I went at 11:00a to the title company and promised my mortal soul in exchange for…

Oh, wait a minute.

I mean, I went to the title company and signed all of my loan papers, handed over a ridiculously large check, and now my house is in escrow. As soon as the loan funds and records (which should be Friday), I’ll be getting some keys to the place because, at that point, the house is mine.

Of course, the lady selling the house won’t be out until April 3, which was part of the offer - allowing her to stay there rent-free for a few days while her new house closed and she moved out - so I won’t be able to go in until then. I’ll take a couple of loads of stuff over, maybe roll around on the carpet, nothing major… but on the fifth, I’m movin’ in.

My realtor, Gregory, missed my paper signing, but I think it was just some sort of miscommunication or something. He said he didn’t get the message on when the signing was, while my title officer (who is, coincidentally, also my aunt) says she left a message for him with the info. Gregory is understandably irritated because he thinks it reflects poorly on him, while my aunt is also understandably irritated because she thinks it reflects poorly on her. I don’t think it reflects poorly on either of them; they both provided me with excellent service and will be getting future business and recommendations from me. These things just happen sometimes. I’m not sure what Gregory would have done there anyway, other than just showing support; it was basically just a bunch of new versions of loan documents I already signed.

All in all the signing took about 45 minutes and I signed probably - seriously - 100 different things (I have two loans - a primary/first mortgage, and a secondary/home equity line of credit - so there’s double the usual paperwork), many of them duplicates of each other, but all reasonably straightforward. Now that it’s said and done, I’m not sure what all of the hazardous warnings and bad signals were all about that I got from people I talked to; the signing isn’t really a bad experience, and there’s not a lot different there from when you buy a car or any other big-ticket item. There’s just more to sign, which doesn’t make it bad, just a pain in the wrist.

Only one more step remains in the entire process - the actual move. We’ve been packing nightly and getting things ready to go, but there’s still so much more. I’m wiped out, man.