House Sold... Maybe.

We were lucky enough to get a buyer submit an offer within 4 days of putting our house up, but unlucky enough to get the buyer from Hell. There has been so much drama on this house sale contract that I have been at wit's end several times in the last few weeks. After 2 weeks of negotiating and a original list of 51 items of "to be repaired" demands from the buyers, my real estate agent finally negotiated the repair list to something reasonable. We are busy trying to get our repairs done in the short escrow the buyer wanted; putting on a new roof and getting a lot of carpentry work done. I will be so glad to leave this place, if only to have the drama end. The last hurdle is whether our house appraises for the amount that we agreed upon. We'll find out next week. I am going forward with the gamble that it does because we've already found a rental house. We have signed the paperwork and should be moving in 10 days. Its a cute 4 bedroom house that was amazingly reasonable that is in a good location for me to take public transportation to downtown. I'm excited to move in; with 4 bedrooms we're already planning on having a "gaming" room AND an "office". This is mostly so when one of us wants to concentrate we have a space that is separate from the noise of the other person's game playing/talking. The rental is actually bigger than our old house, though the yard is a lot smaller. The best part for Mark is that the rent includes yard care; so no mowing the lawn for him.
Other than the insanity of the house sale, we also had to put down our cat Piers in March. We've had him for 17 years now, and both Mark and I were devastated by the decision, but we felt it was the best thing to do in the situation. The last year he's been losing a lot of weight and barely eating. We've tried feeding him everything under the sun, but at the end he would barely eat and was sick all the time. After the 4rth vet visit in 4 months, we finally decided it was time to let him go. Mark has taken it the hardest; Piers was his "shadow" and was the most loyal cat I have ever known.
Along with the house stuff, I have been busy working at H&R Block. I also have a small web design contract; doing a project for a department that I knew when I worked at PSU. It's my first real paid web design gig, though its going very slow because of the other distractions in my life right now. With the craziness of the house sale and move, I also decided to postpone taking classes this spring, since the move is going to take a lot of time. I just have 2 more project classes to finish my certificate, but I keep postponing it lol. Eventually I'll get it done.
Mark is very busy with his full time temp job work as well as teaching 4 classes. To alleviate his work load, I offered to do all the grading for his classes for the Spring semester. We'll see how it goes, and whether its sustainable for the future. If Mark gets a full time job (either one of his interviews or his current temp job being converted to permanent) then in theory I don't really have to work as long as Mark continues to also teach part time. So we have tossed around the idea of me helping him to rewrite some of his courses that need some content updates and web re-designs instead of looking for an internship/job right away. I could also just work on some side projects to build up my web portfolio a bit before looking for real web work.
Its still hard to tell if staying home all day is driving me crazy, since we've been under so much stress. I am reserving judgment on working from home until we are settled into our new rental. I have spent a couple days going to PSU during the day with Mark as well as walking to the nearby Starbucks; it gets me out of the house a bit. I am still loving the ability to just wake up whenever I want, though I am surprised how fast the day goes by.