Relative Something

I am struggling with the unsettling feeling of being in our new place without having successfully executed the closings on either property. It gave me dreams last night that we were back in our old house, but then suddenly remembered that we had invited the buyers to take possession.

I have so many things deserving attention all at once, that I am going to make this a short post, and get to work.

It is all good! The views out our bedroom windows when we wake up are spectacular! The scenes out our front porch windows, when we have breakfast in the morning, are even more thrilling! It will be better still, when we actually have food to eat for breakfast. Cyndie is going to the grocery store for the first time this morning.

We are in a very wonderful place. I can’t wait for the moment when it will no longer feel strange to be here. I expect that getting documents signed will go a long way toward alleviating that strange feeling.

Step three of our 3-part plan is simple, and incredibly complicated. It is all in how you look at it.

The simple version is to get all of our possessions unloaded from the truck. Done!

The complication comes when you factor in where all the stuff went, and what needs to be done to put it all in order. Yikes! We’ve got our work cut out for us.

It was absolutely thrilling to see that long trailer being backed up the length of driveway. Each step of this transition has been big, but this one was HUGE!

The drama that remains unresolved is that we have yet to officially close. It is only by the gracious generosity of our sellers that we were able to unload our possessions from the moving truck and take possession before we actually closed. We learned yesterday afternoon that the closings would continue to be delayed until next Monday or Tuesday, but that everything was in order and able to proceed. It is a pall that clouds an otherwise superb experience.

We were informed that our buyers were now in a situation similar to ours, in that they had become stuck between properties and were homeless. Cyndie and I didn’t hesitate to pass along the generosity that has been shown to us, authorizing our buyers to take possession of our old house in EP immediately. We are thrilled to be able to do so, and know exactly what they are going through.

Now we are trying to learn which switch controls what light fixture, and struggling to remember where we have set things down, because nothing has a permanent location yet. It has been a very long time since I needed to get used to a new living environment. I’m noticing a tendency to try to put things in a location that in some way mirrors the arrangement of things in the living environment we just left. Old habits, you know.

I consider step three now complete. I’m going to frame it as getting everything off the truck. The move is completed. The moving in still requires some time to accomplish.

Happy day-after-closings day! Yahoo! Except… we only sorta half-closed on each property.

There are a lot of people involved and affected by closing the sale of a home. There are even more than a lot, when closing on the sale of two homes.

If any step of the process gets disrupted for any reason, the number of people needing to communicate with each other is dizzying.

Late in the day on Wednesday, we suddenly learned that the lender to the buyers of our EP home would be unable to close the following morning, as previously scheduled. Cyndie’s amazing ability to think quickly triggered her into action to find a secondary way to cover the down payment on our Wisconsin home, in hopes of keeping that subsequent transaction on schedule.

With that plan in mind, we met yesterday morning with the closing agent and our realtor to pre-sign documents for the sale of our EP home, and establish power of attorney for our realtor to represent us in concluding the closing process once our buyers are finally ready. That was to allow us to proceed to Wisconsin for the second closing appointment, for the purchase of our new home.

While en route, we received a call that there was a flaw with our plan. If we hadn’t officially closed on the sale of our old home, our liability of the 1st mortgage wouldn’t show as paid off, and would cause us to no longer qualify for the loan from our new mortgage company.

That triggered a new barrage of phone calls, back and forth, between 5 or 6 parties involved, each message causing impact on multiple other parties… It becomes rather catastrophic, very fast. Quick-thinking agents with the best of intentions, worked frantically to help us succeed, coming up with potential options, but the more convoluted the path became, the more documents it would require to verify the authenticity of transactions.

The demands were simply impossible to satisfy in the short time available that remained. By the time we identified the stalemate we were ultimately facing, we were sitting in limbo in the parking lot of our new credit union, partway between the home we were leaving, and the one we were hoping to arrive at. We were homeless.

News came through that the sellers of our new home were going to enact the same pre-signing for their sale, as we had done for our sale, earlier that same day. Cyndie and I decided to complete our trip to that town, present them with the gift we had put together for them, and demonstrate that we were ready, and willing, but just not able on that day. Hopefully, we’ll have it all worked out by the end of today.

We knew this was an ambitious plan, but, oy! We had high hopes because everything appeared to have fallen into place. So much for a clean and simple second step.

For any of you who have felt that our story of the last couple months seemed too good to be true, hang in there with me. It’s not over, ’til it’s over.

Yesterday was supposed to be a bit of a chance to catch our breath between steps, but it ended up bringing new challenges. The dream is being disrupted a bit at the last minute. That’s what dreams do. We’ll follow along, with a couple of backup plans in our pocket.

I am exhausted, having popped awake at way too early an hour yesterday morning, due to sleeping in a temporary bed for the interim. Cyndie is doubly exhausted, dealing with over twice what I am right now.

Step two will be an interesting day.

Having tons of fun. Wish you were here!

Last night was our  LAST NIGHT  of sleeping in our home of 25 years. It was a little weird. We have dismantled everything to such a degree that it hardly feels like our place anymore. We had originally planned to sleep at Cyndie’s parent’s house, but we had just enough things left to do that we decided to go one more night in the old bedroom. With everything packed up, I had no clock displaying the time on the ceiling!

We are doing a bang-up job of preparing for the movers. They are scheduled to arrive this morning, and we are working to be as ready as possible in hope of allowing everything to go super saamoooooth. Why not expect the best possible outcome?

Yesterday, we got the flat screen television down from the wall and moved to Cyndie’s parent’s house. We drained the washing machine and unhooked water lines. By the end of today, the house should be empty.

If I can find where I put my camera, I’ll try to take some pictures.

Here we go!…

We are down to just a couple of days before the moving van shows up at our door to load up all of our possessions. That means I am finally getting around to the remaining items that need attention around here. I think it would have been prudent to get more things done by now than I did. Suddenly, it feels like there is too much to do, and not enough time to do it. Sound like a familiar predicament?

I’m discovering how long it takes to shred documents. It takes longer than I considered. The shredded remains also take up more space than I anticipated.

Luckily, we do have a place to store some of the miscellaneous things we aren’t set on keeping, but haven’t yet properly distributed, so the movers don’t need to haul the stuff all the way to Wisconsin.

Since I decided to claim the entirety of the coming week from the day-job, I should have the hours available today to accomplish the bare minimum required to have us ready for Tuesday. However, I expect it will be a rather long day.

I may prefer to have stayed at the day-job. It will probably be less work.

It was 1:30 in the morning, and our phone was ringing. It was on Cyndie’s side of the bed, and she wasn’t moving. I jumped out of bed and headed around to get it, then she popped up and grabbed it.

“It’s Trans-Alarm.” she says, after looking at the caller ID displayed.

My response was, “Dammit.” I didn’t realize Cyndie had already pushed the ‘Talk’ button when I uttered it, and the gentleman on the other end of the line seemed extra-apologetic, so I’m guessing he heard my exclamation.

“Alarms on the perimeter doors and internal zones have been triggered. Police have been dispatched. Can you meet them there with a key?”

I am second in line to receive calls from the security company when my workplace alarms trigger. If the owner is unavailable, or he simply doesn’t pick up, they move on to my cell and home numbers.

It has been a tough month. A week or so ago, we were awoken two nights in a row by an indoor motion sensor alarm call. The message from the alarm company this time was different, and I knew the owner was out-of-town.

“Yes, I can be there in about 15 minutes.” He asked me what make and model car I would be driving. Geesh, was I at risk of getting hit by friendly fire? Cyndie offered to come along, and questioned how I would get the place re-secured if doors or windows had been broken. It is interesting how fast your mind paints a picture of wild possibilities when a phone call interrupts your slumber in the middle of the night, and involves the word, “police.”

I hustled to get dressed, and pushed my little Subaru around corners with purpose. As I closed in on the location of our building, I took a couple cleansing breaths to prepare myself for a calm and controlled conversation with the officers on scene.

I turned into the parking area on the front of our building, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, continued around to the back, where I saw… absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. I went through a variety of intellectual and emotional responses, essentially boiling down to: “It figures.”

I drove all the way around and parked at the front door. I got out of my car, paused to contemplate my life, the universe, and everything, and then called the alarm company.

I asked them about the police: “Maybe they have been there and gone. I can connect you to them.” I hemmed and hawed a bit, asking whether I should go in and check, or what options or advice our alarm company might suggest. Of course, she wasn’t going to suggest anything. It was up to me whether I want to go in or not. She was more than happy to get the police on the line for me.

What the heck, I needed to talk to them anyway.

“911 emergency…” I guess I expected she was going to connect me to a person who had a clue what I was calling about, but, no, this was like a cold-call to the 911 dispatcher. I explain that I had arrived at the building to meet the officer(s) who responded to our alarm call.

“We have no calls to respond to that address.” Did I say, ‘it figures’ earlier? Now I was feeling like the brunt of some practical joke. A half an hour ago, I was warm and snug in my bed, soundly enjoying a good night’s sleep. That was a far cry from standing outside my workplace in the blustery chill of the middle-of-the-night darkness, wondering if I dare open the door, or not.

I asked the dispatcher if I should go in. That had to be entirely up to me. She offered to send a squad car. At this point, it just didn’t seem worth it. I told her I would take a look myself, and if I found anything, or needed help, I would call 911.

I pulled on the outer door to find it securely locked. I opened that and stepped up to our front door, peeking in to see if the alarm was flashing red alert, or anything else. I couldn’t see a thing. I unlocked that door and pulled it open to find the display completely blank. Hmm. I flipped the light switch. Nothing.

Power was out. That’s all it was. Or was it? There goes the mind again, racing to all manner of possibility. Ultimately, I think that is all it was. We’ll find out on Monday. I double-checked to ensure all the perimeter doors were secure, called the alarm company back, asked why they couldn’t have detected it was a power failure incident, and reported that everything appeared in order. I went home and tried to get a half-night’s sleep.

That universe sure has some sense of humor.

We are learning some unpleasant lessons by way of Cyndie’s falling prey to the malicious marauders soiling the online communication world. The full extent of their devious intrusion is yet to be determined, but, like so many violations of our trust, it is the psychological damage that probably takes the greatest toll.

Finally, last night, I discovered that filters had been created on her account, which were routing some messages around her inbox, so she would never even see them, and deleting them. There were a curious select few, which created the question of whether it was random or with some evil intent.

One address being filtered seemed to be understandable. It was the friend who, prior to Cyndie, had likely fallen for the same trap. Thus any subsequent communication attempts from the previous victim, like maybe to alert Cyndie, would go unseen and be deleted.

I have learned a lot more about Google’s email features and how to quickly see information on my account, like, if there is any other activity, and if it is from a location other than my own. Conveniently, there is a button there to immediately log out all other sessions.

Now I know exactly where the “Report Phishing” link is, in case I do receive any suspicious messages.

I don’t know why the thug(s) took the step of deleting all of Cyndie’s contacts. Google offers a simple button click to restore contacts within the last 30 days. There also seems to be an odd number of emails missing. It is difficult for Cyndie to be sure, since there appear to be some visible, but certain specific messages she is looking for do not show up in a search.

While scouring everything I could find, related to being hacked, I stumbled upon the place to request Google to search for lost messages. Overnight, they obviously restored quite a few, but there are still specific messages missing. Their report indicates that if it doesn’t show up after the restore, it is not retrievable. I have no understanding of what step differentiates deleted messages from ones Google can retrieve, from those which even Google is unable to restore.

There is plenty I don’t understand about all this, but I have recently learned a lot more than I knew before.

Some things go right, some things go wrong. We have got a lot going on at the moment, and amidst all that is going on, two things you never welcome in the best of times, have picked this most complicated time for us, to appear in our lives. Hospitalization and email hacking.

Cyndie is busy trying to manage the last critical steps of getting our lives packed for the move, and suddenly one of her relatives is unexpectedly needing hospitalization. Cyndie is repeatedly being called upon to fulfill her role as guardian and advocate.  In the middle of dealing with that, yesterday, her email account was hacked, and who knows what personal information compromised.

It is getting difficult to discern which way is up around here.

In addition to all of that, Cyndie has also agreed to take on new employment, and will start as soon as we get to our new home. There isn’t much in the way of spare time showing up for her. I’m thinking it sounds a lot like her last year in Boston. Maybe that experience was a training run for the challenges she finds herself facing now. As stressful as it all is, she seems equipped to deal with it. Still, that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

We did have one thing go right yesterday, which Cyndie deserves credit for. Wednesday afternoon, we had packed the back of my car with all of the 25-plus years accumulation of household hazardous waste we uncovered in the basement and garage. My plan was to multitask and take advantage of the Wednesday evening hours at the County drop-off site. That plan failed as our first task of the evening ran us past the closing time.

Cyndie then volunteered to drive it over during the daytime on Thursday, while I was at work. I had warned her that they might not accept everything, as we had neglected to do any research and just put it all in the car. I discovered that we exceeded our allotment of a year’s-worth of allowable 5-gallon cans. Somehow, she worked her magic and convinced the staff on hand to take every last item out of the car for her and sent her on her way, free and clear.

That is a major item off our to-do list.

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…All of you can add this little tidbit to your “do-not-ever-do” lists: Never, ever fall for the phishing trick where you click a link in an email because it appears to have come from someone you know well, and it requires you to log into your email account to see what they sent you. **IT IS A TRICK!** Plain and simple, don’t ever fall for a request to enter your account name, email address, or user name, and a password, when it is inside an email, or the result of a link in an email you receive. Resist the urge. Just don’t do it.