Well, we said it would be a hospitality house.

So all week UPS has been delivering packages, multiple packages, to Credo from QVC. Thing is, neither Big Frog nor I have ordered things from QVC, possibly ever.

But Credo's former owners have. Often, evidently.

And we've been getting packages addressed to their current address, with stickers pasted over and around the ostensibly correct "ship to" addresses which redirect the packages our way.

But unlike the United States Postal Service, United Parcel Service won't let you just marker "please forward" onto the item and throw it back into the mailbox. Instead, I went online to figure out what to do, and the "chat now" person had me take photos of the packages, which she passed along to the local office, which sent a brown truck back our way to retrieve and redeliver. The drivers have been very gracious about it, but they seem as mystified as I about who would keep correcting a "ship to" midway through the process.

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I am a night owl. This is not news to anyone who has ever met me.

And although we have our outdoor and tree lights set to "dusk + #h", they're on sometimes dusk to dawn, sometimes longer. It depends on how light hits the sensors. Or maybe we have a bad optic. We're not sure, and this is the first year we've relied on them instead of just using them as switches.

So I was awake and reading, and the lights were still illuminated and blinking merrily away in the darkness at 1am when a knock sounded at the door.

Even though I always say, "It's never too late to call, although it may be too early," few people call after 10p. And really no one calls after 11p, even if you tell them to. So a 1am knock was really unexpected. Haven't had one of those since college days, when everyone was on a semi-nocturnal schedule.

I open the door and I'm greeted by a complete stranger, an African-American woman whose face immediately falls and she says, "Oh, [former owner] moved." She starts backpedaling into an apologetic, "I knew they had their house on the market, I just forgot, I'm so sorry," and I learn that the previous owner's mother has passed on unexpectedly. This night visitor just an hour ago learned about the passing and hopped in her car to support her friend. Who no longer lives at my house.

But wait!

Longtime readers may recall how God providentially let us meet the previous owner and her mother the very day I moved to NC. In a show of completion, when I arrived in NC, I met Big Frog at the house rather than at the hotel where he was then living. Not 15 minutes later did the previous owner show up to do some last minute tidying before turning the keys over. So instead of prowling around the perimeter with cat-like tread and bobbing flashlights, we went into the house and took photos of us in our new kitchen. We exchanged cell numbers and invited the former owners to EOPS.

So, 1am notwithstanding, I was able to give the friend all the reasonably-current contact information I had for their friend.

Ain't God good?

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Hebrews 13:2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

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.