Would It Be Wrong To Hide From the World For A Week Or Two?

Things are not going especially well right now.

Let me put that in perspective. We arrived safely at our destination after five and a half days of driving cross-country. We have a (temporary) roof over our heads. The two pets are still alive and my dog is even sitting at my feet as I type.

Obviously, things could be worse.

However.

The idjits in the relo dept of hubby’s work gave us temp housing that is not only NOT in the right school district, but is also a two hour bus ride from his office. (about a 45-60 minute drive, but not many buses get out this way). This means two things:

1. I can’t enroll Zeeb in school. I mean, I could, but we have no intention of staying in this area and how mean would it be to make him change schools TWICE in one year? I am going to be homeschooling A and R, but I was not intending to school Zeeb. Let’s just say that the two of us do not work well together.

2. Hubby is renting a car, because we need a car at “home” and he needs a way to get to work in under 2 hours every day.

There’s two solutions to our current problem. 1. Rent a house in the right area. or 2. Buy a house in the right area.
Unfortunately, it appears it is not currently possible to rent (nothing on C’s list) and it’s definitely not possible to buy, being as how our house has not sold.

Which brings me to the real reason I want to curl up in a ball and hide from the world for a while.

Our realtor has sold us up the river. And I totally should have seen it coming and we definitely should not have been wooed by her poetic postcards.

See, after she (and another, unrelated realtor) told us that we could get X amount for our house when she was trying to get our business, then when it came time to list she said, I think you should ask Y amount (which was lower than X amount) and now that she’s brought in her very own buyer for our house, she thinks we can only get Z amount. And Z amount? Let me tell you about Z amount. Here, I’ll use an equation.

Z = Y – A Truckload of $$ – the washer and dryer – the playground – $15000 in closing costs = LESS than we paid for the house, four years ago when the market was at it’s lowest and BEFORE we paid 20K to redo the kitchen and 6K to paint the exterior of the house.

Z is such a ridiculous pathetic amount that were I in a better mood and not talking about my freaking HOUSE I would be laughing my @ss off.

And when I told her as much on the phone yesterday she said, “Well, houses in your range are just not selling. I think it’s the best you can do.”

REALLY? REALLY???? Funny, because what I know is that in our town house prices are UP and it is by definition a SELLERS MARKET. And if that is what she thought, why on EARTH did she tell us something wildly different when she was trolling for our business???

OMGosh I think I hate the woman right now. God forgive me.

Yes, I am insulted and mad about this offer. But I’m more mad at the realization that our realtor is entirely working for the buyer and has every intention of screwing us. And, furthermore, has NO intention of representing our needs from here on out.

I want to fire her. Like yesterday. But I don’t think we can, because Hubby says the contract we signed says she represents us until June 30th. Is that true? Is there no way out? Because I seriously have zero trust or respect for her and don’t know how on earth we can continue like this.

I feel trapped, frustrated, betrayed and so freaking tired. There is no space, no food, no grass to walk my dog and I am rapidly going nuts. Oh and did I mention that Hubby picked up a full-fledged freaking Man Cold and keeps reporting to me every twenty minutes what his stinking temperature is?

I knew this transtion was going to be stressful and difficult. I knew that. I just didn’t anticipate it being this stressful and difficult.

 

There’s Still Some Fire Left In That Dragon

New Years’ holidays in the winter are so passe. Everyone who’s anyone knows the time to throw a national new year party is in the spring, when the weather is nice and the flowers are out. At least, that’s how they do it in Cambodia. (And Thailand. And Laos. And probably a few other SE Asian countries. But for my blog, let’s focus on Cambodia).

I confess, it snuck up on me, again. After ten years, you’d think I’d be more on top of things. But then I have been a little busy, what with the listing a house, picking out colleges, and getting ready to move cross country and all. So, my apologies. I know you’ve been dying to shop for Cambodian New Year gear for weeks now, and were almost to the point of despair. Well, despair no longer, my friend.

Cambodian year of the Dragon Tee by Bykota

2012 Cambodian New Year Square Stickers To Share by Bykota

Happy New Year, Dragon! by Bykota

The store is stocked, it is time to shop!!

 

So That Was An Expensive Open House

My agent held a “broker’s open” at our house today, so R~ and I had to clear out for like four hours. The local library doesn’t open until like 1 on Tuesdays, so that option was out. Clearly, our only alternative was to go shopping. Call it an economics field trip. (okay, okay, call it a day off from school.)

I was in dire need of new spring clothes for Easter and, well, just life. I am not good at shopping. I can’t make outfits and I have like no sense of style and I get bored. But I was determined. And Kohl’s had an almost endless supply of options. And yet, in the end I could not find a single pair of pants I liked. They didn’t have my size, or there were weird sparkly sequins on the back pockets, or the pants were too fancy. I’m a simple girl, I don’t need fancy pants. Also, I bought a dress. Which I know Hubby will want me to wear for Easter and any other occasion he can dream up. It’s weird how much he wants me to wear dresses. About as much I don’t want to wear them. June Cleaver I most certainly am not.

I also got a couple pairs of pants for R and two shirts for A~, a pair of heeled sandals for me, a strapless bra, and a new purse. DUDE purses are expensive.

This is a goodly amount of stuff, right? But still, I was STUNNED when she rang it up and the total came over $400. Like knock me over with a feather, help me catch my breath, stunned. I played it all cool, whipping out my credit card like it was nothing, while mentally planning to return half of what I bought. For one thing, I didn’t realize the stupid bra was $36. That is WAY too much for a bra. Don’t know why I didn’t just have her take it back right there. Too stunned, I think.

And this is why I never go shopping and never have anything good to wear for Easter or any other nice-dressing type day. Because in my head it’s still 1982 and all that stuff would never come close to $400. I am so old. Also cheap, apparently.

Anyway it was surprisingly easy to kill the entire day at Kohls (and Starbucks. We had to stop there first, to fuel up.) And now I am home and my house is clean and the cat is walking around all twitchy like and the dog barked at every corner of the house because it smells like strangers. And I sure hope some agent is calling one of his buyers and saying “You MUST go look at this house!”

Did I tell you how our agent said the “facade” of our house is keeping people from wanting it? It’s a Dutch Colonial. Apologies to anyone who’s a fan of that style, but it is U-G-L-Y. But we did give it a new paint job just last month with more updated colors and the plant beds are SO much better than they were when we moved in, so I sort of hoped all that would off-set the Dutch Colonial-ness of it. Also, she says you can’t tell from the outside how big the house actually is. Which was actually a positive to me. I don’t like to be all uppity. People around here? Like nothing better than to be uppity. They want their house to scream MCMANSION from the hilltops. Which is bad news for us. So now I am praying for some humble, yet well funded family to come along and see all that’s good about the house. It’s so much better than it was when we bought it almost 4 years ago.

Hey, I never showed you the kitchen, did I? Here, I’ll paste in the photo our realtor took:

Isn’t it pretty? Do you remember what it looked like before?? Let me refresh your memory:

Now if we were stupid enough to buy the house with that kitchen, shouldn’t someone be willing to look past the facade and buy our house with it’s new pretty kitchen?

Fingers crossed. The good news is, unlike well, pretty much everywhere else, we have a very “active” market here right now, and prices are even going up a tiny bit. So, if we can manage to shed the bad house-selling juju that seems to follow us from house to house, we should be able to unload this place someday soon(ish).

And wow was this long and rambly and all over the place. Sorry, apparently I needed to talk. Thanks for listening.

 

T Minus 13 Days And Counting

Our first day active on the market.

Our agent’s assistant called at 3:30 and said a realtor wanted to come by for a showing “Between four and six.”

Seriously? A 2 hour window?

“He says he’s planning to go to your house second. So probably around 4:20.”

Okay, that’s do-able.

Pile two kids and a dog in the car, and go to the bus stop early to wait for Zeeb. He gets off the bus, we sit in the car a bit more. 4:30. No one looking realtor-ish has driven past us (we wait at the corner of our street. They can’t get to our house without going past us.) So we drive to Starbucks to get the kids a snack.

Sit outside, enjoy our Starbucks, Zeeb does some of his homework. A~ is eager to go back home, he didn’t bring all his homework along. It’s after 5, surely they’ve come and gone by now.

Get back to the house around 5:30. I go in first, to look for the telltale business card that all realtors leave when they go to a house for a showing.

No card.

Back to the car, drive to the church parking lot at the corner to wait some more. Six o’clock, we go home.

Still no card.

In summary: They make us leave our house for two hours, during the prime time of homework and dinner preparations and they never even freaking SHOWED UP.

That? Is just plain rude.

 

I’m Too Busy To Tell You How Busy I Am

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve thought about blogging about all the stuff that’s going on. I even had one post half-written, and with a snappy title. (“All the World’s A Stage… And So Is My Livingroom” – long, but kinda’ catchy, don’t you think?) But that was like all the way back last week which feels like three eons ago so much is going on. So here’s the quicktakes version of life in the Broccoli Household:

-> Our house goes “live” on the market on Wednesday. Which means, that’s the day it hits the MLS and the interwebs. Also, coincidentally, the day I go tearing about the house like a madwoman trying to make everything PERFECT for that last minute showing I just know I will have.

-> I have already done the Madwoman Bit a few times now. Because even though our house is not technically on the market, our agent has already brought by two different buyers (the first came back for a second look with her husband, so two buyers, three showings). Alas, no offers yet. Also, I did the Madwoman Bit for the stager (so desperate was I to hear “you don’t need to change a thing! It’s perfect! HA. That SO DID NOT HAPPEN.)… and then the Madwoman reappeared two days later when the virtual tour photographer came over. (oh, the pressure of pictures! Everything is IMMORTALIZED and put ONLINE for the WHOLE WORLD TO SEE. GACK!!)

-> The week before the stager and the photos, Hubby and K~ and I were out west, looking at colleges. Three schools, one a pricey private liberal arts school, the other two less pricey private Christian schools. Meanwhile, the in-laws were here, being me all week. Trust me, there was much blogging material. MUCH. One of these days…

-> Confidential to April: Guess which school K~ picked? !! So, shall we betroth them now, or let them meet first?

-> Homeschooling is going, mostly well. There are days, there are moments where I’m like “what was I thinking?” But mostly I’m like “yeah, this was a good idea.” But I’m still planning to put her back in public school next year. Though if it doesn’t go well… homeschooling doesn’t sound quite so scary anymore.

-> According to a friend of ours, this is what’s called “burying the lead”: We are moving in exactly 16 DAYS. Or, to be more precise, five of us and our two pets are piling in the car and hitting the road in 16 days. There won’t be any moving trucks involved that day. And K~ will finish school and join us in May.

-> Yes, we are doing a road trip. Partly because of the pets, and partly because I really hate to fly. On the flight back from Portland a couple of weeks ago, K~ and I were absolutely positutely sure we were going to DIE. It was not a good flight. There was much turbulance. Also praying. Much praying. And before that, they used the naked scanner on my daughter. Did I mention how much I hate flying?

-> I bought a car seat for Pixie. Yes, I am THAT person now. The one who buys car seats for her DOG. And I will take pictures, because it is going to be so. cute! The cat has to ride in a crate. Sorry Ichiro. But they both get to stay in the hotels with us. Surprisingly not that hard to find hotels that take pets these days. Though one of them said “no cats”. We’ll just let them think that Ichiro is a kinda’ tall, slightly skinny chihauhau.

-> We are moving into “temporary housing” when we get to Washington. At this moment we have no idea where that will be. They don’t have to tell us until 2-3 days before we arrive. It’s an adventure!! Or so I tell myself, whenever I’m tempted to stress about the unknowns, of which there are many. I’m really hoping they put us in housing within the boundries of the elementary school that I want for Zeeb. The district won’t let him go there unless we’re in the boundries. And it’s a really good school. Plus? The student body is 40% Asian. Wouldn’t that be awesome for him? But, we’ll just have to see. It’s out of my hands. (Sort of. If they totally screw up and put us super far from where we want to be, we’ll hold off on enrolling him until we either rent or buy, in which case it’s back in my hands, baby.)

-> We just found out last week that A~ got into the brand new “STEM” school they are launching in our desired district. (STEM = Science Technology Engineering and Math). It’s opening next year with only the 9th and 10th grades, so he’ll be new, but so will everyone else. I am SO PSYCHED for him. I think it’s going to be awesome. He’s probably psyched too, but being a 15 year old boy, well, “psyched” isn’t so much in his vocabulary.

Ok, I think that’s it. I’m sure there’s more, but this is already long and I have windows to wash, a daughter who is very stubbornly sitting at the piano but refusing to play in a battle of wills regarding the setting of a timer, and floors to vacuum. I’m swamped!