Captain Pike's Ship Log II

Okay, yeah... it turns out, I can be a bugger to live with. We talked on the phone, Little Miss Wonderful and I, we talked about... money. See, here's an area where we, at least I alone, have some issues. I hate to buy something, then see it at half-price a week later or somewhere else. Before I say anything more, have a look at the real LMW, or more precisely, the youngest of, Little Miss Wonderful.



Now that you are sufficiently sidetracked, let me to you what happened...
So our conversation about what offer to make on this house (which has everything we need -- even ramped access in two places) came unraveled, resulting in a mild tiff.

The only thing worse than fighting with my spouse is fighting with my spouse on the phone, hundreds of miles away. Imagine it: she's down there, living in the basement of her tyrannical father, her mother's got a brand-new teacup Pomeranian crapping all over the floor so that her father (who excelled in two tours of Vietnam) is doing the porcupine dance, trying not to step in tribble (Trekkies -- look it up) Shi'ite. He's up there, pounding his fist, "why do you have to move all this crap in here?", she's just taken a new job where the minimum requirements included a master's degree, she's trying to buy a house which can contain a dysfunctional version of the Brady bunch. She's in the realtors office, after a long, hard days work, on the speakerphone with me, sitting there with the real estate broker and I'm complaining about our not talking first about how much we want to offer.

First off, let me admit, I hate the steamroller sales pitch, where the agent is saying things like, "well, to be terribly honest...", [so all that other preamble was a lie?] And then the famous, "well of course it's your choice...", [you don't have to tell me it's my choice, I know IT'S MY CHOICE].

So, you get the idea, I'm this almost 50, balding fat guy in a wheelchair, all alone up north, wanting deliberately to "lowball" the seller of this perfectly reasonable home... Meanwhile, LMW is sitting in an empty board room, across a big table from this fast talking realtor who has taken her to view eight properties just a little bit earlier. I'm bellowing this and that, on the speakerphone, she wants to turn into a viscous liquid and flow down through a small grate in the floor, disappearing forever.

She wound up leaving there, embarrassed, having made no offer. Oh well, so, I'm not always able to be the great supportive man I would like to be. I wanted to be able to come up with some number we both agreed on, to present as an offer. Our communications fell apart -- I surely have a part in that. I'm happy to report that the last night, we had a good heart-to-heart and did make a low offer for the property.

I really thought that it was a "buyer's market" these days. Maybe it's a good thing that up here in Maine, the level of mortgage defaults is not as high as the country's average. Also, the area that we want to live in is still very desirable, meaning, housing prices haven't dropped that much.

I hope the sellers will counter our offer. My fear is, they will just reject the offer, feasting instead on some other offers they may have gotten. I've tried to include God in this deal, but this is not my default MO. My motto used to be stuff like, "seize the day", "give 'em hell" and "get, while the getting's good". I've been through enough, these last few years, to recognize I'm not alone -- that there is a plan, and I'm part of it. These days, I'm trying to be part of the plan -- moving with the current, instead of fighting against it.