The Bright Side

Are you getting tired of my house drama? Here’s the latest:

The bank doesn’t want to sell us our house because it turns out that Mr. Bankruptcy had a second mortgage of $66,000 on it that he promised to pay back before he filed for bankruptcy. They no longer have that deal, so the bank wants to try to sell it for more.

We could probably get a real estate lawyer to push the deal through for us, but we decided to see what’s on the market these days in case there’s something better. We looked at a bunch of houses on Saturday, and after the 11th one I felt like we had just wasted an entire day. We decided to go see one more…

AND TOTALLY FELL IN LOVE WITH IT! Here’s the difference:

House we’ve been fighting for:


New house:


They’re both older homes in similar neighborhoods with great schools, and Mapquest says they’re both exactly 17 minutes from Ben’s work and 30 minutes from Schmath’s goats. We put an offer on the new one Saturday night and got a verbal acceptance a few hours later. I’m trying not to get my hopes up just yet, but let's be honest. This could turn out to be the greatest of all blessings in disguise.

In Limbo

I packed up my car earlier this week with the intention of moving some clutter from our old house to our new house. The new house hadn’t recorded yet (we had no keys), but it was sure to happen by Tuesday so I wasn’t worried.

I took one of the twin beds out of the guest room, shoving the box springs under the other twin and the mattress into the newly emptied closet, the contents of which were sitting in my car.

Now it’s Friday and my car is still packed up, and the house isn’t going to record anytime soon. Our realtor is even more frustrated than we are. He spends hours on the phone with different people from the bank, not making any progress. Because of our weird bankruptcy situation, nobody knows how to process our paperwork. Apparently there’s still a possibility of us not getting the house, even though we already closed on it and we’re paying $30/day in interest.

Now I need to go to Costco, but there’s no room for food in my car and no room for clutter in my house. I’m afraid I’m going to have to set up that second bed again, just for the closet space.

Shiloh's Lonely World

The latest issue of Life & Style Weekly was on display as I was checking out at the grocery store tonight, and cute little Shiloh was staring back at me with this caption: “She’s surrounded by so many siblings—and there are even more to come. Why does Shiloh feel so left out?”


What the…? First of all, how do they know she’s feeling left out? I would love to see a copy of that interview. And secondly, isn’t she like two? Who cares if she feels left out? Two-year-olds don’t have real feelings. Get a real story, Life & Style.

Mike Crowley Is My New Best Friend

Several years ago, my band had a gig in Las Vegas. We spent one of our nights there at a jam session while our husbands went to the strip and gambled. Mike Crowley taught Ben how to play a fun little game called Roulette.

Fast forward to last month, when Ben’s boss, Craig, took us to Vegas. I loaned Craig $30 so he could tip the limo driver, and he paid me back with a $5 bill and a $25 chip. Ben and I promptly took our chip to the Roulette table and set it on black. Five seconds later we had two $25 chips, which we immediately cashed out.

But that's not the only reason that Mike Crowley is my new best friend. We closed on our house today! The house we thought we could no longer have! The house that prompted this post, where Mike Crowley left a comment and taught us how to work the system!

Mike, because of you we are not just $25 richer. We also have the house we really wanted and we only had to wait four extra weeks. Thank you!

So You Think You Can Clog

Whoa. Did you guys just see Maria Tucker on So You Think You Can Dance?


I hope she clogs her way to Vegas. Go Maria!

Signing Time!

A couple months ago I got an e-mail from Rebecca, saying Signing Time! was auditioning for some new episodes. We sent in our audition tape and found out that even with all of the nose wiping, they wanted Liam.

Last week they started filming, so we spent a couple days in front of the camera where some dude would say, “Now can you smile at the camera, Liam? Can you smile while you sign ‘play’?” Obviously that dude hadn’t watched the audition tape.

This morning we got to meet the Signing Time! cast: Rachel, Alex, Leah, and Hopkins. Just for fun, I asked Liam to smile for the camera. Instead he gave me this look:

Real Estate Riot

Here’s a little update on our housing situation:

After we found out that our seller went bankrupt, I called our realtor to see if there was anything we could do to fight the system. This is his first experience with a short sale turned foreclosure, so he wasn’t sure. He said he would get back to me. A few hours later, he called to say there was some paperwork that would need to be filled out saying the seller was not making a profit from the sale of our house so it didn’t affect his bankruptcy, and that it would take up to 30 days to get the paperwork processed, but that there was a 70% to 80% chance we would still get the house. Hooray!

Then, a few days later, the realtor called again. It turns out that Bankruptcy Guy was the one who would be filling out the paperwork, costing him time and money, and he was sick of it all. He decided he wasn’t going to help us out. Now we had only a 5% to 10% chance of getting the house. Bummer.

Then someone named Mike (Is that you, Mike Crowley?) left a comment on this post, saying we could probably work out a sales agreement with the seller's lending agency. Ben called our realtor to see if this was a possibility, and the realtor said it was possible but not really legal. This got Ben thinking about other possibilities, though, like suing Bankruptcy Guy to force him to fill out the paperwork or going over Bankruptcy Guy’s head to have someone else process the paperwork.

Turns out that Ben is kind of a genius, and now there’s a 90% chance that we’ll still get the house. We’re not sure what any of these percentages mean, since they fluctuate 80% from one day to the next, so we’re not getting our hopes up just yet. But we’re also not giving up yet. So thanks, Mike, whoever you are!

Weed Hound

Bucket of weeds, anyone?


You might remember that last year I absolutely detested dandelions. I picked those stupid yellow flowers every single day and never got any satisfaction from it. This year, things have changed.

I found this handy little tool called the Weed Hound at Home Depot.


This thing reaches down and grabs my dandelions by the roots without even making me bend over. I'm not much of a gardener, but this thing is SO gratifying. I think I'm in love.

Huh?

Our realtor called yesterday to tell us that the seller of our new house filed for bankruptcy without telling anyone. It was going to be a short sale, but now it will go up for review sometime in June and then become a foreclosure. Long story short: it’s no longer ours.

Did I mention we were going to close on it tomorrow?

Weekend in Review

Ben’s boss took us, along with six other employees and their spouses, on a quick trip to Las Vegas this weekend.

We flew in Friday morning and took a giant Hummer limo to the Venetian, where we checked in and then hung out in a private cabana by the pool for a couple hours. I really liked the cabana because I could lie in the sun (with my SPF 45 sunscreen, of course) and sip my drink without having millions of people around. Ben really liked the cabana because he could watch TV in the shade while eating nachos and wings.

Next we had dinner at The Palm and then went to see Phantom of the Opera. I hadn’t seen Phantom in 10 or 15 years, so I didn’t remember how awesome it was. Totally awesome. Afterward we went up to Ben’s boss’s giant hotel room and ate cheesecake while watching the end of the Jazz game.

The next morning we had breakfast at the Venetian and then went to the bodies exhibit at the Tropicana. Again, totally awesome. Then we moseyed on back to our hotel by way of the New York, New York roller coaster. Have you noticed that everything is better when someone else is paying?

Back at the Venetian, we had a quick lunch at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant out by the pool, then grabbed our stuff and got back in the Hummer limo. We were back at the airport after only about 28 hours. So that’s what I call a really fun really quick trip.