House Poor-ness

In the last year, we've lowered the asking price of our house about 5 million dollars (well, it feels like it, anyway - wait, what the hell am I saying? I don't know what five millions dollars feels like!)

Our most recent offer came in Saturday night with a 24 hour time-limit. We agonized. We thought 'Take it!', then 'Fuck that - let's stick to our guns', to 'OK, let's meet them halfway', which is what we eventually settled on. So we countered with another 24 hour deadline. Then late this afternoon, mere minutes before the last of the sand falls through the hourglass, we get a phone call from our real estate agent. THE phone call. The one where she says, "Well, they didn't accept your counter", or "Well, they accepted your counter".

I tilt my head, my right ear pointing toward the stairwell, where I can hear the Mud Puppy saying things like, "OK.....OK.......OK.......OK...." and many other helpful one-sided monosyllabic sentences.

He hangs up the phone but doesn't come down the stairs to report. Oh, he must be waiting for an email from our Agent where he will pounce into my office with papered proof of the start of our escrow.

Minutes crawl by like snails on parade.

Nothing.

So I accost him and ask, WTF?

"Oh," he says. "They'll give us their answer tomorrow. The guy is out of town or something."









Well, it's been a year since we posted that most-likely-dry-rotting-by-now FOR SALE sign. What's 12-24 more grueling hours, right? I mean, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?