Faces

I see faces. I am not crazy, but I see faces of the people that I left. I think it is the minds way of making all the change seem familiar. To look for the people and things that are like the way it used to be, to make things seem like they are familiar.

I am painting every room the same color it used to be. I am decorating the house to look like my old one. I feel like maybe I should change, do something different. Perhaps it is too much for me to process too much change, I need to make something, the things I can control like they used to be. I want to go home, to go back.

The kids are struggling with the fact that everything is different. They are overwhelmed by all the change, all the new people. Hannah hates everyone. She only likes people that are familiar, which of course are the ones that are not here.

We can not go back. Even if we did, it wouldn't be the same. That bridge is burnt. Our old lives are left in a smoking heap. They don't exist anymore.

So, I look for faces, things that are like they used to be. Anything to chase the overwhelming loneliness away. Slowly I suppose we will make friends and less and less will we see the faces of our old friends in strangers in the grocery store.

We waited....

I learned a lesson while waiting. That bad things happen so you can appreciate the good and joyful things in your life.

The first 2 weeks were a bit like vacation. We hung out, went to the pool and various museums. We checked stuff out. It was ok, kinda lonely, but ok.

Then school started, and it got crazy. Driving the kids to school basically blows. It is super tiring, and by the end of the week, I am pooped. But, we go through Mac's first day, without any problems. Then it was Sam's turn. We drove to the house, parked and started walking, and low and behold a bus drove by and asked us if we would like a ride. Wonders never cease, since we hadn't talked about it Sam wasn't into it. The next day he rode the bus. He liked it. He liked it so much he decided that he should ride it home to, when his teacher told him no, he freaked. When he saw me he threw the mother of all temper tantrums. Of course this was in front of the entire school, where all the parents are in line to pick up their kids, all the teachers and the principal are out there. I ended up having to carry him, while he was screaming, "you are hurting me," to the car. It was lovely. He screamed until 4:30, so for an hour.

The next day, the nurse pulled the kids from gym because our forms said CT on them and not IL. Mac went into a tail spin about this. He cried and hit me because I didn't turn the forms in. He told me all the kids were going to hate him and think he was stupid.... it was lovely, and against the law.

The next day was Friday... got the forms in, got the kids situated... all seemed well again. WRONG. Tuesday morning some kids tried to hit my kids with rocks...then Sam go hit by a bike. I was not impressed.

By the end of the week we saw the movers move the people out of our new house, and we think we see the light at the end of the tunnel. (it might be a train!)

But as we went through all of this stress, Hannah and I sang songs and jumped over cracks while the boys were in school. Spending time with her and her mostly unflappably happy attitude certainly helped make things seem like they might actually be better. I truly enjoyed her. Without the bad, I might have missed these moments with her.

Here we are... now what

We watched all our worldly belongings drive down the street headed towards Rhode Island. We met the people who bought our house, perhaps they aren't so bad. We loaded everyone, 3 kids and a dog, into 2 cars. We drove for 3 days and here we are. We live in 1200 square feet.

It is all a little surreal. It seems like we are on vacation. In spite of the fact that we left the house with nothing in it, it still felt like we were just leaving for a trip and that we would come back soon. It didn't seem like good bye forever. But it was.

Our apartment, while wholly adequate, is well an apartment. Not really appropriate for a family of 5 and a dog. The kids are at loose ends. They don't have any friends to play with. They don't have an activities to attend. It is all a bit odd. It seems like a vacation. I like to pretend that we are in a vacation condo on Maui.

We have seen the house, registered the kids for school. Now we wait. We wait. The kids are acting out, I am sad and lonely. We wait for our lives to start. This is all like a huge pause in our lives. We wait for the next chapter to begin.

Just a small rant

Ok, here is the deal. We are 5 days away from selling our lovely home to the most nasty people in the world. They are completely disrespectful. Their agent, hmm yeah, she is even worse!

I got a call on at 4:00 on Thursday and was informed that they would be inspecting our chimney the next day. What??? Their time for inspections has past, they can look at the work we did, but they can not do more inspections and expect us to do more work. The kicker is that they buyers wanted to see the house again. Yeah, they can see the house all they want once they own it. I am in the middle of packing and they want me to clean up the house so they can see it????? Is this the pre-closing inspection? No, they just want to look. OMG. I have 3 little kids, who are completely freaking out that we are moving and these sob's want to look at my house? My husband told me the could look from the street.

Susanne Vacek, their agent, has to be the stupidest woman on the planet. I can not express how much I hate her. She has lied to us, told us one thing and done another. I can not believe it. She actually called our chimney contractor, with out our knowledge. She claims we didn't give her the information she requested. WTF, she didn't request any information. We sent her the paperwork and pictures of the work. She told my chimney people that she didn't get any pictures. This is so unethical, I have half a mind to report her to the board of realtors.

This isn't the first time this chick has lied to us, she told our agent no one was in our home except the buyers. HMMM, I saw with my eyeballs two van loads of folks pulling away from my house after they had been in it for 2 hours. So who were the other people in the other van???? Liar liar pants on fire.

She also told us one thing and did another on every single written document. We would think we had agreed to one thing verbally, and then the paperwork would be completely different.

The killer is that our home is impeccably maintained, my husband and I are ridiculous about maintenance. We have records for everything and we updated the home and kept it very well. They act like we never did anything to the house. Yet the only inspection issues they could come up with totaled $300 bucks. We told them no. They are getting a lovely home for a great price in a wonderful neighborhood. You would think that they would be happy and respectful. NOPE.

Oh well, if you ever live in Vernon, don't use Susanne Vacek from DW Fish of Manchester CT. She will alienate your sellers and probably your buyers!

**** editorial note, because my husband wanted to wait until the money was in our account before I posted this, this rant is actually out of order. *****

Hi, are you Susanne?

Ok, so here's the scene. It is 8:45ish and the Paul Arpin truck pulls up in front of the house. (Paul Arpin ROCKS btw) It is only a box truck, not the big semi, which I was informed by the 5 year old was not what I promised. He was pretty let down, but I digress.

So, the guys from Paul Arpin are here, give them the nickel tour of the house and they are getting boxes from the box truck. (Get it? Ok, well, I thought is was funny. Yeah, no one else does either.) They are bringing in the load and there is this young guy at my door. I say hi. He says, "Are you Susanne?" I say, "yeah." Now, I know my name is Susanna, but in the history of the world, no contractor has ever called me that. He says to me, I am here to look at the chimney. I say ok. He tells me that someone called him and said the chimney was falling apart. I said "WTF? I don't think so." I told him that the crown had cracked and that we had it fixed. He could inspect the crown. He said ok. I also told him that if he wanted to go on the roof I needed to see his insurance. He said he didn't need to go on the roof. He told me everything look solid to him, and he left. I thought GREAT!!! The AH's didn't come! Maybe they aren't so bad after all.

So I am in the house making food for the kids and I get this feeling that the swine were out there. Sure as poop, they were. We let them cool their heels in the street for a half an hour. After I was pretty certain that they had called the chimney contractor and talked to him, I grabbed the 2yr old and went outside and had a chat with them.

I tried to schedule the walk through, but they would have nothing of that. I also gave the realtor a piece of my mind about her calling my chimney contractor. She had the audacity to accuse me of not sending the information. Now, everyone that knows me knows that I am pretty buttoned up, so this is a ludicrous accusation. She was extremely combative, and I finally told her that we are trying to do the right thing. I was pretty upset that they keep kicking us. Have I mentioned that I HATE her? Hate is actually too mild a word. Unbelievable!

Anyway, the good thing was that she assured me that they planned on closing. I hope that happens. I really do, because if it doesn't I plan to sue them for liquidated damages.

Only 3 more days, only 3 more days.

Are they for real?

So, we told our realtor that the buyers couldn't come and see our house on Monday, the chimney guy could come, but they couldn't. Our movers are coming between 8 and 10 on Monday, and having them arrive at the same time too is a bit overwhelming.

When we told them that only the chimney guy could come, they got mad and didn't understand why we wouldn't let them in the house. Tomorrow should be interesting. I am on the brink of a nervous break down!

The kids are excited to get going and see the truck. I think everything will be much better once we are in our temporary apartment and our current home is sold. Seeing the money in the bank will make me very very very happy.

I ask everyone to pray for me to make it through this and to have our house actually be sold. I never thought that selling our house could be so amazingly difficult!

My last girls night

It is very sad, we had our last girls night. I am going to miss my friends so much. I have had so many negative experiences in my life that it is hard for be to believe that I have some many great friends.

I wasn't very popular in High School and even after college, people were pretty mean to me. So I was very nervous about staying home and trying to make mommy friends. I have gotten to the point where I have some wonderful relationships, and now I have to leave them. :(

I am very nervous about meeting new people in the new place. Will they be nice? Will I like them? Will they be muffys? Will they be regular people who like to coupon? Will I find a job?

So much unknown. It is scary and I feel like I want to cry every time I think about the move.

The whole thing has been really stressful . It seems that everything thing that could go wrong has gone wrong. My husband won't let me go into detail yet, but once it is over, I have some stories for you! Needless to say, I go to bed crying most nights because of the sadness of it, but also because of the overwhelming stress.