The Joy of Twins

Somedays I feel ganged up on.

On the Home Front

Our washer died a few days ago. I loaded it full of the kids clothes and got it going. About three hours later I went downstairs to switch it over and noticed 1) that it was still going and 2) there was a burning smell in the air. Crap. We got a repairman over to look at it and he basically told us to take it out back and shoot it. It would cost more to fix than to buy a new one.  So today we spent the morning going from store to store looking at new washers and feeling sick about having to spend such a large chunk of cash. I’m going to spend the afternoon researching the ones we saw and find one that we can get soon. Laundry is piled up to the ceiling and the babies are wearing the same clothes several days in a row. Finn is out of pajamas so we’re just putting him in whatever light t-shirts and pants we can find.

We put our house up for sale in late March and were slammed with showings, sometimes 3-4 per day. It was peak academic season, when new professors come into town to find homes. Within three weeks we had a buyer and after some back and forth he made an offer we were happy with. We moved forward from them, booking tickets to go find our house in California in early June, setting up our summer schedule which was insanely complicated. The home inspection went swimmingly and all looked well. The day after the inspection, we got hit with major rainstorms. A few days later the inspector came back to pick up his radon tester and noticed water in the basement. It had come up from the ground and seeped in, a common and well-known problem in this neighborhood but one we’d never had since living here. The buyer got spooked and wanted us to pay a ton of money to waterproof the basement. We argued that it was a luxury repair and the inspectors had said that there was no defect or damage with the house and that it was sound. We just couldn’t pay that much money for the repair, it would mean coming out of the sale in the hole.  The buyer said he’d walk. We told him to walk. After all, we’d had so much interest in the house that we weren’t worried about finding another buyer.

In the two weeks since we’ve been back on the market, we’ve had exactly one showing.

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