Y'know, at some point you guys won't have to put up with all my whining about the process of buying a house. Then I'll actually have to try to come up with interesting topics of conversation again. I hope I'll be able to muster it. :)

Today was probably the worst day yet in this entire process. At least for me.

I'll try to give a brief rundown of what's been leading up to today and how it ended. I promise. As brief as I can be (keeping in mind, I'm workin' on some rum and cokes tonight).

 Our loan papers were sent, a week ago, to the grant people. On Thursday, our loan officer said, "Everything looks good. It's all right on track to close on the 27th. We should have the grant papers back tomorrow."

On Friday, our loan officer said, "Everything looks good. It's all right on track to close on the 27th. We should have the grant papers back on Monday."

On Saturday, I emailed our agent to ask about the details of closing, final walk-through, etc.

On Monday, our loan officer said, "Everything looks good. It's all right on track to close on the 27th. We should have the grant papers back tomorrow."

Yesterday (Tuesday), we still hadn't heard from our agent, and our loan officer stopped returning our emails.

We got a little nervous and I got a little pissed. I know. Hard to believe, right?

So last night I sent an e-mail (and this was minus the rum, even) to our agent and our loan officer, explaining our concerns, which included (taken directly from the email):

• Jeremy has a major upgrade hitting on Monday, with the public announcement being made on Tuesday. This means that he will HAVE to work this weekend in order to make this launch. We anticipated being able to START moving in on Thursday, and have been packing like crazy in order to make sure that he had the time to do this. He needs to be able to let other people working on the project know when he will be available and when he won't.

• I start on a deadline, working on our May issues of the magazines, on Monday. That means 12-14 hour days for me from there on out.

• Our current landlords, given the information that we close on the 27th, have asked us to be out of our current rental on Monday the 31st.

• I have a freelance client that is actually putting the launch of an entire new product line on HOLD because of our move, which I thought was going to begin on the 27th. My not knowing the dates I will be unavailable makes ME look unprofessional, and is affecting my freelance business.

• I originally had made arrangements for all utilities to be changed to our name on Thursday, with Charter cable coming out on Friday to set up tv and cable services. I have since called yet again to push these things back, which means that if we are able to move this weekend, we will be without internet, which is necessary for the work Jeremy needs to do, which means he will likely need to be up in Reno for part of the weekend.

Jeremy made a comment about how he had sent our loan officer a slightly "nicer" email ... but ... I didn't much care.

Today, when I'd still not heard from ANYONE by 10 a.m., I called our agent. And thus the roller coaster ride began. He apologized for not having gotten hold of us, but said he'd been out of town for an emergency. Ok. It was my opinion, at that time, that he wasn't getting the urgency here. He told me to try not to worry. I told him that was a little difficult when we were supposed to be CLOSING tomorrow and on Monday we would be HOMELESS. I followed it up by some snide comment about our coming to his house with our dogs and all of our belongings Monday, which was really pretty bitchy, but I was upset. We ended with him telling me he'd call our loan agent.

He called back about 10 min later telling me things were still, for the most part, on track. Umm, ok. Which track, exactly? The track to Hell, you say? No progress. I was near tears at this point, so I just went out for a ride at lunch. I figured I was either gonna cry or vomit, but I wasn't gonna do it up in my office.

While out, our agent called my cell phone, which I knew was almost dead, so I just let it go to voice mail. When I got back to work, I listened to it and it was about 3.5 minutes of him apologizing profusely, explaining that he'd just now seen my email from last night because he'd been out of town 'til last night. He went on to explain the phone calls he was going to make, and I softened a bit. He sounded pretty sincere.

I had no clue.

Our agent kicked some major banking ass.

He called the liaison between our loan officer and the grant people and ripped her a new one. Then he called our loan officer and told her if she didn't figure all this out, he was going to pull all his business from their bank. She (loan officer) then got her superior and the VP of the bank involved. The VP then called the grant company to find out what was going on.

That was when our loan officer told me that the grant company had no record of ever having any loan papers for us. We were not in their system at all. To them, we didn't exist.

All the breath was sucked out of my lungs and I had no clue what to say. All extraneous sound was sucked from the room. Thank goodness I was already sitting down.

Then it all came rushing back in as she told me that because of our situation and her guarantee that we fit all the requirements for the grant, the VP of the bank approved our loan and told her to send the papers over to the Title company, minus the grant paperwork. So, I asked her, what happens if for whatever reason the grant does NOT come through? We have to scramble to come up with multiple thousand dollars to close this deal? No, she assured me, the bank VP chose to have the bank take responsibility for the situation, and if something happened, they would work with us to resolve the situation.

Wow.

So, by about 3:30 p.m., the lady from the title company called to tell us she had our paperwork and she was going to start processing it. She asked when we could be there to sign ... I told her I didn't want to mess up her night, but all she had to do was say the word and we were on our way, but that Jeremy needed about an hour to get here from Reno.

She said that would be perfect and that she would stay as late as we needed to get this going. I think her exact words were, "I don't care about that, I care about you and your family having a place to live."

I really hope Jeremy doesn't mind, but I'm fairly sure I love her.

So, I called Jeremy, and he came down to sign. She answered all of our questions, had this incredibly helpful, upbeat attitude. She said she'd been waiting for these papers and that it was stuff like this that kept her up at night. Awesome. Someone else who actually gave a shit about what happened to us.

And, she also told us that our agent kicked some major ass today, and that this was pretty much all due to him. Gotta give props where they're due, y'know?

So. The loan papers are signed. We do the walk-through tomorrow. The lady at the title office explained every single step those papers would be taking now, and said that she estimates we will close between 2 and 4 p.m. on Friday.

We went to dinner, came home and did some work out in the yard, came in and fixed some drinks, and here we are. I'm off work tomorrow and Friday, and I'll be packing up everything else that I possibly can while Jeremy works on prepping for this huge project this weekend.

I'm afraid to be so hopeful, but it FINALLY feels like we may just be in our new house by the end of this weekend.

Sorry. That wasn't very brief. Oh well. You should have known better.