Thanks for the birthday happys, everyone!

Oh yeah - Happy Birthday, Zenkitty!

Happy bday, Zen!!

Well, it's official: refinancing didn't go through, and we received a lovely letter informing us that our house has been foreclosed on and auctioned off. We have 90 days, which is frankly, much better than I expected.

While this news is far from great, I am mostly all right with it -- freaked, yes, but D has said we can hire a mover. That's the part I dread about moving, so that's all right. I can pack and stuff -- and, since the house is already auctioned, I have no compunctions about just leaving shit (ahem, ex-wife's crap: BUY-BYE) behind. And selling every other damned thing. If she wants it, she can arrange for someone to come get it. The foreclosure is largely her fault, anyway, for dropping her business, the house, everything, and moving away without a thought to how it affected anyone else.

I am kind of eager anyway to have a house with no history, no baggage, no holes, no major repairs needed. So there is that.

And goddammit, I want a decent bathtub.

D hasn't told her yet, and that will be unpleasant, but oh the fuck well.

Happy birthday, Zenkitty!

Not quite sure what to say, Erin, about the foreclosure. May it turn out to be a good, fresh start.

Erin, that's bad news. But it will be a good thing to start over in a fresh place, methinks. Will you guys rent or buy?

Erin, while the whole situation sucks, it really does sound like you have a good handle on making it into a better and more baggage-free life in the end (umm, sort of the way a layoff often leads to a reboot and clean start compared to staying in the same ruts? if that makes sense?)

I'm wishing you all the ~ma in the world for minimal ex-craziness and a better place in the end.

I don't suppose anyone out there in Buffistaland would be interested in or has the time to take Joe's resume and make it something beautiful that will get him a job in like, a week? It's stuck in a template that I'm having a hard time un-doing.

I can make it beautiful. I can offer no other guarantees.

Oh, rent right now, for sure. Buying would be just a mess, with a foreclosure on record.

I am ok with buying a house in the future, but right now, renting is just A-OK with me. There are quite a few rental houses in the area for the price of our mortgage or even $200-300 less.

We don't have to worry about a school, so there's that. I am awfully glad, though, we didn't paint or fix anything besides the bathroom that needed to be done. This will put the wedding reception on hold, but frankly, that might turn out to be a good thing, with all of the work on the house and yard we would had to have done to get it ready.

We will have to find a good home for Mr. Dog once M. leaves, but I think that will be ok. D's mom has a friend with a farm who is interested in him, and he would be so happy with more room and things to chase. Things that aren't cats. M. hardly pays him any attention, anyway; he is much more involved with the cats. He will be a little sad, but I truly think it will better for Mr. Dog, as well as for us.

And as you all said, it will be a chance for US to have a house. Until the foreclosure went through, I didn't really allow myself to think about how much it bugged me, cause...well, no point, right? But they lived in this house, fought in this house, adultery in this house, she miscarried and buried her child here (that really creeps me out, all sympathy to her, but it does) and she left tons of her stuff, her now-husband's and her brother's stuff here.

I have never felt like this was MY house. Or ours, even.

I have now responded to 15 apartment ads. One person got back to me.

It's a numbers game, Hil.

heh.