House of Ill Repute

Oh hey, guess what?  I put my condo on the market.  Yes, in 2011.  In fact the day I put it up the stock market fell 519 points.  Timing has always been my strong suit.  But it didn't matter, because somehow the universe threw me a break and I actually got a contract yesterday!  After not living there for seven months but still paying a mortgage, condo association fees and parking fees, I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders.

So where do I go now?  Well, I am kind of superstitious about going on and on about this since it isn't a done deal yet, but I am a month and a half in to the process of buying a short sale house in the suburbs.  How nuts is that?  I don't want to go into too many details about it just in case it doesn't go through, but here are a couple of pictures.

Looks nice, right?  It really is.  It has a lot of charm, all wood floors, lots of windows, a big backyard and a nice basement.  Butttt..... there are a few downsides too.

It's been empty for almost two years, so it does need a little, um, work.  But the price is right and I like it a lot, plus Cooper will have a fenced in yard and I won't have to walk him which meeeannnnnssssss... I can move out of my parents' house!!!!!!!!  (Sorry, Kate, the exclamation points are very necessary here.)

Not everyone is a huge fan of this life decision.  One of my cousins is adamantly against it, since it means I won't live in the city or live close to her anymore.  For a while, she refused to even look at the listing, but when she came down here to visit me, we took a ride and I showed her the outside of the house.  It was just getting really dark out and we snuck into the backyard, which is huge and has an area separated from the rest by a bunch of trees.

MISSY:  What the hell?  Do they do human sacrifices back here?

ME:  No, I googled.  No murders here in 70 years.

MISSY:  ... None that were reported.

Now she's taken to calling it "The Grove" and hinting that she is having visions that there will be horrific consequences if I move there.  Yes, she's going right to the old "don't buy that house, it's haunted" trick.  I kind of laughed it off... until I showed this picture to one of my friends.

"Hmm.  It looks a lot like that house in "Unbreakable."  Did you ever see that?  That looks like the house where this old guy was brutally murdered."

Gulp.  Then another friend said, "That looks like a creepy old English haunted house."

I think I'm going to borrow some Holy Water, rosary beads and St. Joseph statues from my mother.