Offer Submitted
Last night the wife, Crab Cakes (baby), and myself met up with our realtor at a Wauwatosa coffee shop to place an offer on a home.This place is a few blocks from my parents house, which is both good and bad.
The good:
Great neighborhood
Easy resale
Neighborhood is safe for the wife and baby to walk
Wife can visit my parents if she needs to go anywhere (she still does not have a car)
The bad:
The parents are only a few blocks away
Yes, I'm seriously considering disabling the doorbell.
Anyway, it's a nice place. At first I thought it was too small, but the basement has been completely finished so it adds another level to the house. It's listed as a 2br, but you could use it as a 4br. Two of the 5 rooms in the basement can be used as bedrooms.
It also has a huge deck and a nice small yard. I'll be able to cut the grass in about 10 minutes, tops! Also, the yard is completely fenced in with a big red fence that you cannot see through, so it's very private.
There was only one issue with the house, ...one of the basement walls has cracks. It appears that the wall might be bulging a bit. The current owner says that the cracks were there when they bought the house. The previous owner said the cracks formed when he filled in the ground under the deck with gravel. I guess he felt that the weight of the gravel pushed against the wall and cracked it.
Seems a bit dubious, but if the current owner has lived with the cracks for 6 years and they haven't gotten any worse, then it might be true. We investigated the gutters and the landscaping for drainage problems and found none. We did find that the roof used to leak, but they replaced the roof recently to fix that problem. The current owners will pay for repairing the wall, so we're thinking that everything will be ok. Most of the houses we looked at had basement issues, and this basement looked better than most.
We'll find out about the offer later tonight.
The house is right on a corner with a 4-way stop. This is the very same stop sign that I once drove through while passed out at about 5:30 am on a frigid November Saturday morning.
You see, there was this girl. I had a huge crush on her. Her name was Amy and she sat across from me in a poetry class. Something about this women totally fascinated me. Whenever I looked at her my heart would pound like someone was tossing hardballs at the inside of my ribs. Once, my breath was literally swept out of my body as I adorned my eyes on her from across a plane of cheap laminate.
Also in this class was another girl named Amy. She had been a year ahead of me in high school, so we knew each other. I saw her talking to the Amy that I liked, so I got close and chummy with the Amy from high school. It worked. I got an invite to her birthday party.
I assumed the Amy I had a crush on would be at the party, but I couldn't be sure of that, so I decided to ask her myself. Now, I had so built up this girl in my mind that I could no more approach her than I could approach ...(let's see, who was hot back in the early 90's) Gabrielle Reece.
So, I stalked the girl for about a week after class. I found out where she went immediately after our class. My goal was to leave class quickly and beat to her next location. Then I could pretend to bump into her without looking like I was following her, brilliant right?
We hit it off famously, talking for about an hour. I called her that night and we talked for two more hours, ...we had so much in common. This was my dream girl. Then she casually dropped some info on me.
"Blah blah, my fiance' blah blah blah."
I was devastated. She meets a guy from class on the street. He talks to her, invites her to a party, gets her number, calls her, ...and she fails to mention the issue of her fiance' until late in the conversation. And then only in passing.
Well, I didn't give up, but that's another story.
We went to the party together. We did shots of Goldschlager every 25 minutes to commemorate the girls birthday. I chased them with bottles of beer, ...too many to count. The night was a blur of laughter and hugs. We walked to North avenue to hit a few bars. I literally could not see more than 3 feet in front of me. I almost fell down while standing still.
She held my arm as we walked home, but the brutally cold air kept me alert. We got back to the birthday girls apartment and had popcorn fight. Then I passed out in a chair. The girls decorated me with a lampshade, popcorn, and condoms and took pictures. Someone woke me at 5:30 and I got up and pretended I was sober.
We got in the car and I proceeded to nearly sideswipe a row of parked cars. I got her home in one piece, she begged me to sleep on her couch, but I waved her off. Once I got to the freeway I started to regret that.
On the freeway I could not stay in my lane. Also, I could not stay awake. I was dozing off and then snapping awake with my car drifting onto the shoulder. I rolled down the window and let the violent cold wind tear into me. I blasted the radio and sang along. I kept my speed between 50 and 55, but I could not stay awake and could not stay in my lane. I tried. Lord how I tried.
I contemplated pulling over and sleeping it off, but I knew a cop would come over and give me a ticket for drunk driving. No one was on the road. I can make it, I said.
I dozed off a few more times, but made it off the freeway and onto the street where my new house (hopefully) will be. As I approached the top of the hill where the stop sign is, I told myself that I was almost home. Stay awake. Stop at the sign, and then you are just two blocks from home. After the sign, you are home.
Blackout.
Wake up, I'm 75% of the way through the intersection, headed for the sidewalk. I straighten out, look around, and feel very lucky that no one was around. At least it's all over.
Blackout.
Wake up, I'm driving in the parking lane, half a block from the stop sign. I could not even keep it together for a half block! I knew it was getting worse, and soon I would not be able to wake up so quickly. I concentrated, blacked out a little as I made the turn onto my parents' street. Parked the car, entered the house, walked upstairs, collapsed on the bed, and said "never again" will I drive in that condition.
I was lucky to make it home that night.
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