sometimes you just gotta bawl a little.

So we bought our house!

Everything went smoothly, all parties involved were super nice and friendly (if perhaps the listing agent seemed a little out of touch; she was selling the home for her 98-year-old sister-in-law, I gather? But she was very nice, despite a general aura of cluelessness that went a long way to explain some of the various delays we experienced over the course of the sale)...We went back to Our New House after the initial home improvement store run, and spent a few minutes just marveling at the fact that we were finally free to experience being there. We sat on the floor in the living room, listening to the windstorm raging outside (and slamming all the soffit panels around in a way that was slightly disturbing - we'll have to fasten those in better) and exchanged big grins every time we heard a jet plane. :D

But after a bit, Greg had to get to work - his intention was to install new dual deadbolt and handle locksets on the front door, the rear door and the garage man door, as well as the wrought-iron security/storm doors at the front and rear, before we left that first night. Well - that didn't go quite as easily as he planned. He did manage to get both the house doors technically secure on our own keys by the time we finally left after 9 PM...but due to issue after issue with the doors, the locks, the shape of the strike plates, etc., he didn't get the last of the locks installed until sometime Sunday afternoon. And that isn't really even all of it, since the back storm door had a unique handle/lock style that he isn't sure if he can replace - for now, it's just got holes there to pull it open. Whoops.

In the meantime I did a lot of vacuuming inside, tested outlets, and tore down the unattractive and barely attached stone brick wallpaper in the kitchen to find a far more unattractive flowered vinyl paper underneath. Then on Sunday I worked from 11 to 8, just trying to scrape down that paper. I failed, mostly. This shit is indestructible. Around 3 (about a half hour after Greg left for the day, to go attend his biweekly D&D group) I broke down and had a bit of a screaming and crying fit. Every part of me hurt - the paper was fighting me at every turn, and the chemicals didn't seem to be helping any - I kept peeling back chunks of the wall's paint and gypsum layers instead of just the paper, when I could get purchase at all - and the worst part, my Bluetooth speaker wouldn't stay on for more than an hour per full charge. Dead silence is not the best for solitary, grueling physical work. :(

So I sobbed and sniffled for like 5 minutes, spouted a ton of terrible curse words at the kitchen, the speaker, the evil paper, and whatever blithering idiot in the 80s had decided to put it up in the first place...and then I rinsed my face off, got in my car, drove to the nearest Five Below and bought myself a speaker I could plug into my player with an AUX cable. Then I stopped for gas (a whole separate frustration requiring 2 stops and a bunch of red lights) and afterwards, I walked into a likely-looking Chinese takeout restaurant in the shopping strip behind the gas station, which I'm pretty sure will be our new go-to Chinese once we've moved. Back at the house, I sat at the sawhorse drafting table and ate some of the best General Tso's I've ever had - and then, I busted out the spare coffeemaker and the supplies I'd bought on Saturday, and fixed myself a small pot. I ate some chocolate with my coffee, started up my music again, and got back down to it.

By the time I left around 8 PM it had started unexpectedly snowing, big fat splatty flakes of half-sleet. I was exhausted, and my throat was starting to hurt. But I'd made some small progress, finally, so there was that.

Sometimes, you just have to have to pitch a fit before you can pick yourself up and keep going. :)