postscript

I happened to meet the couple who came back to look at the apartment a second time, and they seemed very nice. Maybe this isn't going to be so bad after all.

it's not about me, really.

We had our first open house today. Silly me, I thought it was a "brokers' preview," where the brokers come without clients to preview the property before it's officially shown to the public. But I must have interpreted wrong, because it was brokers bringing potential buyers. Which is okay, I guess, except that I had hoped the tile work and painting would be done in the bathroom before people started viewing it.

Our agent said the response was good, overall. One man is coming back at 5pm this evening with his wife. I wasn't here. I had planned not to be here, but I find that it's more than just considering whether people want the owner hanging around while they're looking. (I felt a little imposed upon if the owner was in the house when we were looking at properties.) I guess I just can't handle seeing people milling around our home making evaluations.

I don't know why this is so hard for me. It's just an apartment, and without our stuff in it it won't be our home anymore. (Except for the kitchen, which I designed and feel real ownership of. I wish I could take it with me. Irrational. I designed the wall layout, too, and I don't feel like I want to take the walls...)

I guess it's about looking forward instead of looking back. This looking back is new to me because when I was younger I never looked back. Not that there was anything much to look back to... when I went to college my parents divorced and sold the house, and I didn't have any childhood friends or lovers keeping me where I was, so I was always looking forward. It's a matter of changing perspective, is all.

Change is good. Change is good. Change is good.

four years ago

I remember sitting on a bench in our churchyard, holding the Book of Common Prayer and trying to find the words to pray, while ash swirled around me like snowflakes.

It's four years later and I since that day I can no longer sing the words to "America the Beautiful."

is there a god of real estate?

I ask facetiously, but something tells me we ought to be thankful to someone or something...
the house we thought we lost came back to us!

The people who outbid us decided that they didn't want to buy the house after all, so the owners called our agent and asked if we were still interested. We renewed our bid and this time they signed it. So as long as nothing falls apart (and I know that's a rather big "if") we have a house to move to.

It will help us handle having to sell our -- dare I say "beloved?" -- home if we know where we're going.

Our listing agent came today to take pictures for the listing, but even before he did a guy with a computer printout stopped me on the street this morning to ask about our building. He told me he was interested in buying an apartment in the building. Of course the printout he was holding was our listing. The agent wants to have brokers' previews next Monday and Wednesday. This is all happening so fast!

I feel guilty

Today I told Myriam, our son's babysitter, that we're moving.

I don't feel bad for Myriam so much, because she's an excellent caregiver and it will be pretty easy for her to find another family (and of course I'm telling all my neighbors with little children that she's going to be available). But I do feel bad for my son, because he loves her so much and he doesn't understand that we're going to be moving away and he won't see her anymore. And I'll miss her too, because I never have to worry about our son when he is with her.

I always knew this wasn't going to be easy.

the long goodbye...

(I wrote this post yesterday but my DSL went down during the process, so I lost it. It was brilliant, the best thing I'd ever written! But it's gone. Oh well.)

And so it begins. We signed a contract with a broker yesterday to put our apartment on the market. We're going. We're leaving NYC.

Two weeks ago, concurrent with our son's second birthday, we began looking at houses in Massachusetts. We actually found one we liked enough to put an offer in on it, and lo and behold, the sellers accepted. It was about two miles from the house where Steve grew up, and approximately the same distance from his sister's house. It had a yard where our son could play, a playroom in the cozy, finished basement just for him, and a wide flat driveway for riding a tricycle. For us it had a four-season porch, a sunny kitchen, a flower garden and patio. Plus the requisite number of bedrooms and bathrooms...

But it was not to be.

Due to a condition requested by the sellers, and in some small part to Hurricane Katrina, our signed offer didn't reach the sellers at their Florida vacation home until a week after they had verbally accepted our offer over the phone. The day before it arrived, their agent called them and told them not to sign our offer; she had a better one. They gave us an opportunity to match the other buyers' bid, but we decided we didn't want to get involved in what was likely to become a bidding war, and besides, our offer had been good enough just two days before. So we were a little put out. Obviously the sellers wanted to get the best price they could for their house, so we let them. We let the house go.

So we're starting from scratch. We plan to go back to Massachusetts in the next two or three weeks to look at more properties, but our minds are already part-way there. Steve had already done the groundwork for his transfer from the New York office to the Boston office of his firm. And I've already mentally begun to say goodbye to the place where I've lived for the longest period of my life.

We've been really happy here. We lived in this apartment when we got married, and when our son was born. We took what was sort of an ugly-duckling of a loft with grubby p-lam cabinets and dingy lighting in the kitchen and bath and turned it into "an architecturally designed showplace" (to quote our real estate agent). At least, we liked what we did with it. It fit us. But it's time to go.

With this move we'll be closer to at least some members of our family -- our son will get to grow up with his cousins, instead of seeing them only a few times a year. It will solve the public vs. private school debate. And we'll still have our friends here in the city, even if we no longer see them every week...

So begins the long goodbye. I figure it's going to take about three months.

just a little obstacle

Hello friends. I've put word verification on my blog so that if you want to post you have to type in a few characters at my request. Not a problem unless you're drunk or dyslexic... and I apologize to you, my dyslexic readers. But I got one of those annoying stock spams as a comment on one of my posts, and I don't need that in my life. I already get enough of them in my e mail. So please post anyway, after you enter "zbryzyk" or whatever...

Labor Day weekend stretches before us, vast and empty

The city has emptied out. People began leaving on Thursday after work, headed for the Poconos or the Hamptons or wherever they go to engage in one last blowout weekend before the "end" of the summer.

We are here.

Actually, there's a movie opening today that I can't wait to see... "The Constant Gardener." I'm a LeCarre fan and a Ralph Fiennes fan and I can't think of anything I'd like better than the two of them together. I read the book several years ago and sent it to my Dad last year for his birthday. The movie got a great review in the New York Times today. So maybe we do have something to look forward to this weekend.

Besides signing a contract to put our place on the market. More later.