Welcome to homeownership! aka If I give you the key, it's your problem now.

Everyone worked to get this house to closing.  God bless the realtors, the paralegals, the hotel staffers who scanned & faxed stuff for us, the utilities customer service people who answered in writing every dumb question the out-of-state underwriters threw at us... Until 11:15am, we had not yet received confirmation that we were actually going to closing at noon.  (Or, you know, 10a.  Oh well.)  The fact that this went through at all today means we have a lot of thank-yous to send.  (And definitely two to neither write nor send.)

But in the midst of all else, God watched out for us, even as we were questioning God's ways and means.

For example, we planned to walk thru the house prior to closing as a final check.  Once again, the previous owner's family was on-site getting some last-last items donated to Habitat for Humanity.  They're good people, & you can meet them; we've invited them to EOPS already.  But after they left, & left us with a bundle of keys, I used the loo and discovered to my dismay that it wouldn't flush!  The sink ran at a trickle!  Uh-oh.  Hadn't I called and changed over the water to my name?

A quick call confirmed that I had, but that it was an "all-day window".  They just hadn't activated us yet.  We would definitely have water by CoB, & I didn't need to be there for them to turn it on.  Phew.  We hopped in the car & headed towards the lawyer's for closing. 

Not halfway there, I get an odd and unexpected call.  It's the water company.  I had already been activated, even before I called.  Thing is, Credo (that's our house's name) and therefore we are sewer customers of the company, but not water customers.  In this area, there is "community water", which is a mutual arrangement of deep wells, & "county water", which is what I'm used to as "public".  

So, fine.  Despite the appraiser's word & the aforementioned struggles to get everything documented on community water, evidently we have county water, & not turned on, as I'd called community for what I thought was both sewer & water.  We call county.

County says sure we can get water.  On Monday.  They don't do anything same-day via phone, anything at all.  (I will not on it in a house, I will not on it with a mouse.  I will not on it here or there, I will not on it anywhere.  Ahh, kidlit.)  But if we want to stop by the office in Winston, maybe they can expedite it.

All we can do is all we can do.  (But all we can do is enough!)  We spend the next 90min signing away our lives & promising to live there.  Then on to County.  And then lunch, by which time the stress-induced adrenaline rush is definitely gone and we are well on the way to an emotional crash. 

Finally,  back to the house.  Credo.  OUR house.  We park in the garage & a gentle rain begins falling.  We meet the kids next door.  We start opening windows to let the unused-house smell out.  We flush the unflushed-from-before and are glad to have water (huge sigh of relief).  Almost on cue, the sky opens up and starts dumping buckets.  We're extra-glad for the garage now, as we unload what we'd each brought down from PA. 

Then I decide to open up the walk-out basement doors to, again, facilitate airing out the place.  Ummm... was the tile always this shiny, hon?  Or is it just reflecting the water coming down thru the patio onto the lower level?  Or WHAT THE... WHY IS THERE A PUDDLE IN THE BASEMENT?  WHAT'S LEAKING?  IS THAT COMING IN FROM OUTSIDE?  WHAT HAVE WE GOTTEN OURSELVES INTO?!?!?

On the plus side, it wasn't the door leaking, nor a roof problem in the sunroom, nor a structural break, nor an immediate need for a sump pump.  And we virtually immediately found the source of the water when we looked up and saw the bulge in the popcorn ceiling.

On the down side, that source was the washer-dryer hookup on the floor above.  Evidently the water was switched off prior to the washer getting moved out, & the tap was left  turned on just a smidge. 

On the plus side, we were going to replace that popcorn ceiling anyways, and this just makes it sooner rather than later.

But we're most thankful that the water was off until just before we moved in, or that puddle could have been a lake.  God watches out for God's children.  Even when they just want to flush when they want to flush.

Welcome to homeownership.  God has a sense of humor ¹.

1  I'm not even detailing how "frog protection ²" watched out for us when we tried to stock 3 1/2 bathrooms ³ with towels & bathmats & shower curtains, and our card was declined because $230 worth of "kitchen supplies" in another state was out of character for us.  Glad the card texted us immediately to make us aware of possible identity theft, even though in this case it really was us.

2 Frog protection

3 We are "wealthy" now, based on Saff's standard of "one bathroom per person & maybe a few left over".  By contrast,  his definition of poverty is a lot of people and just one bathroom.