So that happened....

I have been busy.
Last time I blogged was nearly 3 months ago. I was till starry eyed about being able to sell my house and was painting it and making it pretty.
HA.
Oh, so naive!
So here is how it went down. We started to go to open houses, we looked at houses all over the city and outside of the city. We googlemapped and Trulia-ed and Zillowed our asses off. Two neighbors down the street from us had major dig up your front yard sewer repairs done. Our neighbor next door gave us reason to believe the likelihood of a sinkhole near us was more than a passing obession of mine with the discovery of some long neglected storm sewer pipes the city put in 50 years ago and then abandoned. In our yards. We saw many house going up for sale all around us with people who are just done and fed up, and also some houses where people just packed up, moved out and walked away from their mortgages. And of course we had the bank-owned house rotting next door to us that was never cleaned out.

And I was going through the motions, but still not sold on selling the house. Because it was my home, my first home where I was in control, where no one was yelly and scary and where no one could kick me out. I loved my little house. Too much. I was so in love with feeling stable and safe there. And then one day I was scrubbing the kitchen counter grout, the grout I put in myself, and I realized the safety? The stability? The house did not create that. I have a stable and secure life now because that is what my husband and I have created. We argue, yes, but no one is a drunk, no one screams, no one carries on and stirs up drama for the hell of it. What we have isn't confined to a specific house.

It was eye opening to realize all of that. So, we called a national house flipping company and set up an appointment. The whole thing went like this:
September 8: he came to see the house, gave a lowball offer and then said he had to check some other numbers before letting us know.
September 9: he called back and cut his offer in half and told us he might know some other people... I wasn't completely on board with selling it until I realized that even the "we buy any house" guy might not even be willing to buy our house. Then I realized I wanted to get the fuck out. I cried. A lot. And then put on some lipstick and went out to see a house we had driven past several times.
September 10: we wrote an offer on the house we saw! Jeff called back lowballing man and told him we'd take whatever he was offering, send us paperwork to accept.
September 12: the seller accepted our offer
October 4: our 13th anniversary. We closed on our new house! We moved in on October 9.
October 18: we are officially no longer the owners of Shitty House.

And now it's a month later and we are still settling in, painting like mad and trying to figure out which box we put any of our crap in. And it's coming along slowly but surely.

And in the middle of all of this FEMA did reverse their decision and decided to cover individual claims, but by then we were in the middle of buying the new house and would have to make an insurance claim which would be two large claims within 3 years which could make us unable to get a policy on the new house or possibly make it more difficult for the buyer to insure our house and then we still might get next to nothing from FEMA. Our neighbor got $200. For her furnace and water heater and the cleanup costs. Yes, that is two hundred. We had more at stake than we stood to gain so we didn't file with them in the end. We just left it, cleaned and scoured with a new water heater but no operational furnace.

So that is what is going with me so far. I'm starting over and so far it doesn't suck.