Pins and needles

Today is the day. Or maybe Monday. Or maybe the next week. We've been waiting since January 19th for word on the house we are trying to buy. Every week we hear that we should hear "in about a week" if the seller's lender has accepted our offer and then we never do. The home is being offered on a short sale, which for those who have never dealt with one, is a last-ditch effort by the sellers to avoid foreclosure. The mortgage lender(s) agree to take a loss on the house to get the sellers out of the sticky situation in which they find themselves. Unfortunately, for both the sellers and the would-be buyers (us), the lenders are in no hurry whatsoever to approve the offer. The sellers are managing to make their house payments each month and the lender has our file on a desk somewhere waiting for review. With foreclosures a reality for so many now, I imagine that the stack on that anonymous desk is quite high.

And so we wait. The latest word is that we'll hear today. Or possibly Monday. I'd like to believe that, but we've been strung along for so long that it's hard to get our hopes up again. What has really been hard is that we've been in limbo all this time. Our current home is strewn with boxes, some of them packed up with non-essentials, but most of them empty yet. My grandmother is going to be living with us in the new home and she's very excited; she's picking out new housewares and waiting every day to get the word. NR will be changing schools and he too is excited to go to the new house, to get his "green and purple" design for his bedroom (we're still working on that idea) and to have a park right outside his backyard. We'll finally have some storage space and a garage so I am looking forward to that. I want to plant my new garden and make my herb boxes.

If for some reason we don't get the house, we'll have to start the searching all over again. I don't want to think about that. But whether we get it or whether we don't, at least this waiting will be over. Not being able to move forward with your life because the file is on someone's desk is truly difficult. I'm hoping that the hibernation of winter is truly over and spring is bringing something new.