Juggling

            It’s been quite a week (or two). First, we are not moving to Ann Arbor. The short version of what happened is that when we had our final walk-through prior to closing, we noticed some serious problems that we were prevented from seeing before. (I’ll skip the details, but they include some building-wide plumbing problems and the fact that our car does not fit in the garage.) So, we said, No deal. We had driven a carload of mainly kitchen stuff down to put in our new place, and then we drove it back home. So it goes.

 

            But as I write this, we have not gotten back any of the full purchase price that we wired down in anticipation of closing. No, not the Earnest Money – the full price, about half of my life savings. The owners say they want to keep much of it in escrow so that if the unit sells for less than we were going to pay, we would make up the difference – not a great motivator for them to take to negotiations! We also heard that the money should stay there in case they wanted to sue me for breach of contract. We have an attorney trying to get our money back, but nothing has happened yet.

 

            When I was in high school I learned to juggle. I thought maybe it would help me with sports, so I sent away for instructions and some small rubber balls. After a few weeks I was capable of juggling 3 of them. I tried to move up to 5, but I could not master that many.

 

      Well, now I’m struggling to juggle all 5:

 

1.     See above.

 

2.     Our Bark House is on the market. We’ve had some realtors come by for a look, a couple people lured in by the sign, and one scheduled showing. This leaves us hanging – what do we do if someone makes a good offer? Where will we go to live? Meanwhile, we are working extra hard to get the woods and gardens looking good, cobwebs off the house and garage, beach raked, dust off the molding and out of the corners.

 

3.     With the abandonment of our Ann Arbor deal, we are again hitting Zillow and Realtor on my laptop over our second cup of coffee. Where should we look? Ann Arbor is cool, but expensive, and it’s much more crowded than it was when I lived there a half-century ago. We love it up here in Northern Michigan, and we are looking at places in or near Traverse City – closer to our doctors and the medical facilities for Kim’s chemo and other maintenance. And possible emergencies. But we also see real advantages to living in Southeast Michigan, near family, for love and support. Scott and Shariee were there for us giving physical, logistical and emotional support during the Ann Arbor collapse – they fed and housed us, and offered to do it whenever we needed. So, we are looking in both places.

 

4.     Then we found a place that we really like in Traverse City, and after a visit for an hour or so, we went home and made an offer. The owner responded with a counter-offer, and we found a way to bridge the gap through their furniture. We were ecstatic, even though it stretched a little beyond our budget. But then we realized that without our money held in escrow by an Ann Arbor title company, we could not close on the condo, so we did not sign the Buy and Sell Agreement. Unless our attorney can get our money sent back to our account in the next day or two, we will just have to let it go.

 

5.     Another big juggling ball in the air, and starting to come down, is our health. We are dealing with some mobility issues, and though we are pretty much able to laugh at it, some cognitive issues involving short-term memory. I have this naïve hope that we can find the right doctor, pill, diet, or physical therapy, and somehow bounce back to the health we enjoyed ten years ago. My guess, however, is that we are pretty much on a one-way street here, a reality that impacts where we choose to live next.

 

            Getting the balls in the air is not difficult. Dealing with them as they come back down is another story. I remember from my juggling instruction manual that the key is to make a good toss. This, for example, is what we did not do with the Ann Arbor non-purchase. Our friend Beth suggested some pills, no doubt derived from mushrooms, to help deal with stress. It will soon be time to re-order.