Diving in Head First

A couple things about me - big changes petrify me and large financial commitments stress me. I am a tax CPA, I have an accounting bachelor degree and a master's of taxation. I studied the financial world for five years and have been working in that world for four. I firmly believe a good house is a good investment, yes markets can fall but they also rise. Armed with all my financial knowledge and with a bevy of years of advice/tips from my fixer-upper parents, I began the house hunt.

I met with my realtor, Cristy Christy, (nope, not a typo that is her name) for the first time on June 30th. After one prior offer and withdrawal, I found this place on Monday, August 4th and made an offer. By that Friday, I was in my 10 day inspection period. In less than a month and a half I went from the looking phase to the purchasing phase. All the time I remained surprisingly calm and confident about my choice. I kept waiting for the freak out, a major meltdown but it never came.

Because the process went so much faster than I had expected or planned, I did have a little bit of a dilemma. I have a lease on my apartment till mid-November. I was closing mid-September. Two months of rent and a mortgage and double utilities. As a solution, I asked if my sister and her family wanted to rent from me. They were moving to Phoenix and needed a place. I gave them a pretty good price and a deal was struck. It wasn't ideal, my very first home and my sister was going to move in first but it was the most logical and financially best choice.

The week of closing, I got all my utilities set up and the day before close I did my final walk through. Everything looked great and still no buyer's remorse or worry. Even though I felt confident about the decision, the financial obligation was still very large and I was expecting buyer's remorse to hit soon probably as soon as title cleared. On Friday I checked my email all day long waiting to hear when title cleared and I could get keys. Finally, around 3pm the email came. I was so excited, I made plans to meet my realtor with keys at 4:30pm and left work a little early. And still only excitement and anticipation, no remorse whatsoever.

I got to my brand new house and found my sister with a look on her face, something was wrong. As I walked in my brand new house I saw gas station cups on the counter, odd, those hadn't been there last night. The arcadia door to the backyard was wide open. The guest bathroom had been peed on, all over. The final devastating blow, someone had smoked an entire cigarette in my master bedroom. Butt and ashes left on the windowsill and ashes on the brand new carpet. It reeked of smoke.

I saw red!

What?! Who?! WHY?! Why MY brand new house, didn't they know this was my first ever home purchase? Why is society so screwed up? I was so angry and I had no one to blame. No one to pay for this. No one to clean it up. No one to make it all go away. It was my home, my responsibility. It was hard for me to swallow this.

Due to my blinding anger and a prior super unhelpful police incident, I figured it was pointless calling the police. Lesson 1: hopefully this never happens again, but if so I will call the police. Also, I had my sister's family moving in the very next day and I had a mess to clean up, so we cleaned up all the evidence before I even thought to take a picture. Lesson 2: Take photos first thing. (Though on a personal level I'm glad I don't have photos of the desecration, I think they would still bring up so much anger and without them it just feels like a horrible nightmare.)

Needless to say I had a long weekend of scrubbing every inch of the floor, ceiling, and walls. A few other things went wrong that weekend. It was a long, exhausting couple of days. I definitely dove headfirst into real life home ownership. Strangely enough, despite the great deal of anger I felt and the frustrations of the weekend, I never felt buyer's remorse.  25 days in and I still feel good about my purchase.

Lessons Learned in Moving

The countdown has begun!

7 DAYS LEFT...
In one week, I'm leaving Arizona and hopefully not returning (except to visit).

So here is my first countdown post.

Saturday, the movers came and took almost all my stuff away. It was a CRAZY long day and I learned quite a bit.

1. Splinters, stickers, tacks come out of nowhere and are everywhere (stepped on, slicing arms, stabbing hands.) Wear shoes, long sleeves, and pants.

2. Pay attention to the accessories when packing, so the remote gets into the tv box.

3. DO NOT ride a mechanical bull the night before moving.

4. When you do ride a mechanical bull use the legs more than the arms (but again, NOT the night before moving.)

5. Don't leave your bathroom looking like a tornado just blew threw, the movers WILL ask to use it. So clean it the day before they come (you'll be too tired and busy the day of.)

6. Keep one hand towel unpacked in the bathroom so the movers don't use your towel (gross, I had to use a beach towel to dry off later.)

7. When the driver says "I'm on my way." Ask him if he is actually in the truck AND on the road or if he's still doing paperwork with the prior client.

8. Expect them to be hours late, so go ahead and go get that pizza for dinner so you're not starving, tired, and cranky when they finally show up at 8:30pm (3 and a half hours late.)

9. Have a pen ready, there's a TON to sign and their's will be out of ink.

10. Ask him to forego highlighting the paperwork, when its dark you can't see it anyway.

Chaos!

When you're in the midst of chaos, what happens? MORE chaos!

So I went home for a quick overnight trip. Worked early Saturday morning and then drove home. I got to Yuma right after lunch time, hung out with my parents, ran to purchase stuff to finish my quilt, and visited my brother Nathaniel's family. Things were going great!

Then BAM!

Right in front of the neighbors house, I stopped as my dad passed me and then stopped. He didn't move or roll down his window but he was waiting. So I figured he wanted me to reverse so we could talk, my sister agreed. I threw my car into reverse and hit it.

Literally!

The neighbor girl was being dropped off and her friend didn't pull into the carport, she just kind of pulled up at an angle right behind me in the street and was chatting. I dented both of our cars. Man, it was a frustrating afternoon. I was TICKED at myself for not checking and TICKED that I had now had this car problem when I had no time to take care of it.

Thankfully I have great parents who exchanged me cars and said they would get it taken care of. (They also took me to dinner and a movie, the Hunger Games, super good and I highly recommend it.)

~

I drove home late Sunday night after exchanging cars with my mom. I had a LONG day at work Monday and was exhausted from the weekend drama. I wanted to be in bed by 11pm and at 10:30 I remembered my power card (electric) was low. I grabbed the car keys, credit card, and power card and walked out. I had gone two steps when it hit me, my door was locked and my apartment key was somewhere inside on the floor. I hadn't put it on my mom's key ring because when we re-exchange cars I didn't want to forget my apt. key. Great idea at the time.

Locked out, no on-site manager, no cell phone (it was also inside), a sleep-deprived panic and despair set in.  I took a deep breath and hopped in the car, twenty minutes later I was at my brothers. He came over and spent the next hour trying to jimmy anything to get inside. I had just given up and figured I'd be spending another unexpected chunk of cash on a locksmith, when Matthew got in!

It was almost 1am before I was in bed, but thank goodness for family.

~

From now on deep breaths, double checking EVERYTHING before I do ANYTHING, and no rushing. Hopefully the chaos will be over soon.

Had a Bad Day...

You know the kind, not anything CRAZY terrible, just a lot of sucky/annoying things all day and when you get home you're just glad its over. That was today for me.

I woke up almost an hour before my alarm went off because of gas pressure, no, I'm not joking. I was in pain! I got up and went to the bathroom and tried to work it out, I was able to relieve some of it and then I tried to get some more sleep. FAIL!

 I got up and went to the dentist, my cleaning a few weeks ago revealed two cavities. FAIL!

Today was the day to get them filled. They numbed me to high heaven and went to work. You all know the uncomfortableness of laying there with your jaw wide open for an hour. After the whole process, the tech told me I could rinse if I wanted to. I tried and spilled all over- of course - and the dang tech watched the whole time! I knew where the front desk was, she could have met me out there. RUDE! Major FAIL!

After paying almost $200 she informed me the numbing stuff should wear off in two hours.

LIES!

Five hours later, I still looked like botox gone wrong. And yes I was at work. As the numbing finally started to wear off, the headache got worse. I was barely able to eat or swallow - I couldn't fully close my mouth, my gums hurt, and I had SUPER bit my cheek the day before and it was stinging. FAIL!

In addition to being hungry and in pain, I was STILL gassy! After 12 hours at the office, I finally made it home and took some tums. I felt OLD, only old people take tums! FAIL!

And that, folks, is the definition of a bad day.