It’s 6:30 on a Tuesday morning, and my phone is ringing. Few things cause my gut to clench faster than a way-too-early-in-the-morning phone call. A moment ago I was sleepily attempting to fill the espresso maker for our morning lattes. Now I’m wide awake and staring at my phone with dread.
The screen displays our real estate broker’s name. OK, it’s house related, and not a family member calling from the scene of a car wreck, I think, relieved. Still, this is quite unusual.
“Hey Lew,” I answer. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you last night,” he begins. “I wanted to let you know as soon as possible this morning that the buyer who looked at your house last week submitted an offer last night. It’s a good, good, bad one.”
“Okayyyyyyy,” I reply, strongly suspecting that my day isn’t going to play out quite the way I had planned.
“It’s good, because it’s a full price offer. And it’s good, because it’s a cash deal. But…”
I took a breath. “Butttt?” I asked.
“But they want to close on December 16th so they can be in by Christmas. You have 24 hours to decide.”
Boom. And there it was. As I’d mentioned in The Calm Before The Storm, I had had a feeling that there was a storm brewing. And now lightning has struck and the tempest is unleashed. Three weeks. It’s two days before Thanksgiving, and we have three weeks to pack up and move. It’s half the time we were expecting to have. We had a plan for how to do it in six weeks. That’s commonly how long it takes to go from offer to closing. But that’s because there’s usually a bank involved. This is a cash offer. There’s no bank to slow things down. So we have to figure out how to accomplish our six week plan in half the time. During the holidays. While we both work full time.
Another yard sale (more Nautical Alchemy). A quick haulout for Eagle Too. She needs her waterline raised and a leaky seacock replaced, and I want to put in the dripless shaft seal I should have installed back in May. We have to conclude our possessional triage, putting treasures in storage, distributing furniture and appliances to our children and donating what we can’t sell at the yard sale or online. And then Christmas. Between working on the house, working on the boat, and just plain going to work everyday, we have to still shop, mail cards, plan meals.
We’ll get it all done. We’ll be fine. We always are. And we’ll probably keep repeating those words to ourselves over and over in the next few weeks to help us make it through. Because the whirlwind is here, and we’re about to take a ride.
