My Head Is Full of Snot and I'm Losing My Voice.

And there you have it. Let's hope the allergy drugs kick in really fast.

In other unrelated news...

1. The ignorant fools of the world continue to prove themselves perfectly capable of being ignorant fools. There's a story behind that, but not now.

2. I missed four tiny lines I was supposed to initial on the Universal Mortgage Application. I turned in all the documents on Friday. My error wasn't caught until Tuesday. Does anyone else think the lines should be bigger?

3. My car battery died on Friday, remember? I made a date for an oil change when I picked it up (which is tomorrow). In the meantime, the tire with the slow leak has sped up the process, and the brake-pad sensor went off this morning. Is that a trifecta?

4. In a nod to Kate's blog (One More Thing, over there in the blog list), where today's topic is A Year Ago, today is the anniversary of an event that I still choose not to describe in a blog. Suffice to say, I wouldn't wish it on anyone else, but I don't think I could have avoided it. The important part is that on this day, one year past, I'm still here.

5. And so that we end on a lighter note, Charles (who is my appliance guru at Lowes) called me this afternoon to let me know that the refrigerator I ordered has not arrived yet, and not to be surprised when they deliver everything else tomorrow. I quickly returned his call to say, it's actually a good thing the fridge isn't here, because I don't have a kitchen to put it in yet. I really hope to rectify this situation soon. I'm starting to use boxes as end tables.

Dog breath update.

I have spoken to the rescue folks....a long, tearful talk, but with a good resolution at the end. George has already settled into his new home, with another dog to love and an owner who adores him. The lady I spoke to said that both George and Gracie had a rough time of it, and Gracie nearly had to be put down as unadoptable (she is protective, as most female Dals are, and therefore doesn't present as a warm and cuddly family dog). But she's been placed as well. George had a very hard time being separated from her. The rescue people are not particularly happy with my ex either, and another mutual friend who is also a Dalmatian person was furious that it happened. There are so many things we could have tried before events happened as they did. But (and this would be one of the reasons he and I aren't together any more), my ex was helpless in situations that most people would shrug at, and when appropriate times came to get input and/or help from another source, he would suddenly become the Lone Ranger, no matter the impact on anyone else.

But they're going to send me pictures, and while I would dearly love to have them back, they both have good homes with people who love them, and that's what I want the most. I'm also quite sure that the rescue folks will be more than happy to help me get a new dogger when I'm settled into the house. I love older dogs, and there's rarely a short supply of them needing homes.

Please, if you can, consider visiting the Willing Hearts Dalmatian Rescue website; George's leg surgery cost about $2000, and they're still trying to pay the bill. I've donated towards it, and perhaps you can too. Thanks for the good thoughts. They worked.

Please Send Good Vibes. Dog breath ones preferred.

Not specifically for the house thing this time, as the post title infers, but those are of course appreciated.

This is for my dog. Or should I say, one of the dogs my former husband and I shared until we split up. He kept the dogs; I kept the cats. We adopted two dalmatian-mixes, a brother and sister who we named George and Gracie, through a rescue organization. Long story short, when he moved across the country, he surrendered them back to the organization, as is their policy. Unfortunately, he didn't tell me he was going to do it. I found out later through mutual friends. George and Gracie were very attached.

Since I'm going to have space again, I'm really looking forward to having a dog again. So I surfed around a little bit this morning, looking at rescue organizations for different breeds. That's a cause I firmly believe in, that I won't get into now except to say, keep an eye on the Portuguese Water Dog rescues in the near future. I figured it wouldn't hurt to check out the one we used.

George is on their front page. He hasn't been adopted, but Gracie was. They've been split up. I am HEARTBROKEN. When we picked them up, I rode in the backseat of the car with them, George on one side, Gracie on the other, both their heads in my lap.

It would appear that George potentially has a placement, but the website was unclear about when that might happen. I have sent both emails and voice mails begging to have him back. He had to have surgery on a rear leg, and the bill hasn't been paid. I don't care. I will pay it, and whatever else I need to do. I want him back. He's my boy. Please put a good thought towards this if you should get a minute.

I wish I knew how to contact my ex now, because I would rip him a new one. Perhaps it's better that I don't.

Tentatively Hopeful

So, after a three-day weekend of The Plague, another week of it sapping my will to live, and a spring break full of naps and frustration, things seem to be on the upswing.

Notice I say "seem." While I want very much to maintain a positive attitude and attract that energy from the universe, a part of me whispers, "Your other mortgage tanked 24 hours before closing, remember?"

I'm onto mortgage #2, with only one episode of Tactical Yelling, wherein it was discovered that the paperwork the brokers kept insisting all I needed to do was sign and return to them already (I could imagine them adding, "for pete's sake, lady") and things could move ahead...had, in fact, not been sent to me. Within two hours of The Yelling, I had the good-faith estimate that I should have had a week and a half ago. Two hours after that, I had the mortgage application. Miraculous. I, of course, am much more efficient than these folks and had everything checked, signed, copied, returned, spindled, and mutilated (OK, not those last two) within 24 hours. Now, I realize that this is Friday, and hoping that I will get something like a closing date by close of business Monday is most likely folly. But since the lawyers are ready to go from mortgage #1 (the survey is done, the title search is done, whatever else it is that lawyers do is mostly done-I'm sure there's something specific to this set of paperwork to be done), I should be able to close much more quickly than before. "Quickly" being a relative term, really. If nothing else, I have learned that MY definition of "quickly" is not closely related to the mortgage industry's definition.

And in what I can only view as an interestingly quirky turn of fate, as I raced between schools and the credit union and the realtor's office and Wegmans this morning, my car battery died. I totally understood how it felt.

(Riding in the big yellow tow truck back to school was a highlight of the day!)

Batting .500

Which is not the worst stat in the world, I know. But frustrating all the same, when things were really looking good.

The Good: The play went very well last night. The kids were cuter than the dickens, of course, and this crew is a particularly strong group of singers. There's always a few things I would change (more time to work on blocking, for one), but I'm more than pleased with what we staged last night, and the kids were ecstatic...so there you go.

The Not-So-Good-But-Will-Go-Away: After an entire winter with no colds whatsoever, I managed to get the latest upper respiratory infection that's going around. At least it's not pneumonia, which I've had twice and don't care to repeat the experience. And I'll have a nice quiet weekend to recover, because...

The Really Crappy and There's Nothing I Can Do About It: Not only did I not close on my house today, it is questionable that I will end up with this house at all. The mortgage company decided last Friday that it wanted a second appraisal, because the house is a flip and it's being sold in less than six months of original purchase. Now, they've KNOWN about this all along, but didn't bother to alert anyone to this necessity until a week before closing, rendering the closing impossible. I could deal with that; delays happen with regularity, I'm told. But this appraisal came in well under both the seller's appraisal (which I thought was a little high, but that's me), and my appraisal (which I thought was quite fair). Therefore, they will not finance the mortgage for which I've already been approved. And seeing as the seller has proven himself to be less than generous (he refused to replace a $250 screen door, for pete's sake), I don't see him dropping the price of the house to a point where they will finance it.

Needless to say, I am bitterly disappointed, and frustrated, and very unhappy about the rooms full of boxes that I've been living around for the past several weeks. We are trying a few other options (trying to get the underwriters to move up, trying to get the seller to move down, I have a little more that I can put down now, possibly a different lender) but I have to admit I don't have a good feeling about this. If this isn't to be the house for me, then it isn't. I just wish it was something I had a modicum of control over...or at least there was a person I could call at the mortgage company and yell at. I never have liked feeling so helpless.