Friday, April 29, 2016

Dream Deferred




I realize I deserve little sympathy for my first-world tale of woe, but . . .

We were supposed to leave for Florida today. My bags are packed, the refrigerator is empty, and the newspapers have been stopped.

Last winter, on vacation in the gentle twilight of our lives, we both lost our minds simultaneously and signed up to buy a second home. For more than 365 days I’ve been marking down the days on my calendar and dreaming of palm trees.

 Now thanks to builder delays and Byzantine insurance and mortgage rules, we’re in a holding pattern.

In an off-hand manner on Wednesday, I suggested to my fellow lunatic that, ha ha, perhaps we should just drop an email to the bank to see if everything is copacetic for the closing date everyone had assured us was locked in for Tuesday of next week.

It did seem a bit unnecessary – I mean, if there was a problem, at least one of the fleet of people we’ve been dealing with would have contacted us, right?
Still, we were about to rent a trailer, hitch it to the car, and drive for three days, so what the heck, why not?

A buzzing started up in my brain as soon as the bank lady began cataloguing the hoops remaining to be jumped through. Bottom line, we’re going nowhere anytime soon.

Apparently, it never occurred to the many builder reps or bank officers to let us in on this. Had we not contacted them, we would have merrily motored through 7 states only to sit in an expensive hotel room day after day while bureaucrats shuffled papers.

My coping skills kicked right into gear as soon as I got the news.
Gone now is a two-pack of Hostess Snowballs, the first third of a bottle of wine, and half a bag of potato chips.  

21 comments:

  1. Hard to believe that nobody thought to mention these little facts to you! I cope in much the same way :-)

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  2. Oh God I feel your pain. When we moved from California to Georgia we received a call from our realtor letting us know that the people we'd bought our house from and were renting it back from us might not be moving out in time for us to move in after we'd coordinated everything for the cross country more. Some little clause in the contracts we'd signed had given them an extra 2 weeks if they needed it. I drank more than a third of a bottle of wine. We were lucky though, the house they were building was going to take way longer than they expected so 2 weeks wasn't going to help so they found a 6 month rental and moved out.
    Where are you moving to in Florida?

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    1. Venice, and I'm still - in spite of it all - beside myself with excitement. Which makes waiting that much more maddening.

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  3. So sorry that your plans bit the dust. Hope something good comes up soon.

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  4. I'm getting to move to Fla also....my original home state. So much red tape, uncoordinated people and timelines...a very stressful time for sure. But someday it'll all fall into place. And this is my last move before the crematorium..ha!

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  5. I agree that Snowballs and wine are the appropriate response. I don't weather the problems as well as I used to but that does not stop me from adventures

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    1. Yes, I guess I'll suck it up and deal with all this considering the alternative is missing a grand adventure.

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  6. You will be Olga's neighbor in Venice. What a lovely town. Hope you get all the hoops in a row. Sure is good you checked first.

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    1. I know - Steve's previous stomping ground!

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  7. Having purchased a number of houses in my life including newly built, I can understand this problem completely. This delay can be expected, but the lack of communication is totally incompetent! This costs you money and they should realize that.

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    1. What's really maddening is I can't q u i t e figure out who to blame. I would be so much more satisfying to have a specific person to grind my teeth over!

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  8. Contractors these days seem to have no idea what reliability is supposed to be.

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  9. That's a bit rude of them to keep you out of the loop like that. I think a very stern email, followed by a hard copy letter, to the managers of companies involved would be in order.
    Snowballs? Those little chocolate and coconut covered marshmallow things?
    I've never known anyone who likes those.

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  10. Lucky you found out before hitting the road.

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  11. I'm really sorry about your ordeal.

    Greetings from London.

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  12. I hope you'll forgive me for laughing over the package of snowballs, wine and chips. I can so identify with that. As I read your post I kept saying to myself, they should cancel the deal and walk away but nothing is ever that simple. Besides, you apparently have been planning this for a long time. Very distressing. Life is full of frustration.

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  13. I have lived in Florida in the summer, it isn't all it's cracked up to be with the daily monsoons and humidity:(

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