I'm Homeless

Before I begin the amazing story of how my wife and I became homeless this weekend, let me give a couple of shouts out:
Julie, at Julie's Running Blog recently hosted a give-away of which I was a winner and has also been running some great races. Thanks Julie! Nitmos, over at Feet Meet Street is successfully tapering for a marathon, and Ian at Half Fast won his age group in a local 5k (his local not my local). Finally, Don of Minnesota Running Wild fame won his age group at the Fargo Marathon 5k on Friday night and followed it up with a sub-3 hour marathon on Saturday. Color me impressed.

Now, for how I became homeless:

My wife and I have been in the process of purchasing a townhouse and we were supposed to close on said townhouse this past Tuesday. Our Wells Fargo mortgage consultant told us that these things usually go down to the wire but since we scheduled the closing 45 days from the signed purchase agreement she was pretty confident we could get it done. Taking her word we scheduled ourselves to move today so that if the closing had to move to, say, Friday, we'd still be OK.

A week before closing the consultant told us things we taking longer than expected because so many people are trying to take advantage of the tax credit. She said we might have to push the closing until Friday. No problem, we said.

A week before that Friday she said we could probably close on the original Tuesday we we supposed to close. Great, we said.

This past Monday, the day before our original closing date, she said, no, now some form that wasn't signed about lead based paint that shouldn't have needed to be signed since the house was built after 1978 actually probably should have been signed and it's holding things up (how's that for a run-on). We're going to have to close Friday. No problem, we said.

Friday shows up. Early Friday morning we both get e-mails that said she's doing her best to make sure everything's ready for closing on Tuesday at 2 PM. Errr....OK, isn't that what everyone's planning?

Friday at 12:30 PM our Realtor calls us and says things are getting held up still so we might as well wait to do the final walk-through until later. We plan to do the walk-through at 1:45 PM and hope Wells Fargo gets their crap together so we can close after that.

Friday at 2:15 PM our Realtor, who's walking through the house with us, gets a call from the mortgage consultant. We're on standby, she says, because this lead-based paint thing hasn't been signed so they're trying to figure that out. Sure, we knew the seller wouldn't sign it a month ago but now, an hour before closing, it's a problem. Apparently no one has the authority to say, OK, it hasn't been signed but who gives a crap? These people probably want to move into their house. Nope, they have to ask their boss's boss's boss who's out at Edina Country Club and he's 1 under par through 10 holes and he'll be damned if he's going to cut his round of golf short so a couple of poor school teachers can close on their house. The lady from the title company tells our Realtor if Wells Fargo doesn't have their crap together by 3 PM we won't be able to close today. We go back to our apartment and wait to hear from someone.

Friday at 2:54 PM our Realtor calls us. We're not going to close today. It's too bad he has to deliver the news because he's awesome and has done everything, including finding us this townhouse. I wish one of the people who actually held this process up had to call and say why they couldn't get this done rather than him. Actually, our Wells Fargo lady is super-nice too and she seems like she's good at her job. I'm guessing it's her higher-ups who are responsible. Nothing like cleaning up banks' images after the worthless bailouts than by being incompetent at your jobs.

So, we now have to cancel our moving truck, call our friends who were going help us move and my wife's parents to let them know that no, we do not need their help after all. Oh, and we're subleasing our apartment to our friends and they are moving in on Sunday so... that's right, we're going to be homeless.

Our friends were cool about it and said they could stay somewhere else for a few days but we didn't what to inconvenience them too much. Fortunately a family my wife babysits for said we can stay at their house. They're on vacation somewhere in the Caribbean. So actually it's not bad--we're staying at a super-nice house and I'm not having to paint or put together bookshelves or fix shower heads or unpack. Instead I get to put that off for a couple of days and relax and watch cable. I feel bad for our friends who have to wait a few days before we can get all our stuff out of our apartment so they have the whole place to themselves. It also sucks that I missed half a day of work and now I'll have to miss more. Oh well.

I did a nice run in today and did some barefoot striders in the grass. It felt great. I also went on a bike ride with the wife so really it's been a pretty good day despite being homeless.