OnLeaving America - Part 36

The house is sold, I think . . . maybe. Tomorrow the inspector comes and I am sure he will find things that will cost us another $5000 plus. It’s been enlightening to go through this. Like all of you I’ve read the many articles on people who are losing their homes. Their fates seemed as distant as riots in Somalia, now I truly feel their pain and remember a time when homes were our major investments, the retirement plans of the working class—all that is gone now. Those who have money make more of it, and those with less lose more of what they have. What’s wrong with this picture.

I feel some sadness leaving this house. I have been happy here and now, with all the updates and thousands spent on improvements. I wish we’d made them a couple years ago so that we might have had a little time to enjoy them. But we were happy the way things were.

 

I sometimes wonder if I have become a neater person through all of this. I’m now accustomed to keeping the house immaculate for prospective buyers, making the bed when I get up and putting things away as soon as I’m done with them—well maybe not putting away as much as putting out of sight, and more often than not forgetting where I put them. Some things will never be seen again until we are on the other side.

If the deal goes through we will have to somehow schlep a bunch of furniture from my wife’s office back to our place where there is no more room in our double garage. Our neighbors will let us keep it in their garages until the movers come. We’ve had wonderful neighbors here, it will be sad to leave them too. 

Where all our stuff will go in Sweden I cannot imagine as the new house is smaller than the one we have here. Things in general are smaller in Sweden, but well made. Showers are the size of phone booths; rooms are smaller too, but solid and well insulated. Windows are triple paned and heat comes from the floor—some kind of hot water system that somehow supplies the neighborhood. The new place is high tech, fiber optics and several systems far beyond my comprehension. Below photo has to do with the heating system . . . this for a man who has trouble operating a cell phone.

We need to be out of the house for three hours tomorrow while the inspector looks for anything he can find that will cost us more money.

Whatever.