The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Pete and I can vouch for this, living in upstate New York as we presently do.

Caught in Somebody Else's Karma

The house-buying is on hold, indefinitely. We expected to sign the papers yesterday or today. Instead, we discovered that the seller lied in a signed statement where she said she was in good standing on her mortgage and wasn't in bankruptcy. Turns out, she went bankrupt ten months ago and hasn't made a house payment since then. For some reason I'm not clear on but our lawyer is, this makes the house a short sale. Which means a) the bank that's foreclosing on her has to approve of the purchase, and b) we don't know if the small amount of profit from the sale that she said she'd turn over to us will be turn over-able. We kind of need(ed) that for repairs.

A friend of mine pointed out that this is starting to feel like karma, and he's right. But it doesn't feel like our karma. Our karma's been consistently sweeping us toward this house. No, this feels more like we've been caught up in her karma, somehow. I suspect you don't develop the kind of drug problem that causes you to lose your home of seventeen years without acquiring some bad karma along the way.

All the same, we've now up to no christmas tree, no house, up to our ears in already-packed boxes, and canceling changes of address and utilities with nothing to show for it. Not a way to get into the spirit of the holiday season. And oh yeah: If we find someplace else we'd rather buy (unlikely, but we're searching again, hedging our bets against that karma thing), we'll be out between $1000 and $2000 we've already put into this process (I'm not sure if we'd lose our earnest money or not since the offer we signed was with the seller, and she apparently doesn't have the authority to sell the house).

I so badly need a mental health day, and my freakin' status as a subcontractor (which is also indefinite, since the entire IT for the site I work at is up in the air) means I don't even get paid holidays, let alone PTO I could use for a mental health day. With three days without pay next week during which we're going to RH's folks' house for the holidays, I really can't afford to take one more day off this pay period. That I'm thinking about it anyway is indicative.

A few thoughts on Christmas

Funny and a little sweet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0s68-GLGWY

In other news, like I haven't already fallen off the face of the earth--we hope to be moving into a new house next week or next weekend. I may not even be replying to e-mails and I don't know how the move if the internet service will go re: possible downtime. I apologize in advance.