In a little over 24 hours we get the keys to our house. Things are tense in the current Strocel abode, as we stare down home ownership. Poor Jon was ill last night, and is not doing so well today. On the other hand, I am actually kind of excited now. Also, I rarely have physical symptoms due to stress, so that works in my favour.

Today we’re off to visit Christy as she blows through BC on her way between Wales and Edmonton. We also get to meet James’ new girlfriend, Sara, who is celebrating her birthday today. I always appreciate it when Jon’s siblings bring boyfriends or girlfriends to family functions. It’s fun for me, as the old pro, to watch the newcomers in action. I’ve heard good things about her, though, so I expect that she’s a great person who will be a wonderful addition to the gathering.

OK, so it seems that I’ve been letting my stress creep out a little bit in my news updates. I’ve just signed my whole life away and undertaken a huge project. If I weren’t worried, it would indicate a lack of understanding on my part. So there. Please don’t worry about me, send me care packages, set up prayer circles, etc. I’m just fine, I’m eating and sleeping well, and my cold is subsiding right on schedule. Soon enough, I’ll be far too busy laying out cash for the money pit to worry about the situation.

In other news, I still have not finished unpacking from Brownie camp. This is quite characteristic of me–I get home, and push the bags and boxes through the door. Then, when I need to use something, I take it out of its bag, use it, and put it away. In my single days, the bag typically stayed semi-packed on the floor for months at a time (don’t judge, you might unpack promptly, but I’m sure that you don’t replace the toilet paper roll when you finish it, or commit some other equally heinous crime). However, this bothers my husband to no end. So, maybe I’ll unpack those boxes and bags tonight as a special treat for him. Or, maybe I’ll just wait until I have to move and need the boxes for something else.

Well, today is the day the mortgage is on us and the house is ours on the weekend. I’m actually much calmer about this than I thought I was going to be. I think Amber’s doing the worrying for us. The contractors are booked for the most part, at least for the hard stuff that involves the house being empty. I think a better attitude about this is to get the stuff done that needs to be done before we move in. Everything else (such as the roof stuff) can happen at any time. It will be easier when we’re actually doing all this stuff and it’s not just an abstract thought somewhere in the future. It’s going to be wonderful when we have our own house and it’s painted in colours that we like

The nice part is that my work schedule levels off quite a bit in June, so I’ll be able to go down and putter around the house and get things ready. I’ve already been fairly successful in getting the level of crap in the apartment down to manageable levels.

Yesterday I took out a whole box of old video games, and I was just going to throw them out. But I thought, “what the heck, I might as well see if someone will take used video games.” I took a trip down to Electronics Boutique at Lougheed Mall, and I got $50 in trade-in for all the games I was going to throw out! Happy Happy! So I got Amber the new Simcity 4 in a straight up trade, and got rid of a box that had sat in our closet for 2 years. Not too shabby.

Tonight Amber and I are going to celebrate our new-found debt with pizza and 90 minutes of the new Amazing Race, Amber’s favourite reality show. One of the audio guys who did the show says it’s a pretty good one. We’ll have to enjoy.

Today we also welcome home Christy from the U.K. for a three-day whirwind tour of B.C. before she’s back out to Alberta. So welcome home Christy!

We have a mortgage! We now owe way too much money to TD Canada Trust. And, if all goes well, we’ll have it all paid off in 25 short years. Why, we’ll be older than dirt by then. Eek!

I’m beginning to panic now. In three days the real work starts. And then what? I feel woefully unprepared. In truth, my wonderful husband is doing most of the legwork, but I’m just certain that there are things we’re forgetting, or more calls we should be making. I’m trying to suppress these impulses by working on changing our addresses everywhere and getting the movers booked, but that still leaves me plenty of downtime to worry. About what? I don’t know really, but I’ll fabricate something if need be. I’m a real pro at this sort of thing.

At this point we’re pretty much sitting on our hands until Sunday. We made our appointment with the realtor to go to our house and take possession at 1:00pm. I have plans to go shopping to buy some stuff to keep there. Mostly toilet paper, some drinking glasses, a garbage can, and maybe some towels. Just the basics so we can survive there while we’re doing our renovations. I guess if I’m going to buy drinking glasses I should buy some dish soap too, huh?

In other news, I think I caught a cold from the Brownies. One little girl in particular was very sniffly and kept giving me hugs and holding my hand. I was less than vigilant, and now I’ve got the sniffles myself. Oh well, the price we pay for spending time with little people. It was worth it, though.

Things are moving along of their own accord at this point. This morning Jon and I visited Ted, signed all of our papers, and delivered the rest of our downpayment. I went and paid for the cabinetry last night, so that’s done. That purchase alone gave us enough airmiles to get halfway to Alberta. Our hope is that when we’re done, we’ll have enough to fly to Hawaii.

I’m also starting to think about moving. We got our utilities hooked up at the new house so that we’ll have heat and light when we move in. We’ve given notice at our apartment that we’ll be gone by the end of June. Next we’ll have to start collecting boxes and packing. Not my favourite thing, although with the water leak we’ve had in our storage closet we’re halfway through packing alot of our stuff anyways.

In 6 days we get the keys to our new house, and we are not in a good mental state. We are both finding the process to be very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. I sincerely doubt whether or not we made a good choice, although Jon is more optimistic. Certainly, renting an apartment has its downside, but I know what I’m dealing with there, it’s cheap, and it’s much easier than buying, renovating, and moving. We say to each other that we’ll feel much better once the work on the house is done, but we can see that the work will never be done–there will always be some job left to do on our house, until we get a new house with new problems.

The latest saga has to do with painting the ceiling. Like all early-80s houses, ours sports a popcorn ceiling. This presents quite the painting challenge. Unfortunately, we can’t just ignore the situation because the ceilings sorely need paint. However, at this point the two options appear to be (1) a lot of work on our parts (with dubious results), or (2) paying way too much money to a professional. And don’t get us started on the kitchen cabinets.