the one

After twenty-six years of apartment living, and after four months of searching, after crying to Bryan's parents that at times I think we're drooling lunatics for even thinking of leaving Brooklyn, we found the ONE.

It came on the market Thursday, we raced down to see it Friday afternoon, well I was going to go solo Friday morning but after five hours' sleep and nerves jangling, for the first time ever went sun-blind moving the car at 8:30AM for street-sweeping and crashed into a double-parked car and even though the rheumy ancient fellow sitting in the undamaged car waved me away and said in broken English to forget about it I went hysterical and was too traumatized, dramatized, stressified to drive, so I had a nap and dragged Bryan out of work early, we drove down in the in-laws' Camry, me tucked safely in the passenger seat, walked in and immediately knew it was Our House and that anyone else who made an offer would essentially be stealing our home, we just had that Feeling, that one you hope for when home shopping, so we fell all over ourselves filling out paperwork, made a bid over asking price because we were finally serious, nearly had our heads explode waiting to hear, but then finally they accepted our offer after some late-night back and forth over certain things back in Brooklyn Friday night, and then Saturday morning the sellers signed the contract and, and so we are in contract.

Breathe.

It has a big (by our urban standards) yard, four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a master suite including an office for my writing pleasures and a master bath with a Jacuzzi tub. It has a full basement with another little office area for Bryan’s musical frolickings, AND it’s in the school district I was yearning for, AND it was reasonably priced, within walking distance of one of my oldest and dearest friends, and just by blogging this, I am acidic with fear that somehow it will still slip through our fingers, even though it's already passed inspection and we are as in love with a pile of stone and plaster as anyone could be.

I would and possibly should be using a buttload of exclamation points but I can’t find them. They are lost or hiding among the thousands of boxes making mini skyscrapers all over this apartment, stacked in front of the windows, eclipsing the sunlight. Anyway, I want to denote my state of mind, which I will call “exhausted disbelief, mixed with hungry excitement and irritating irritation that we’re not living in the new house yet,” since our apartment is currently a frigging mess—those boxes, clothes not put away, dried kernels of rice scattered across the kitchen floor... It’s like, not our apartment anymore.

I’m itching to trick out the new place, already recklessly tearing pages from Domino Magazine… but don’t worry, Good Buyer! We will clean the place for you. I will even wipe down the fridge.

Oh…wait, I think…Holy Shit! WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!! Okay, there are those exclamation points. I knew they were around here somewhere. They’d fallen between the piles of files and the box of dusty toiletries we haven’t touched since 2002 but still might need someday.

It’s a 1925 Sears & Roebuck Bungalow kit, which is cool, right? It's funky and quirky with that magical flair that speaks to us.

The master suite, which is not pictured, was added in 2002. The fireplace works. The kitchen’s not eat-in, but we love it to death still. It looks thoughtfully planned, not like it was slapped together by a cheap'n'greedy seller, you know, the ones that boast "granite countertops!" but look schlocky and cheesy but you hate to swap it out because it's brand spanking.

We’re planning to move in mid-March, after Hamish’s birthday, even though we close on our apartment in mid-February. We like the idea of living on the streets for a couple weeks. Oh well, actually, we'll be staying with the grandparents.

What else is there? Our beloved realtor (no that's not an oxymoron, we LOVE her) keeps warning us about buyer's remorse, but so far we are stupid with glee, and hopefully I'm not jinxing it by telling you this. As much as we've been stressing over outcomes and fearing that everything will fall apart if we blow on it, things have gone as smoothly as we could have hoped. Thanks are in order, to each other, our realtor, our buyer, our seller, the fates... THANKS BE. And there's a guest room for YOU.