The Great House Hunt of 2022

With Darwin working in Stockbridge (over an hour away) and me working in Wherever (20 minutes away), it became clear we'd have to move.

Didn't we just do this?

Actually, we're kind of happy to do it. The condo on the lake is beautiful, but the neighbors are bigots. (We've even gotten the "I'm not prejudiced. One of my family members is gay" speech from an HOA member who fought against our Pride flag.) Also, Waterford isn't a nice place to live. We've encountered a fair amount of bigotry and prejudice here, and unless you're spending money, the residents are ... unpleasant to be around. Most of the town supported--and continues to support--Trump. And guns. They love their guns in Waterford.

When we were looking for a place to live, Darwin pointed out a couple of towns that were good location-wise, but also badly conservative. I said, "I'm tired of living in a place where I have to lead the Pride parade. I want to live in a place that has an established gay community, and where I don't have to fight all the time, or worry someone will try to hit me with a brick if I hold my husband's hand in public. I've been the neighborhood LGBT ambassador for decades. I'm done now." And Darwin agreed.

We settled on Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti Township (not the city--Darwin won't live there). It's a 45-minute commute for both of us from there, more or less, and it's much more liberal and accepting than bigoted, trashy Waterford. 

We set about house-hunting with Tai Chou, an agent from Ann Arbor. (If you're looking for a house in that area, get hold of him!) Unfortunately, we got caught in the seller's market. Houses were going fast. More than once, we saw a house and put in an offer, only to learn we had five competing offers. One seller said he wanted an escalation clause in every offer; if someone made a higher offer, the clause would automatically put in a offer that was even higher, until all the buyers had reached their limit. We declined to put one in, the house sold anyway. Another house we saw less than two hours after it had officially gone on the market. We told our realtor to put in an offer, and he learned the house already had seven competing offers. In less than two hours. 

What's happening, of course, is that corporations and other groups are buying houses as investments. You can buy a house for $300,000, let it sit empty for a year, and re-sell it for $330,000. That's a 10% return on investment, a huge amount. These are where many of the sight-unseen offers are coming from.

Anyway, we finally found a house we liked and for which the seller accepted our offer. It's in Ypsi Township, and the location is wonderful. It's only a 10-minute drive to town, 15 minutes to a hospital. (That's important to us.) It's at the edge of a rural area, so I can ride my bike in the country, away from traffic. It's quite large, actually. Bigger than the condo. I know we were planning to downsize, but after living two years in a smaller space, we discovered we didn't really like it much. I want a garage and a basement for storage. Darwin wants dedicated spaces for work, exercise, and recreation. We both want our own yard, and neither of us wants an HOA ever again. (The house has a neighborhood HOA that mostly exists to maintain the road. We didn't see any rules or regs about what you can do outside your own house.) The en suite bathroom is a wonder. You can fight an entire football team in the shower! So we're happy with this house, even though it's a bit more expensive than the condo.

We close on June 13 and move in on June 18. Woo hoo!
 

The Condo Sale Debacle--With Happily Ever After

We put our condominium on the market. Condos sell slower than houses, even in this market, but after a week, we got a good offer. Yay! The buyer was a woman who was a first-time owner, and who currently lived in an apartment.

But then the buyer's mother stepped in. We heard through the realtors that Mom said it was ridiculous to pay 5.5% (the then-going rate) for a mortgage. Mom said she would buy the condo for cash and sell it to her daughter on a land contract to save on the interest. Would we be willing to cancel the daughter's offer and accept the Mom's instead?

We were fine with that. A cash offer? We're in!

A couple weeks later, all the Is and Ts had been crossed and dotted. All agreements and contracts were signed. We just needed a closing date.

Then our realtor called us with the news that Mom and daughter had gotten into a major fight, and now Mom didn't want to buy the condo for Daughter anymore. She was backing out.

The hell?

A great deal of back and forth ensued. Would we be willing to convert the cash offer to a mortgage offer from daughter? No. Why would we give up a cash offer for a mortgage offer, especially if we didn't know if Daughter would pass a credit check? Mom kept trying to drag Daughter into it, and we kept pointing out that Daughter was not officially involved. Mom was the buyer. Her relationship with Daughter, financial or emotional, had no bearing on the contract she had signed.

In the end, she still refused to buy the condo. Fortunately, there was a $5,000 earnest money deposit, which we got to keep. When it came time for us to receive the money, we learned Mom had fired her real estate agency and, it turned out, the agency hadn't properly collected and cashed her EMD--and now she was refusing to pay it. Oops. But not our problem. The agency would have to pay us the money and try to extract it from her on their own.

This they did, and we got the check. Cool!

We put the condo back on the market and two days later, we had another buyer. A better one. So there!

Shoulder Surgery 20 (Peaks and Valleys)

I've avoided this topic for a while, partly because it's difficult to handle and partly because I've been dratted busy. But I need to catch up.

Last time I wrote, I'd been searching for a pain specialist to see if anything else could be done. I finally found one and went in to consult with him. The doctor, who was startlingly good-looking in an Abercrombie & Fitch kind of way, basically told me there wasn't much he could do. When I told him the meds I had didn't take the pain away; they only made me high enough that I didn't care, he laughed a little and said that's basically how all painkillers work. He did prescribe a topical agent, a hyped-up version of Aspercreme. I tried it as directed, but it didn't seem to help.

By now, my shoulder ached or actively hurt a lot, nearly continuously. I was supposed to have a regular follow-up appointment with the surgeon in several weeks, but I moved it up so I could talk to him about it.

When I arrived at the doctor's office for that meeting, a numb lassitude came over me. I sat in the waiting room with my head hanging. I didn't have the energy even to look at my phone. I recognized it as a heavier version of the shutdown that always came over me when I went in for physical therapy and a reaction to the shitty treatment that the anesthesiologist and the nurses gave me.

The nurse called me in, and I trudged into the examination room. I tried to shake off the lassitude so I could concentrate, but ... not so easy. I muttered one-word answers to her questions and waited for the doctor to show up. He breezed into the room as he always does and I managed to rouse myself enough to explain to him that I was still in enough pain to keep me awake at night, and that I had to take heavy-duty painkillers two or three times a week.

He ran an examination (push this way, pull that way, move this other way), and said I shouldn't be in pain, so he wanted an MRI. It was either that, or make an incision for a camera to look around. Naturally, I opted for the MRI. The doctor told me not to do further physical therapy and to avoid using my arm at home for at least a week, then resume "gentle" exercise.

I scheduled the MRI. Their next appointment was almost two weeks away, and afterward, it would be another four days before an appointment with the doctor to evaluate it. That was a long time to wait to find out if I would need more surgery. There was no way I'd let anyone at that clinic touch me again. If the doctor recommended more surgery, I would quickly find someone else. I was only staying at this place because I was moving soon and I didn't want to transfer my care twice in a short time. But more surgery from this place? Not in a hundred thousand years.

Later at home, I realized I had no idea what the doctor meant by "gentle exercise." Easy, no-strain lifting? A little strain? Stretching? Could I run? I had no idea. What one person sees as "gentle," another sees as "heavy." To me, a "gentle" run would be 40 minutes at level four on my treadmill, but to someone who doesn't jog, that would be "heavy." I finally elected to do just stretching exercises, nothing more.

The MRI appointment finally arrived, and the four days afterward dragged. I became more and more afraid I was going to need more surgery. I was even trying to figure out when would be the best time--before school started or after? Where would I find a surgeon? How would I handle the pain?

At last, the next doctor's appointment arrived. The same lassitude settled on me as I walked through the door. It was like walking through mud. Once again, the doctor breezed into the exam room and said he'd seen the MRI. "It's hard to tell for absolute certain from an MRI," he said, "but there's nothing in there that makes me say you need more surgery."

Relief washed away some of the lassitude, and this let me wake up enough to ask more pointed questions:

"Why does it still hurt so much?" It's just that way for some people. Did I need a scrip for more meds? I did not.

"When will the pain stop?" It can take up to a year to fully recover from the surgery.

"What do I do from here?" Continue gentle exercise only.

"What does 'gentle exercise' mean?" (This was the key one, and I wrote it down so I'd remember to ask it. That's depression for you.) Lifting no more than 10 pounds in front and aside. No restrictions on bicep lifting. Absolutely no overhead lifting whatsoever. Stretching is good.

"How long will it take to restore my full range of motion? I can move my arm up behind my back a lot farther than most people, but I'm hyper-flexive, and I'm nowhere near where I was pre-surgery." It can take up to a year to recover.

Okay, then.

The abusive anesthesiologist and unprofessional, foul-mouthed nurses aside, I still feel like I wasn't fully informed going into this. You hear "non-invasive" and "arthroscopic" and you think "recovery in a few weeks," not "probable agony for weeks that may or may not die down" and "physical therapy for months on end." Knowing this wouldn't have changed the results of the surgery, but it would have changed my mindset. I would have been able to prepare myself mentally for this, change my schedule, ready myself. I never got that chance because the surgeon wasn't very communicative from the outset. He does this all the time, so he knows all this stuff, and why don't I, right?  This contributes to me feeling the need to shut down when I go in to the office, and I'm glad I won't be going back soon.