In the Jaws of the Beast

So! November 20, 2017. Here I am in Panama..wow! The last 3 months have been....busy...yah..good, neutral way to put it! When I last was able to post, I was still living in Halifax hoping that the house would sell quickly, but, in my heart, figured that we would still be there at least until October. So, I was confident that my August jaunt to Kenya would pose no problem. Riiiight!

What is that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for! You just might get it!"? Yah..Ok...I got the memo!

Within a week of listing it, we had 2 showings in one day. So on July 8, Darren and I drove the dogs around for a few hours and wondered if the selling process was going to be easy. Excuse me while I hack up a fur ball from laughing!

July 9 - another showing! More driving with dogs. Darren was grumbling already. And we were just in the early stages...sigh! Well, at least Tessa and Charlie were happy; they love car rides and walkies!

So it began. One of the offers was way too low; the other one was within reason, so we decided to proceed. Before I say anymore, let me make one thing perfectly clear: my husband detests any infringement upon his domain by any type of what he considers bureaucratic bullshit. Brace yourself!

Medication played a huge role in my life for the next 2 weeks. On July 14, we had to have the septic and well inspected, as well as the house. Darren was savage that he had to dig up the septic and proceeded to rant endlessly about $&^% BS and crooks and...you name it! As one could predict, the inspection came back with a number of items that were of concern: roof shingles, chimney, minor cracks in the foundation...the usual stuff a 45 year old house would have...nothing too drastic, but enough for them to hesitate and for my husband to blow 15 gaskets! I listened to more ranting from him, but, instead of getting everything fixed ourselves, we decided to drop the price.

They accepted, but now insisted that we be out of the house by August 24, 2 days after I returned from Africa. Oh, and we had to have the water tested. By now, Darren was a fuming wreck, and I just wanted it all to be over. We were fighting constantly with him threatening to back out of selling all together which would have meant that we would have to stay in NS. I was trying to keep things level but after awhile I had no more patience. I truly began to think that our retirement plan was going to fall through. Darren would have been Ok with that, but I was not happy! So we kept packing and waiting for the water test results to come back. And I kept praying to whatever gods are out there that we would survive this! We did.

On July 24, we got the news that the water test was good. With that out of the way, the sale went forward. Now the issue became the day we had to vacate the premises. We wanted 3 more days; to make a long and bitter story short, they gave us 1. Of all the hassles involved in selling, this was the one that pissed us both off the most. I never dreamed when I booked the Africa trip that the house would sell so fast. Now both of us were on anxiety overload as we looked ahead to the August 25, 2017, the day that we would have to be out. I would be gone, and, even though I had already done a huge amount of packing and purging, the rest would fall to Darren while I was gone. He was not a happy camper; but there was nothing to be done about it except bite the bullet. And, he did a great job!

I would never want to go through that experience ever again. We are happy to rent here in Panama, and would not buy a property even if we could afford to (which we can't)!

On the other hand, when the day came, and we drove out of that driveway, UHaul loaded and in tow, neither one of us looked back. A huge weight was lifted from us, and both of us began to enjoy the prospect of being footloose and somewhat fancy free. But that is another story.

Ciao for now!