We just got home from a nice family dinner at a restaurant that my husband’s boss treated us to. It was so generous of him, and though I was feeling really pressured to get out of the house when there was so much going on, it ended up being relaxing and enjoyable to be somewhere together and not be looking at all there was to do – because everywhere we look, there’s lots to do!
I had hoped to be almost entirely finished with packing by this point, but I’m not anywhere close to it. Totally emptying this house and taking care of everyone at the same time is very challenging. This morning I felt like I had to have some kind of help because there was no way for me to pay attention to the little kids and dive into all that needed to be done. A friend called, and when I asked her if she could take the three littles, she was here within three minutes. I didn’t even have clean clothes for ds5 – he used his last clean outfit yesterday and I wasn’t yet able to do laundry (because of the three weeks), but she took it into stride and told me she’d give him clothes at her house, and made him feel so comfortable about going to her house wearing just boxer undies. 🙂 Not one of the three kids was wearing shoes – I could have found them, but it would have taken me more than three minutes – and it was sooooo helpful to have them out for several hours so I could finally tackle in a focused way what I needed to do. Until now I haven’t been able to focus on what I was doing without stopping continuously for drinks, snacks, meals, diaper changes, etc.
The paperwork with our apartment is still not completed – the most recent issue was when the appraiser wouldn’t include two of the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms in the appraisal, which affected what the bank would give towards the mortgage. Then we were told that we couldn’t roll the closing costs into the loan, and that had to come out of pocket. Our pockets just aren’t that deep! But we just kept focusing mentally on everything working out.
On Sunday we got the message that the government office holding the necessary authorization for the apartment to be properly appraised was released, and today got a message that one of the banks involved processed the appraisal. And the good news is that hopefully the bank will release the funds for the mortgage on Monday or Tuesday.
Since we’re arriving Monday and we’d like to have a place to lay our weary heads when we get there, we’re getting lots of opportunity for positive thinking, since the funds have to be released and everything processed before we can get into the apartment! We signed the contract ten weeks before we hoped to arrive, and were told it takes 6 – 8 weeks to process the paperwork. This is shaving things very, very close. Not my preferred way of doing things, but you do what you can and then it’s really out of your hands. I’m getting lots of practice with that with this move!
After a long day of going, going, going, and feeling the pressure that there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it in, I really didn’t want to stop for dinner. But it was the best thing to step away from everything and take time to relax. It’s true that I could have gotten a lot done if I hadn’t gone, but I would have missed out on the chance to recharge with the family, which I think is really important.
Avivah
