Closing on the house

The day is finally coming when we will move! We have FINALLY closed – though we still have a lease back agreement for a few weeks after that. Closing went well. We did the walk through the night before – which was interesting, in that all their stuff is still there because they’re not moving yet! They are making some progress on packing – slowly, but surely – but overall, the house still looks very lived in.

Having looked at SO many houses to find ours, it was almost like seeing ours for the first time when we walked through because I was finally able to really focus on what would be ours. I’d mentally moved our furniture into the last house that fell through at the 11th hour, so I was now mentally packing that up and putting it here. There were a few things “missing” that I hadn’t noticed before – like there are oddly no linen closets? But these things are remediable (they’re leaving some shelves for us, but we can get a cabinet down the road – and eventually we’ll just throw all that in to our mega remodel of one day). And there were no big surprises …till we got to the basement.

We were walking through the basement when my husband pointed to the rafters beyond some boxes and said – did you put that snakeskin there? His sentiment didn’t immediately register. What’s a snakeskin? Is it some sealant or covering? No, no. It is the skin of a snake! Literally! The owner said, No! She went on to explain that actually she hadn’t noticed it until the termite inspector came and that she’d freaked out then, but he’d promised her that the snake was long gone. As she said all this, my brain went into overdrive! Snake? Snake?!?!?! There’s a snake in… oh God, MY, basement. Can I get out of this contract?

I stopped my hyperventilating as we continued the tour of the house, but COULD NOT get the image out of my mind (imagine what this did for the pre-closing stress induced insomnia that I’d felt). There was about 6 inches of the tail hanging down – which meant that there was well more than 6 inches up in the rafters to support that part of the weight. Based on the width of the tail – it was a lot more than 6 inches. This was a BIG snake. Now, to be fair, it was a black snake. A completely harmless snake that I’ve seen around here before. My husband reminded me that it eats mice and its presence means that rodents were kept at bay (I responded with – what eats snakes? Ala the old woman who swallowed a fly.). And we live in a wooded area. There will be snakes (that was my husband’s logic. Guess who’s not going in the backyard anymore?).

My final compromise on this was to rationalize that – it’s coming on winter. Yes, the snake is gone now. So my husband needs to go to the basement first and be sure to remove the skin and never tell me how long it was. He assured me that it actually wasn’t very long and I thanked him for his happy lie.

Anyway, despite the snake, I decided to show up to closing the next day and we bought our house! We’ve spent the time since calling movers (don’t get me started), the electric company to change everything over and all those other “grown up” things that we need to take care of.

It’s so funny – I began to realize this being a parent, but now really see it as we buy a house – my parents weren’t actually born grown up. They weren’t born caring about boring things like mold and taxes and savings accounts! Life has snuck up on me and made me responsible and a parent – a grown up. Boring!!