Then it started.
A real estate agent called him back and wanted to show us other houses as well. Since I was going down to Orlando the next weekend she scheduled us for ten AM on Sunday. Tim told her we needed to be through by three to go to our oldest son's birthday party. TJ had moved to Orlando a few months before Tim did and will be nice to have us all together again.
Tim gave her our max budget for a house. The first house she took us to see was ten grand over our budget.
It was a great house in a great location but why show it to us? The second house she showed us cost even more. By this time she had us trapped in her car with her driving, making us leave our car in a a parking lot.
She finally showed us the HUD house after four we couldn't afford. If I'd been married to Tim the Tool Man Taylor, it would have been a great house to buy. It was older in an older subdivision and had obviously been sitting a while. It had all tile flooring and a great floor plan. It was a little outdated but with a lot of repairs could have been a dream house. The best way to describe it is to say it looked like Mike and Carol Brady had been evicted in the early eighties and the house had been vacant since.
Oh, no worries...she had four more for us to look at.
One that Massey and I had really really liked turned out to be a great home... but literally ten feet from the fence of a huge (actually) massive newly built elementary school. It was a Sunday and traffic beside the house was insane. The school seems to be a cut through to escape the busy intersection around the corner.
Massey and I both said the flyer for the house was deceptive advertising and to the max.
Out of all the house she showed us only one was move in ready (one of our requirements) and although we loved it was fourteen thousand over what we said we wanted to pay.
She asked us if we'd be willing to make a bid on it the next day?
By this point I just wanted out of her car. Massey and I were in the back seat rolling our eyes at each other and texting TJ that we would be there soon.
On the way back to our car she said she would research ten more houses for Monday and pick us up at ten AM again. Then the bomb really dropped.
She said she would also bring two different forms for us to sign, one saying we wouldn't use another agent for a house she had shown us.
I was okay with that.
Then she said another form would be for a $297 fee payable in advance to her for.....
I quit listening after that.
We made our escape from her vehicle and Tim told her we'd be in contact.
Crap, we just wanted to look at houses and I wasn't even moving to Orlando until late September! This woman wanted us to buy a house (over our budget) the middle of April.
I shot Massey my look which always means...
Once back in our own car went to pick up my brother at his house and headed to TJ's for his birthday party albeit over an hour late.
TJ had just turned thirty and our first grand baby was just turning one. The food was fabulous and company even better. We stayed for a few hours then headed back to my brother's house.
The real estate agent called Tim on the way back in the car, he put it on speaker phone. She jubilantly announced she had "done her homework" and had six more houses for us to look at the next day.
Tim was driving, with my brother riding shotgun. My brother did the slit across the throat sign under his chin. Tim stepped up and told her we'd decided to wait on looking at other houses until later in the summer but would give her a call next time I came down to Orlando in July.
I'd say her tone after that was devastated to say the least.
Here's the thing.
I don't need a woman bossier than me showing me houses. I don't need someone asking me for almost three hundred dollars before they have done anything more than print out pages off a web site.
My brother gave us his real estate agent's name and we're going with her next time in July. He also found three or four houses in the area which were great and not only in but a couple under our budget. One of them is on a street where one of his friends live.
We opted to take the next day off and spend it at Cocoa Beach, a short forty minute drive away.
It was an excellent choice to make and a much needed day for me, if not all of us.
TJ and his little family came over for dinner at my brother's that night and we had a wonderful time. Massey got to spend yet another day with her Daddy who she misses dearly.
I love this picture of the two of them. Massey's always been a Daddy's Girl and wouldn't want it any other way. It takes a lot of pressure off me!
Massey and I left the next morning to come back for (me) work and (her) school. She drove the first leg and as we got on the interstate she pointed out the ideal new home for me.
Touche' !!
After the next few crazy months at the airport I may need senior living arrangements. I absolutely hands down love working for Fifth Group Restaurants... for the airport, not so much.
I pay twelve dollars a day to park, no discount for being an employee. I rode MARTA for almost an entire year, only $45 a month with an airport discount but added four unpaid hours to every shift I worked and live nowhere near a MARTA line. Plus when I rode MARTA it let me off at the domestic terminal and had to either go through the long ass security line there and ride the plane train twenty minutes to my terminal or go outside and hope they let me on the shuttle to drive me around to international where I worked and security was a breeze. If there were too many passengers waiting on the international shuttle they would kick employees off to wait for the next one or make you go through the hell which is domestic side. At least on the international side most all the TSA know me by now and let me go ahead of passengers still bumbling around to take off shoes or take things out of their pockets. Everything is measured by seconds when working at the world's busiest airport and can make or break your day.
Don't get me wrong, the job literally saved my family and will always be grateful but after two years is working on what little sanity I have left.
Staying through the busy summer season being an Olympics year will net me probably eighteen grand and will take the money and run. Trust me, I earn every penny of it.
Unlike many workers at the airport I show up every day on time and most always early. I work hard and consistently from the time I clock in until the time I clock out. I rarely if ever take a (union authorized) break and have a positive attitude every time I walk in the door. Okay, maybe I've had two bad shifts in the two years I've worked there but must most certainly be some kind of record.
I feel like a government worker, for real!
Everything has been set into motion now. Tim is already in Orlando, our house here will be rented out come October with renters we totally trust and will be settling into our new house in Florida with a nice nest egg.
I got a little worried when almost hacked my finger tip off at work a month ago. In hindsight was an idiot for not immediately going for medical attention but with lots of diligent cleaning and a whole lot of luck survived losing a finger tip.
A customer asked me just the other day what happened to my (bandaged like an ET) finger and how many stitches did it require? I told them I'd pushed actual humans out of my body and all had survived with me taking care of them, one for thirty years now so considered myself a doctor and had given myself an excellent prognosis.
And just like that...
God once again looked after me and still have a finger to wag .
When first happened, had several nightmares about having to have it amputated because of my own stupidity and infection.
Here's my theory of having a successful life.
It's Simple, so very simple.
Just be a good person.
It's worked for me for (closer to than from) almost sixty years.
Sometimes you have to wait. Sometimes you have to be more than patient. Sometimes you have to feel lost.
If you keep believing in yourself and believing in humanity while also encouraging and urging humanity forward in every possible way you have the ability to... it'll be okay in the long run.
It really will.
I've learned more in the last decade than I ever wanted to... but was obviously destined to learn and would be an idiot not to learn from.
I am loved because I also love.
Til next time...a moving on and up COTTON
No comments:
Post a Comment