I don't think I am being hopelessly picky. In fact, I found the "just right" house back before Christmas. Unfortunately a short sale is anything but short-lived, and we are still waiting on the bank to move forward on our offer. After waiting around for several weeks, I finally began looking again. I found another "just right" house a few weeks ago - but so did someone else, and their offer went in first. We thought we might have a second shot at it when the seller and buyer found themselves at odds, but alas, it just wasn't meant to be ours.
Thus far I've encountered no growling bears, but a few more disappointments like that could cause me to pack it in.
More chilling is the whale of a tale known as Moby Dick. If you haven't read Melville's literary classic in a while, the long (almost 2,000 pages) story short is, it's a tale of a man who is determined--arguably obsessed--to find and kill a specific whale that destroyed his boat and took his leg.I suspect that I, in my house hunting might be likened to Captain Ahab, roaming the dangerous high seas of real estate, relentlessly pursuing an elusive quarry known as THE house.
Like Ahab, I bear the scars of a previous encounter with THE house. Several years ago, an attempt to move into a house (THE house at the time) ended disastrously. No lives or limbs were lost, but it was an epic failure nonetheless, and we suffered financial and emotional loss. Sloppy real estate agent, negligent surveyor, passive-aggressive buyers, attorneys and an ill-informed judge rounded out the cast of characters in that cautionary tale of how-not-to-buy-and-sell-houses.
That disastrous encounter with THE house definitely left a distinct impression on my psyche. It took time for the wounds to heal, and the scars are still present, if healed. I'm wondering how much of that experience is driving my current quest to find THE house. I guess I should take a lesson from the story, considering that in the end, Ahab harpooned the whale but then went down with his ship.
Happy(?) hunting,
