A hundred bucks

Okay, so the inspection was this morning. I herded the dogs out to the Vanagon and deposited baby therein also, after painstakingly removing the clumps of hair left in her carseat by Hope last time the dogs were transported in the Vanagon. Julianna felt it was hilarious to permit Hope to curl up in the carseat (which was empty as I took the baby down to see my sister-in-law and my Mom), where she could perch high enough to see all around and therefore find more things at which to bark.

Next time Julianna feels the urge to permit Hope to do this, she can bloody well go out there and brush all the hair out of the seat herself.

So after several trips to the Vanagon to de-hair the carseat, deposit diaper bag therein to prevent dog from sitting in it, remove fast-food debris, deposit dog blanket, deposit my coat and cellphone etc etc, and finally strap baby in -- really, I felt like a sherpa after about five trips out there -- off we went to Vancouver to camp out at Julianna's sister's house. If you must be away from home with an infant and three unruly, obnoxious, nervous dogs, you must find a place to camp. Shannon's house was empty and she has both a crib and a fenced yard, so there you have it. And our future home lies just across the street! Sadly, Emmy (owner/seller of our future home) was not home so I could not invite myself in to roam around mentally placing furniture here and there at my leisure. Instead, I sat in Shannon's family room and watched a little tv and played with the baby.

I can say this in all honesty -- I rarely watch any tv at all when the baby is awake. Lately I do have music playing, usually Christmas carols (okay, so you now know I'm a total geek and I listen to cheesy holiday programming) but I very, very seldom turn on the tv when she is in the room. The one glaring exception was when I needed to clean like a maniac one day recently, in preparation for selling the house, and I parked her in her Overstimulator 9000 exersaucer and turned on public television. She actually did not seem to pay it that much attention, which made me feel pretty good. She was more interested in trying to strangle the toys on her saucer, or jam them into her eye. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

The stay at Shannon's was uneventful in that I don't think Petey peed on the rug anywhere, and it wasn't until we were crossing the I-205 bridge that I noticed that the gas tank was dangerously empty. Hmph. Guess Julianna forgot to put gas in it, and I forgot to check. We made it on fumes to the station. Then as we were nearly home the buyer's realtor called to let me know they were done and it was safe to come home, and when I asked how it went she said it was all fine and they were quite pleased. Big sigh of relief.

This afternoon our realtor called with the reply to the counter-offer. Merry Christmas to you, she says, you don't know how lucky you are. This does not happen. Usually in the inspection they find, oh, five hundred or a thousand dollars worth of things to fix, minimum. But your buyer? Oh, he wants a hundred bucks to have the carpet professionally cleaned after you leave. And he wants to stipulate that the built-in microwave stays (which we intended to leave anyway). And he wants to move the closing up to January 7th. But you can still rent back to the end of January.

It's tough to be us. Really. :)