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25 June, 1998
I have never been what you'd call a morning person. In fact I'm quite the opposite and by all accounts, terribly nasty, grouchy and impossible to live with when I've just woken up. So you can imagine how happy I was when Sabs told me last night that we had an appointment to sign the mortgage papers on the condo this morning at 9:15am, on the ONE day during the week when I really don't have to get up anywhere remotely close to in the morning. So I managed to get up, close to on-time, got some clothes on and then start running around collecting the checkbook, a folder to put the doubtless, huge stack of papers we would be coming home with, and other various and sundry necessary things for this proposition. Then Sabs asks me where the directions to get there are. I just look at him pointedly. Basically, rather than stick my overly controlling nose into this, I stayed out of it, he made all the arrangements and did all of the research. So of course I was vaguely annoyed that he was asking about the directions at all.
"Where did you put them?" As we were starting to be pressed for time, we simply left and figured if we made for the address listed on the mortgage officer's card that we'd probably be able to find it. Now, Sabs had also told me that this office wasn't very far away. Which I thought meant, just a few minutes from the condo, but since he was at work at the time meant, just a few minutes from his office. So here we were leaving at 8:55 for a 9:15 appointment and we didn't really know where we were going, so we pulled out the map. Sabs tried to look at it while driving at the same time, and was frowning at the general vicinity of his office and not seeing it so I took the map from him and peered at it more closely.
"The intersection of Chain Bridge and 50 is what you said, right?"
"Darling, it's in Fairfax City. Like smack dab in the middle of Fairfax." So Sabs tried to step on it. We witnessed the jammed up Beltway as we went over the overpass on Little River Turnpike and shook our heads sadly. We drive and drive, the sun is merciless above on a day with an ozone alert in effect. But at last we are drawing near. We are 10 minutes late. Sabs finds the intersection, we make a U-turn to get into the building and troop up to the office. Our mortgage officer is late. He isn't even there yet. Oh ... the inhumanity. He arrives around 9:30 or 9:35 and we hustle back into a conference room to start signing papers. The math involved is complex, nearly incomprehensible to me. I look at everything carefully, but mostly it's Sabs asking the questions while I try to figure it out and then meekly, sign on the line. By 10:15 we are done and the folder is as full as I thought it would be. Sabs dithers about how to get me home without being even later to work than he already is. I am tired and sleepy and unwilling to spend an hour taking the Metro from the far end of the Orange Line to the transfer point and then riding the entire length of the Blue Line back to our stop and then waiting even more for a bus to the condo. He settles for dropping me off on the road just outside the condo. So now we have taken another huge step into the grown-up world. The papers are signed, the helper "gift" from his parents should be arriving soon, in a week or so, our landlord will come up to sign more papers and then the place will be ours. We will be homeowners, with all the associated ramifications for our taxes and a semblance of stability which I don't think either one of us has had much experience with. Upon returning home I made myself lunch and curled up to read, putting all thoughts of being grown-up firmly out of my mind. Shara came and curled up with me and we had a human-cat bonding moment before I drifted back to sleep. When I awoke three hours later, the sun was still merciless and work was calling as I ran out of our place to catch the bus. P.S. My note about the Gingko affair, linked here for posterity |
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