Any Dream Will Do...

Remember how I said that we were moving all of our furniture from our old house into our new house this week if all the stars aligned?

Well, guess what...the stars did not align and yet another monkey wrench has been thrown into our house sale. Surprise, surprise!

Last night at 7:00pm, I got a call from our realtor telling us that our buyer can't be approved for a loan because he is in the middle of a divorce and his wife (who we were told was his EX wife, and that he had already gotten a divorce) won't let him take title in his own name without her.

I have no idea why this is just coming out NOW, when we were supposed to be closing in a few days.

This news came the night before our movers were set to arrive, to move out all of our furniture. This morning, we had to cancel our movers at the last minute (as they were showing up on our doorstep), and we have to start again from square one to put our house back on the market.

We have been living without most of our furniture for two months now. Our master bedroom is an empty room with nothing in it. We have no television, and all of our dishes are at our old house. Camping out is getting old.

On top of that, my mom is coming to visit from Indiana this weekend. We planned it so that she would have a place to sleep when she comes to visit. Now I either have to scramble and find a suitable bed for her, or she will be sleeping on the floor. Sorry, mom, our real beds are back at our place in Pasadena!

I am so angry that after almost two months of jumping through hoops for our buyer, we are now faced with a situation where just days before the close of escrow, he is walking away without owing us anything. (The loan contingency was never lifted, so we cannot collect his earnest money deposit).

I would say I am devastated...but I don't use that word lightly. Devastation for me happens on days like the one where I picked up Vivian and Annemarie's urns at the funeral home and brought their ashes back to sit on a shelf in my house.

I know it's just money, I know it's just a lot of money...but at least we're alive and healthy, and that's what really matters.

But I am kind of furious about it. This means months more of mortgage payments. I have to re-stage the house (because I took down a lot of the things already in preparation for the move). Now we have to find a new buyer. And our property now is stale because it's technically been on the market longer (even though we haven't been able to pursue other buyers because we had an accepted offer).

So, instead of closing escrow yesterday...as we originally were supposed to do...we instead found out that we are back to square one (and then some) in our home selling quest. I joked to Mr. Mustard today that it is our pad on "The Upper East Side" (but you know, the Upper East Side of LA is a little different than the Upper East Side of NYC!) It's like having a kid in college at Harvard and paying tuition payments every month...except that we don't, of course, have a kid at Harvard...not yet anyway. ;-)

So, this news happened right as I was walking out the door to take Paprika to see Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It's playing at the Civic Light Opera, and I knew she would love it. She did love it!

We lowered the average age in the auditorium by about 70 years, and she was the only little kid to make it past intermission. (There was a family with a 5 year old and a 7 year old but they left at intermission because the 5 year old couldn't sit still).

So, at age 3, Paprika did a pretty awesome job.

The show was beautiful, and Paprika sat wide-eyed on the edge of her seat the whole show. At intermission, she was dancing in the aisles, and wanted to go down to see the instruments in the orchestra pit.

When the show ended, a hush fell over the audience, and Paprika exclaimed, "That was FANTASTIC!" And the whole audience laughed.

It was a wonderful few hours, and I spent it enjoying watching Paprika watch the show. She was as entertaining to me as what was going on on-stage. Some days I just want to drink in her wide-eyed wonder and excitement.

I also kept looking for the deeper message in the show, wondering if it could give me some perspective on our housing situation...and it kinda did. What the heck are ya gonna do? Just do your best and that's all you can do, right? Right...