my husband that I needed some “time off” and that I was going to give my notice at my job.

In 2004, the night I was going to ask him if I could quit, my husband informed me that he lost his job. (There – I finally said it – that was “The Problem.”) Eight years in a company where he was all-but-told he would be their right-hand man forever, he was out. Not to mention we’re about to purchase a custom-built house and my husband is suddenly unemployed. And there’s no way we can afford this house on MY paltry salary.

In 2004, this conversation about me wanting to quit and Anthony losing his job all took place two nights before our very first IVF cycle would begin. In fact, I considered not going through with the IVF because, between having not yet found a buyer for the house we were selling on our own, and between learning that the primary breadwinner in our family was suddenly unemployed, I figured we were setting ourselves up for failure.

In 2004, we found buyers for our old house. They turned out to be the most annoying buyers in the history of the planet. (Did I mention we still haven’t closed and still have no firm closing date?)

In 2004, I underwent two surgeries, one IUI cycle and one IVF cycle. And yet I am, obviously, still not pregnant.

Transition year. Huh. Who knew exactly how much transition was going to happen this year.

It has been easy to dwell on the bad. To stay focused on all the negative – literally at one point Anthony had his last day at work, the following day we found out that the IVF failed, and then two days later our buyers “requested to postpone” our closing due to some “issues.” That was our make or break week, and initially things looked like they were going to turn out okay, but in hindsight it was a horrible, horrible time.

However, it is also important for me to TRY to look on the bright side of things. It feels nearly impossible to do these days, but I am going to try.

Hopefully within the next nine days I will own and move into my DREAM house.

Hopefully within the next two weeks we will begin our next IVF cycle, something I greatly look forward to diving back into.

Hopefully within the next three days we will finally, finally, FINALLY, close on our old house and officially say goodbye to our first home.

Hopefully within the next twenty-five days my sister will give birth to a healthy, happy, beautiful baby. And hopefully, she will share!!!!

Hopefully my husband is enjoying his BRAND NEW JOB that he started one week ago. Hopefully this all happened for a reason, because the other job overly stressed him out anyways. Hopefully, hopefully, things really do happen for a reason.

Hopefully I will stop all this bellyaching soon and return to a (somewhat) normal existence.

Hopefully 2005 will bring a lot more joy to our lives. It has the potential to be starting off on the right foot.

Hopefully when this blog is two years old, one way or another I will be one step (or more) closer to having a child.

A girl can hope, right?

WHAT INSIGHT!

You know what? Ms. anonymous commenter on my blog is right. In fact, she is so insightful and keenly perceptive of who I am, who the real me is, and what I should be doing with my life that rather than trying to reiterate it I will just repost her comment here so that everyone can see what she has so brilliantly come up with:

"I think you have a ton of issues that need to be resolved before you have a baby. It seems like you think it is the end-all, be-all of everything that is just going to make life perfect. I am here to tell you it isn't. It is just a ton of more stuff piled on the heap you have now.More turmoil, and with all of the negativity and mixed up emotions and whatnot you have built up inside, you are going to have hard fall once baby gets here and you realize how it really is. A child isn't going to fix things. I feel very sorry for you, your husband, and most importantly your baby if there ends up being one.
You owe it to yourself and your baby to PLEASE look into some therapy first to find out what is REALLY missing in you and your life and marriage before you selfishly go dragging an innocent child down the drain with you. See what's up and go from there and decide if having a baby is really what you ought to be doing right now, if ever...."

Very nice, huh? I love cowards who can spew hate and filth yet can't even leave their email address or name. At least, commenter, I own my thoughts and my opinions, and I admit to them being MINE. I don't dare do hit-and-run anonymous hate mail. I feel so sorry for you that you find it necessary to take a person who is at their lowest of low points and then take great pleasure in kicking them when they are down. Perhaps you are right - perhaps I am selfish and I have no business becoming a mother (because I have never lay in bed at night pondering that one myself, have I? I don't even have the luxury to worry about what kind of mother I will be because I've never gotten that far). But at least I am human, and at least I can live with myself for not being such a mean-spirited hate monger.

And, for the record, you couldn't POSSIBLY have missed the mark more on your account of me if you tried. Try as you may to bring me to a lower point, I know deep down that I am a wonderful unselfish person who will someday make a wonderful mom.

Because I am fabulous, and you suck ass.