The date to close on the house is rapidly approaching — April 30th.  So far, the stars are in alignment… the contract is a lock, the loan is a done deal (at a fairly awesome interest rate), my mortgage company deserves some sort of posthumous Medal of Honor for throwing themselves on the worst of the paperwork grenade and absorbing all the shrapnel for me.  I cut a check for my portion of the roof as a deposit (upgrading to the better roof for a fraction of the cost), and the work is a go as soon as the ink dries next Wednesday.

So why do I feel like a guitar string being tightened to the point of snapping, giving off metallic pings and tremors just before shearing?  I’m raw, I’m on edge, and my nerves feel like they’re being sandpapered.  I feel like I’m drowning at times, for want to get my head above the waves of this emotional ocean.

I’m lonely as hell.  The one person I want to spend as much time as humanly possible with is 5000+ miles, and an ocean away.  We IM, we video every so often, we talk on the phone now and again and I am comforted, elated and feel her companionship… but the second the signal is severed, I’m left alone again in my little apartment.

I can be alone, that’s something I learned about myself and am quite comfortable with.  But now that I have a such a wonderful girl in my life, I want nothing more than to be close to her, and I can’t.  At least not yet.  Yet the loneliness I feel is not from living alone, and is felt more sharply owing to the immediate stresses pressing down on me.

I have friends galore, whom I don’t get to see enough of.  Some of them are new friends, and they’re wonderful but we’re still trying to get our equilibrium with one another.  Some of them are old friends, and are the backbone of my emotional support system — they are the comfortable, well known easy chair I can turn to when times are rough, to cradle me, support me, and give me comfort when the world is crumbling down around my ears.  Except that they have problems of their own, or are soul searching and rediscovering who they are, or they are growing in a different direction, or they don’t feel like putting up with my crap any more, or I’ve done such a wonderful job of disguising my emotional state that they don’t realize anything is amiss.  So with a few notable exceptions, my comfy easy chair has left the building… I have a small cushion left, and that’s about it (and I’m thankful for that cushion, or I’d have lost my mind completely by now).

And this lack of being able to lean on my friends for a change has done nothing to improve my mindset.  I’m grouchy, irritable, and throwing off negative waves like a corpse off-gassing the stench of decay.  I’m afraid I’m wearing thin on those who have been putting up with me, including my girl who is oh-so-far away.  But still, what underlies it all is the fact that I’m bone-achingly lonely, and normally it’s not a problem except that right now it’s compounded by the fact that I’m about to lay out a huge sum of money all in one go, and that a figurative chunk of blue ice could fall from the empty sky and wreck the whole house deal.

I need some familiar company.  I don’t even want to go on at length about my problems, I just need companionship and a meal, a movie or a beer in comfortable surroundings.  I need distractions from my stresses, preferably in a small group of two or three.  I need someone to make me laugh — to release that valve on the top of my head like a pressure cooker.  Someone to engage me in a conversation that does not include “house”, “contract”, “closing” or “down payment” in it.  I have made attempts with sub-par success.  Maybe I am too good at hiding my mental state.  Maybe I’m comically lousy at it, and that’s chasing everyone off like Frankenstein’s monster smashing the door in.

But the one thing I don’t want is sympathy.  I don’t want a pat on the head and exclamations of “poor baby!”.  I’m not fishing for a pity round at the local pub.  I’m not looking for a sudden onslaught of calls and texts out of the clear blue sky looking to hang out because people read this post and suddenly feel bad for me, or guilty, or obligated — I’ll take my lonely little apartment over that any day.  In fact, I don’t know what I want, except to not feel like too little butter scraped over too much bread.

Two quickie flash animations for your viewing entertainment.  Both from the same folks at Too Much Spare Time.

Geeks In Love and Bad Idea (you had me at “zombie”).

Enjoy!

So, inspections are done, and turned up nothing that would give me cause to “run, don’t walk” away.  It’s a 25 year old home, and as such has things that need doing.  I made a list, checked it twice, and submitted an amended contract to the seller.

And waited nervously.

One of the things I did want taken care of was the roof, which had about a year-and-a-half of viable life left to it, and showed damage from hail and trees.  This was a point of contention with my insurance company, and as such an important issue with me… an expensive issue.  The seller has to be well aware of the condition of the roof (as it was quite obvious), and the property was a rental, and I’m sure he was reluctant to put any more into it than was strictly necessary.  So, my request for funds for a new roof were likely not to be a surprise.

So, along with the amended contract I submitted a letter from my insurance company basically stating that any policy they issued me would indeed be very temporary, and replacing the roof was a condition of a long and healthy relationship with them.  I also got quotes to have the roof redone and submitted those as well.  I asked for the sum of cheapest of the two quotes to be paid into escrow, to be paid directly to the roofer upon closing.  I also asked for a number of other necessary repairs.

They agreed to pay in full for the roof repair, and offers a sum of cash to cover the cost of the other repairs, and I could do them myself.  Deal!

I’ve signed off on the above amendments to the contract, and sometime tomorrow it should be filed with the title company.  Once that happens, I am on the fast track to actually buying this house.  Now I need to lock in my interest rate and finish the mortgage process (which I was pre-approved for).

Should all go well, I close on April 30th.  I’m more than a little excited.  Nervous too.  But hell, I’m one door-slam away from going homicidal on my downstairs neighbors, so this is for the best.

Added some new gallery stuff.  First and foremost, a new cake…

… a recent crawfish boil …

… a recent Cowboy Mouth concert …

… and other random miscellaneous pictures sprinkled throughout.

You’ve seen the link to my brother’s book over there in the Merch section.  If I haven’t cajoled you into buying the book yet, I’ll let him take a stab at it.

HERE’S a link to an author’s interview recently conducted with him.  He’s serious enough to eat shoes, people.  To eat SHOES!!