06.03.04 - 9:09 a.m.

And now, the best quizzilla quiz EVER:

You are a Theory Slut. The true elite of the
postmodernists, you collect avant-garde
Indonesian hiphop compilations and eat journal
articles for breakfast. You positively live
for theory. It really doesn't matter what
kind, as long as the words are big and the
paragraph breaks few and far between.

What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

Hee. That is seriously funny.

I am so stressed out. I mean - I hear that a good bit, and mostly it's the sort of stress that is always around, or the sort of stress that ends at 5:00 p.m. (or 6:00 p.m. or 7:00 p.m.) on Friday, and doesn't get carried home. Or, it's background stress, like background radiation from the big old sun. I, however, have been stressed out - teeth-grindingly stressed out - for weeks and weeks and weeks.

First, everything was okay. Then, it wasn't, but the appraiser was going to do an addendum. Except, he didn't, not quite, and it turns out that the appraiser wasn't even an appraiser, but the appraiser's apprentice. And then, unwisely, I sent the loan office a copy of my inspection report, which brought up a whole host of other issues, including a bunch of (essentially minor) electrical things. And they were worried about the fireplace. I said: fireplace is decorative. It has FLOWERS in it. It doesn't have a metal thingy for a fire. No one will use it for a fire, and if I decide to put gas logs in it, I will have a new mantle put on, too.

So: I hired a guy to fix the electrical problems. But that wasn't enough - the appraiser was still worried about the broken plaster in the unfinished basement, and then the loan company was still worried about crappy things like the freakin' fireplace (AGAIN) and other minor issues that my inspector essentially put in his report in order to make sure that I was aware of them and knew what was essential and what wasn't and would have that to jog my memory if a contractor were to come along and try to take advantage of my essential girlishness.

(Seriously - men suck. Bah!)

Anyway, so - oh my tooth grinding god - I cannot believe how these things work, how people stick their fingers into pies and root around, how fifteen people in freakin' colorado or wherever are worried over whether the loose bricks on the roof of my freakin' house are an "immediate hazard" as if I'm buying a freakin' deathtrap (which I wouldn't, which I almost did, and for which they were all ready to loan me loads of moolah).

I have (mostly) refused to think about it, except for the moments when the simmering unpleasantness behind my eyeballs erupts like, uh, seawater from behind a cracking dyke, or, you know, fake blood from something creepy in a horror movie, because I can so easily - so very easily - become thoroughly .WRAPPED. .UP. in the effing endless effing crap that is this stupid, stupid situation.

Today, however, there is finally a plan of attack. Max (the Axe!) is going to write a letter to the loan company about their stupid concerns. Henry is going to take the loose bricks off the roof and put up the drywall in the basement (in the UNFINISHED BASEMENT - o holy crap) tomorrow. The appraiser can go back on Saturday or Monday and say, "yep! It's drywall!" and we can close on Tuesday or Wednesday.

If it doesn't happen, I'm going to do something drastic. I'm going to quit my job and run off to the ocean, some rundown ex-resort town in Delaware or North Carolina or the Maine, where I will become the cranky old local librarian and grow my hair until it is so long that I can sit on it and spend my free time breeding pigeons to produce the ultimate ATTACK PIGEON with laser eyes that shoot annoying underwriters and rude appraisers in the butt from half-way across the country.

(Oh, yeah, and I'm a theory slut! Woo - best quiz ever!)