Our Haunted Houses

As an adult, the haunted houses in my life have become much more terrifying than those of my childhood. When I was little, going through the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland was terrifying, but it generally ended within ten minutes and then life was good again. In those haunted houses, I felt fairly secure that my parents could protect me if things got out of hand when a scary guy jumped from behind a wall. Mostly, I inherently knew that nothing really bad was going to happen to me. ******************************************************************************** The haunted houses of my adulthood seem to pack more of a punch. We own two houses in the greater Albuquerque area. We bought high and are now enjoying the good times of selling low. We put the house Daniel bought on the market in February of 2007. In May of this year we finally got an offer at 82% of the initial listing price. At that time, we were just glad to get the house sold. Initially the house was supposed to close on June 12. We are now nearly one month later and still no close. We were told with certainty that July 2 was the close date and then again on July 6. The latest was supposed to be yesterday, now we are hopeful for tomorrow. I don't know when the house will close, the champagne is on ice for whenever that happens. ******************************************************************************* When that day comes, Daniel and I will be left with the house I bought. I really like the layout of the house and it gets incredible natural light and has nice space for entertaining. That said, we have roof problems, bug problems, heater problems, etc and I fear we are steps away from our own personal money pit. If you've seen the movie The Money Pit (if you haven't I highly recommend it), you will know that Tom Hanks and Shelley Long resort to just about anything to pay off the renovations on their house, which they find is a lemon. Sadly, we don't have any super rich friends willing to give us money and so if we are ever to leave Albuquerque, we'll need to find another solution. ************************************************************************************ I remember my apartment days so fondly now. If it was broken, I called a number and it was magically fixed while I was away at work. After my year lease, I could leave and never hear of the place again. I didn't have a colossal mortgage that feels, on some days, like an albatross around my neck. Sure, I couldn't paint, but that seems pretty small now. So, I guess that I will go back to work tomorrow and probably the next day and hope that we can escape our Albuquerque Haunted Houses someday soon. ********************************************************************************