Houston, We Have Keys

And we’re moving in TODAY. Seriously. The furniture arrives in like, fifteen minutes. So I’ll be offline for a few days while we unpack boxes, rearrange furniture and get those little necessities in life, like electricity and water and internet.

Yay!

Nightmare on My Street

Dear Dark Agents of the Lending, Loan and Escrow Underworld,

I don’t want to alarm you, but I’ve noticed a problem. Fourteen days ago, a teensy, tiny, glimmer of irritation bloomed behind my left eye. It’s slowly festered into a snarling knot of laser hot rage and now burns like a flaring itch that makes me bat-bung CRAZY.

You put it there. And it may make me kill you all.

I noticed it came on as soon as you called and asked for paperwork the day we were driving the road to nowhere on a highway between Boise and Yakima. Paperwork that for a month was readily available and at my fingertips – but having never, ever been mentioned before, was now packed on a freight truck headed for Seattle.

Although I didn’t understand, and certainly didn’t appreciate, the lack of foresight displayed by needing critical information four days before we were SUPPOSED to close, I did understand the gleaming power of such documents to keep us from joining the greater metropolis known as Portland’s wandering homeless. Mr. Loan Officer, Beelzebub, would call to explain what he needed, and without files or phone numbers or statements, we somehow found a way to pull these out of our butts. And he would call again. And tell us he needed the same thing. But in a totally different way.

Day after day after day, Beelzebub kept calling, asking for more and more sensitive financial information until we were quite sure he was in fact, a member of the Identity Procurement Gestapo and would soon be issuing us new identities as Mr. and Mrs. Toothless Smith, residents of #303 Cardboard Lane. We watched as our closing date was pushed from the 10th to the 18th to the 21st.

But as soon as we went to your escrow office Thursday October 20th and actually put pen to paper, we felt a just little better. As better as you can feel after wiring your very last dime from savings to a twelve digit account that could very well be Beelzebub’s personal Swiss Account. Our names were all but cemented on the sidewalk of our new house, and according to y’all, the buyers of our house in Salt Lake were on schedule to close the next day. All we had to do was FedEx our papers to Utah, the buyers would wire their funds, and then, holy crap, we’d all have ourselves a house.

But no. NOOO. You buyers had to go out of town for a week and lose their tax return. Can you explain to me the thought process that went into deciding to send it, not by fax or FedEx or UPS, but by good ole’ US postal service? I’m sorry, but in six years of selling and buying internet knickknacks from Hokenpoke, Utah to Syndey, Australia, a person can send anything by Pony friggin’ Express and STILL get it there sooner.

(Case in point, on October 8th, I handed a change of address form right into the hands of what appeared to a real-life US postal worker. I was in the Draper, UT post office. There was this human being wearing a USPS uniform standing behind a USPS desk. But when I entered the charming post office in Maple Valley, WA twelve days later, imagine my surprise when there wasn’t a single SCRAP of forwarded mail to be found. And no one knows where it is. “Now, WHERE did we put that darn pile. Hm. Hm. Hm. Gotta be around here somewheres. Why don’t you leave a message for the Mail Fairy and see if she gets back to you?”)

So you moved closing to the 24th. I called you that Monday. You said, “Ooh, everything’s fii-iine. The buyers are signing today, and funds should go through tomorrow.” And I said, “So we should be done on Wednesday? Keys and everything?” “Right.” “Because our temporary housing ends this week, and I’d really, REALLY prefer not to live in my truck.” “I understand. It’s cool.” “So you have everything you need, right?” “Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeppers.” “There’s nothing else we need to do?” “Nope.” “O.K.”

So I called you Tuesday morning. And you said, “Gorsh, you know what? There’s one more thing we need you to sign. Think you can fax it to us in the next ten minutes?” So we signed your damn fax and sent it back, all before 11am. We waited to hear some good news back. And we heard…nothing. Not at noon. Not at one. At 2pm, you finalllly got to me. And told me funds wouldn’t be wired until tomorrow.

Now, our movers are re-re-scheduled to dump our every earthly possession on the front lawn this Thursday. We’ll have no apartment, no keys, no mail and because the buyers wanted to jerk with us, no refrigerator. From what you freaks are telling me, funds have to sit in escrow for 24 hours or more so the National Security Commission can pick through them, because apparently, WE LOOK LIKE TERRORISTS. And now, you’re going to sit there and tell me that you still have NO CLUE as to when this whole three ring circus might come to some sort of end. Even one that involves shoving my head in a starving lion’s cavity-filled jaws. I don’t care.

But at this point, I don’t want to hear, “Maybe tomorrow.” or “Just one more thing”. And you don’t want me to hear it, either. Because if I do, I swear to god I’m putting on the rubber mask and going all Michael Myers on your asses.

Juuuust watch me.

Sincerely, Your Demon Child,

Jules