Painting Is My Therapy

Yesterday was one of those days that...ah...could make a person want to be committed. Seriously.

The day had so much promise. It was Mr. Mustard's one day off this week (yea!). He worked a 30ish hour shift from Monday to Tuesday, so it was a well-deserved break. We started out the day going to Home Depot to pick up a few things, and then we were planning on going up to the condo in Pasadena to put the finishing touches on our condo to do the final walk-through for our fickle buyer.

Long story short, a few weeks ago the buyer's financing fell through because of his soon-to-be ex-wife. Well, he decided he still wanted the condo, so he worked with a different bank to get financing. Everything was going great, he was approved (even with the ex-wife situation), and we were set to close in a week (after over two months in escrow).

Then, yesterday morning, our agent called to tell us that our buyer was having some new issues with his loan and he might need to re-negoitate. I was thinking about how frugal I am and how I never buy myself anything...and yet how someone can do something that ends up costing you thousands of dollars anyway...just like that.

The day was nasty and gray (these pics were taken the day before- I was not in the mood to take pics yesterday). I was trying to be in a good mood- but I am transparent. I was upset.

So, Mr. Mustard played with the kids and I tried not to talk to anybody. I told Mr. Mustard I had to do something. Something.

So, I painted our fence. Our nasty, fence that really really needs painting. The same fence I told Ann that I would NOT paint. But, nope, I painted it. I didn't take before/after pics because I just was NOT in the mood.

But I painted. I got one whole side of the fence painted, and then it started to rain. I am serious! It started to rain! (Even after I had checked weather.com and they had forecasted 0% chance of rain for the next five days).

So, then I went inside and checked my email. And I had just received another email from our agent. She said that the buyer "was too stressed out to proceed" and was walking away from the deal. Walking away after stringing us along for OVER two months.

It was about 5:00 when I got that message. I then realized that this is the final week of DWTS, and so Mr. Mustard is basically going to be gone from now until next Tuesday night working. So, if we needed to put the house back on the market, I was going to have to go up to Pasadena right then to get it ready to show since that would be my only opportunity for the next week to have Mr. Mustard watch the kids.

So, I got in the car (at 5:30pm, rush hour, no less) and went up to Pasadena. I felt like Humpty Dumpty putting everything back together again. Re-hanging the pictures. Re-staging the house. Cleaning the floors, and scrubbing the spots where the inspectors had tracked in mud and dirt. An endless list of things that had to be done. I was there working until 1am, at which point I called it a night.

So, now we're back to square one. Only kinda worse. Square negative one?

The important thing is that we have our health, we are together, and we have a roof over our heads. But as far as our condo goes, I don't know what will happen now. Welcome to Los Angeles real estate circa 2010. Fun, fun, fun!

The good news is that the next time you see a picture from this angle, the fence will look worlds better. It's pretty and painted white now...which is something. ;-)