Insomnia

It's 3:30 a.m. and I'm wide awake.

I went to sleep with no problem, it's just staying asleep that I can't seem to do here lately.

I was dreaming about signing contracts, spending too much money, and moving furniture. In one part of my dream--the part right before I woke up--I had written a letter to Blaise? Liz? (it was interchangeable) about putting Grandma's house on the market, finding a house for Liz (Ha! THAT'LL never happen! Liz move?! Crazy!), and selling my mother's house. House, house, house, house. Realtors, contracts, mortgages, oh my!

Gee, I think that this whole buying a house/moving thing is stressing me out just a little.

Just a tiny little bit.

*YAWN*

There's a rerun of SNL on E! But it's one from the era of Colin Quinn Weekend Update--i. e. not funny just stupid.

The smell of goose grease still lingers in the air. Mmmmm, boy, that was some good goose! Supper was a success all the way around, actually. We got the house straightened out, the food cooked, everyone fed, and the dishes washed all before 10 p.m. Quite a feat for us, really.

Ya know, I'll really miss my little house in Wendell. I think that's one of the primary stress factors. I am truly going to miss living in downtown Wendell. Hell, living in Wendell period. The new house has a Raleigh address.

We tried to buy a house in Wendell. Reallly we did. A nice house. In Olde Wendell. It had granite counter tops, a built in wine rack in the kitchen. Stainless steel appliances. Underground fencing. And the best part of all was that it was in Wendell. But after two months of waiting, extremely strange behavior on the part of the current owners and feet dragging by their mortgage lender I gave in.

Of course, this house that we're buying is better laid out. And we actually get to keep the master suite. And William has his own "suite" upstairs. And it has a fenced in yard. And it's in a nice neighborhood--one just as nice if not nicer than Olde Wendell. But still. . .if I coulda actually purchased the Olde Wendell house I would have. I had moved in there already in my mind. If I knew I could really buy the house--within a reasonable amount of time--I still would. I'd give up the earnest money on this house in order to buy the Olde Wendell house. But it's not going to happen. I just need to let it go. And I have to come to grips with the fact that I'm really going to be leaving Wendell.

(I'll always wonder about that house, though. What exactly happened? Or didn't happen, as the case may be. Was it the seller's ex-husband trying to sabotage the deal? Was it the seller's realtor's incompetence? Was it my realtor getting tired of putting out so much effort and not getting anything in return? Was it just one factor or an unfortunate combination of all the above?)

But about Wendell. . . Funny, isn't it? As uptight, straightlaced, conservative, Southern Baptist, backwoods, narrow-minded, redneck as this town is it's MY town and I love it. It's become a part of me. It's Mayberry and I like it because it's Mayberry. It's where Lizzy will think of as the place where she grew up. William, too, actually. They'll miss it. Even William, though it may be years before he'll admit to it.

Gee, you'd think by the way I'm talking that we were moving a couple of states away and not just eleven miles down the road!

*Sigh*

So it's the Wendell factor. It's also the expense. This house was listed at $300K. $300K!!! I always kinda thought that a) being a small house, bungalow-with-a-front-porch lovin' kind of gal, I'd never in my entire life spend that much on a house and b) if I ever did it would be nothing less than a masion because, well, that's a lot of damn money! But I'm here to testify, a quarter of a million dollars just does not buy all that much house. Now of course we're not going to pay a full $300K for the house, but we're not buying it for much less than that. (And in the long run we'll actually pay about twice that if I keep the thing for a full 30 years--but we just won't even think about that little fact.)

That's another thing I'll always wonder about: could I have gotten the house for less? Was I a victim of my realtor wanting to get the most commission he could out of a deal? Of course, even at $300K it comped out low, but still. . .

Oh my! There's an infomercial on for an exercise DVD called "Yoga Booty Ballet" and I thought that it was a SNL skit! But it's a real product! Lord.

Anyway. . .

The expense.

Can we really afford this? I sure hope so. If I can rent this house out we should be OK. If we can't, or when we're between renters, we'll manage one way or the other, I know, but it'll be hard. Worse case scenario, though, is that we sell the place. We're putting 10-20% down, so we're guaranteed that much equity if we have to sell and, hell, the people selling this house are realizing a $20K gain in just a year and a half so I think it's a pretty safe investment.

What else?

Oh, yeah, actually moving.

I don't know if there's anything worse than moving. I think I'd rather take a sharp stick in the eye than pack, haul, move, unpack, rehaul, rearrange, etc. There's nothing at all fun about moving. It's disrupting, it's difficult, it's a complete pain in the tush. Donald says we should seriously contemplate paying a moving company, but that's a lot of money to spend for someone to do something that we're perfectly capable of doing ourselves. Of course, it will eliminate some of the stres--a lot, really--but it will also consume a sizable chunk of our quickly dwindling supply of cash. Decisions, decisions. I guess it can't hurt to get a quote or two and see. But even with a moving company, it won't be fun. It'll still be an ordeal getting this house, our storage sheds, and grandma's stuff succressfully relocated. There's just no getting around it.

So, there's leaving the town that my children and I have lived in for the past seven years, and then there's spending too much money, and added to those two things the chore of packing and moving. Just that combination of things is enough to send most folks right over the edge. (That's like three of the five top causes of depression--all I'm missing is death [I've had my share of that for awhile, thankyouverymuch] and divorce.) But I haven't even scratched the surface of the source of my sleeplessness and stress. Nope, I've not yet touched on. . .dum-duh-dum. . .GRANDMA!

Yes, beyond the expense, the stresses of moving, the fears of the unknown there's the hard, cold reality of living with my grandmother to face.

I love her. I do. She raised me. I've spent over half of my life living in the same house with her already but no matter, I do not relish living with her again. She's inconsiderate, ill-mannered, self-centered, rude, crude and often completely, on purpose, obnoxious. Most people think little old lady, grandma types are sweet, loving, gentle souls. Not my grandma. Oh, yeah, sure, she's loving. She loves us all, I know she does, but sweet and gentle she is not. She's whiny and demanding and totally self-absorbed. It's all about Grandma. ALL. And that's going to be hard to live with. I mean, I can barely bring myself to travel the five miles down the road to her house and spend even an hour with her now, I'm not real sure how I'm going to survive spending every single day with her. I guess I'll just work a lot. :-)

I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that with my master suite retreat and bonus-room-cum-den upstairs hideaway I'll be able to escape from a lot of the unpleasantness that is my granmother. Well, and I'm also holding out hope that Donald, with his infinite patience and his amazing ability to apply sarcasm and insightful commentary such that it can cause even the most thickheaded, boorish person to feel slighted and ashamed, will cause some positive change--however small it might be--in Grandma's behavior. She DOES, for whatever reason, respond to him and his reprimands much better than she does to me and mine. Bless his heart, he'll have to play interference a lot, I'm betting.

Oh well, I'm finally getting sleepy (now that's it 5:00 a.m. and just an hour or so before most decent folk wake up for the day). Time to go find something totally boring and inane to put on the TV and try to catch a few more hours of sleep. I have so much to do today. . .