The sale of my old house was supposed to go through yesterday at 12:30 PM. I’ve had 4 offers on the house and 20 acres, one after 3 months couldn’t get the loan money and 3 days before closing I got the bad news. He asked me again if I’d float the loan to him. But I couldn’t. He’d been unreliable in getting back to the realtor about everything and I could just see him never making payments, and me being stuck with trying to evict him.

The next contract fell through. Then I had two at once. I accepted one and the ball starts rolling, again. Since I haven’t had any luck, I’m hopeful, but I didn’t let fantasy delude me into thinking it was a done deal. Not until it was a done deal. Not to say I didn’t fantasize, make a list of all the things I needed to cancel as soon as the house was sold, etc, but it was just a fantasy until it became an absolute realty. But the closing wouldn’t be for a month and a half.

So the two days before, I’m trying to get the paperwork notarized, faxed and fedexed, after the underwriters sent it sooooo late to the title company and it was sent to me. Then the severe storms, massive floods, and it was a real mess and I had to turn around and return home because the roads were too badly flooded. The buyer’s realtor says a tree branch was damaged in the storm. My realtor had to get a tree man out to cut it down on the day before the closing in between storms. $433.

I managed to get the closing papers done on Thursday in the meantime. Yes! But what did I say? It’s not done, until it’s REALLY done. That meant that the fedex truck delivered the paperwork on time to the title company. And there’s always the worry that it really was all there, signed like it was supposed to be, notarized like it was supposed to be and the buyers actually showed up and signed the paperwork and had the lender’s money in hand.

Now, I’m working on two book deadlines, trying not to watch the time on the day of closing, Friday. I get up at 5 am, courtesy of the puppies, then get to work on edits. I’m worried the fedex is going to make it. I’m visualizing he’s going to be there first thing in the morning. So many Texas highways and roads are flooded, the major one from Waco to Temple closed, Highway 6, the one I took to leave my daughter’s home here and return home to Crawford through Waco was flooded in places. I know there’s one low water crossing that has a regular stake there to show how high the water is and that means don’t approach when flooded.

But I’m confident he gets there. Now the title company doesn’t list their hours, so maybe they’re open at 8 am, or maybe at 8:30, maybe at 9 am. No problem. The overnight fedex guy will be there promptly when the doors open.

I’m really working on edits on one of the novels, taking the puppies out between storms, taking a few pictures during breaks, and working on edits. Blogging. Oh, yes, and watching the time.

It’s finally time for the place to open, for sure. By 9 am. I’m counting the hours. Three and a half hours to go. The title company hasn’t called me. They have the paperwork work in hand. They haven’t called me to say anything is missing.

Ten! Two and half hours to go. We’re good.

By the way. Do you notice the ticking time bomb? The conflict? I mean, there’s still the worry that something could go wrong. But not the paperwork delivery. It’s got to have been made. It’s there. All of it. Or they would have called me pronto.

Now, if only the buyers show up with the lender’s money, we’re set. But what if THEY can’t make it? Yes, still the worry.

You know something’s going to go wrong, or this would be the most boring story in the world, right?

I get a call. Oh, no! The title company doesn’t call anyone. Not unless there’s a problem. So I hurry across the dining room to grab the phone. Adrenaline surge. Check caller ID. Spammer. Relief.

Eleven o’clock!!! Woohoo, an hour and half to go!!!

I REALLY am working on edits. It makes the slow time go faster. Really.

Eleven-thirty. Ready to do the happy dance. Then I realize it could be an hour after their signing time that they’re actually done. *sigh* Okay, so I rein in the excitement.

Noon!!! Half an hour from signing!!! It’s almost here!

I get another call. No. Way. Can. IT. Be. From. The. TITLE. Company. No way!!!!!

A sickening feel sweeps over me as I look at the caller ID. It’s Noon. I’m having lunch. It’s the title company.

“We don’t have all the paperwork. The signed paperwork. The notarized paper.”

Twelve o’clock. Half an hour before the signing.

OMG, no way!!! I’m in a panic. “I know I sent in all the signed paperwork. Let me check in my car for the plastic file I carried the documents in straight from the bank to the post office to fedex.”

I’d made two copies of the documents. There were 30 pages, so that meant 60. I had them just in case there was a mistake made on any of the papers. But we didn’t use any. Still, I worried, what if some of the signed ones were mixed in with the ones I didn’t use. I was in hurry to get it fedexed because of the violent storms, the impending threat of flooding again, and was in the middle of the storms again when I headed home.

I can’t find the plastic file container in the car. What did I do with it? I find it on the kitchen counter. I’m so rattled, I just didn’t see it. Even though it’s bright red. But it was next to a bunch of other stuff, soooo…

I dump it all out, search through all the papers, not one signed or notarized document in them. These are all the spare papers. But what if two of these weren’t spares? What if they were the originals? But I had an envelope marker that separated them. So I hadn’t touched them when we were at the bank.

“I sent them all in. They have to be there.”

“I’ll look through them again. Call you right back.”

No, no, no. I can’t believe it. Yet I can. I’d worried about this happening. Worried about anything that could happen that would make this not happen.

The minutes tick by. I don’t remember what I was doing in the meantime. Fifteen minutes goes by really quickly when you’re stressed to the max, I realize. I know I was watching the time. I think I might have been trying to do more edits, though I don’t imagine I made much progress. And then I get the call back. I know it’s not going to be good.

“I don’t have two pages of the deed paperwork. The notarized one and one signed by you. The closing can’t go through without them.”

I have the PDF still open on my computer that she had sent me.

“It’s the last two pages that I sent you.”

They’re sideways. I’m trying to move the forms to the last two. Trying to read them sideways.

A baby squirrel decides to take this time, of all times, to make his appearance, when I haven’t seen any in my yard for months. My puppies take this time, of all times, to see him and raise a ruckus right next to where I’m trying to find the pages of the sideways contract.

The woman is saying, “Do you want me to scan them to you?”

“No, I have them here. Just a minute.”

And then I see them. One has a note: executed and a place to put a date. I remembered signing it because I wondered if I should put a date or not on it and didn’t. The other was the notary’s page and I watched as she had filled out two of them. So I KNEW they were done.

I told her what I just said here. “You have them. I sent them. They’re there.”

“Let me look again.”

The adrenaline is pumping through my bloodstream still from the initial call when she phoned at 12 pm.

I’m thinking, why have they waited this late to call about it? Well, she had said that the fedex guy just had delivered them. So why had they sent them so late to me in the first place!!!!

“I have them. They were just in between a couple of other pages.”

After she about gave me heart failure, she had them.

And that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it, too.

Long story, short, the buyers showed up, they paid for the house, the wire transfer didn’t arrive until nearly 3 hours after closing, and when the bank called to let my daughter know, I was like, no, I called about it! And now it’s time to celebrate! If we can go someplace and not drown to do it.

Have a super great Saturday! I “finished” edits on Loving a Silver Wolf and I’m rereading the whole thing to make sure I didn’t add any mistakes. Hope to have it done this weekend and back to the other book on Monday, which is due on July 1st.

But despite the wild ride, that was the best TGIF ever! A little conflict never hurt anyone. NOT.

And the rain continues…

Terry