It’s gone

My house has been officially sold … contracts were exchanged on Friday night.

Argh!

Well, there’s a cooling off period, so I’m not rushing out and putting a deposit on my dream apartment just yet. Not that my dream apartment is on the market anyway, but more about that later …

It was a bit of a lonely moment when I got the news that the buyers had signed on the dotted line. It was just me and the dogs and a glass of Unexpected Guest Pink Gin & Soda. My lip trembled a teeny bit.

Selling my house felt a bit like getting pregnant with the eldest. I didn’t expect it to happen on my very first try.

I’d given myself a deadline of age 35 to make up my mind about having kids. I hadn’t entirely decided I was maternal, but it chucked the contraception and six weeks later the nausea kicked in. I did a pregnancy test in the toilets at ACP Magazines and stared in shock —and a little horror – at the positive result.

I thought there would be a bit of time for me to get comfortable and with the idea. It wasn’t supposed to happen straight away (and by my calculations fertilisation literally happened on first attempt).

The same thing goes for selling my house.

Having it happen after just one inspection was terrifying, especially when it came in the same week as starting a new job. So much big stuff in such a short period of time!

When the real estate agent called me and asked if I was interested in an off-market sale, I plucked my ideal price out of my head and told him I wasn’t mucking around with offers under it.

My price was my price.

He agreed and signed me up to one-week contract.

I nearly killed myself – and DD – getting the house ready for the open house.

And one of the people who inspected it agreed to my price a few hours afterwards.

It took another week to sort out all the bits and bobs, but we exchanged on Friday night.

Over the course of the week I was soooooo strung out and in knots and had so many second thoughts. But by the time they’d paid for a building inspection and asked if they could have the egg chair that’s hanging on the back deck it felt a bit late to change my mind.

Signing my electronic signature on the contract brought a teeny weeny tear to my eye. I was sitting alone on Friday night as I scanned the contract with a pink gin and soda in hand, one kid at a party, the other at skipping training. Both of them are yearning to be independent and travel or have a place of their own. But not quite yet, due to pesky things like the HSC and no money.

The kids don’t want to move from this place, they want me to wait until they are ready to spread their wings. And I feel terrible about taking away the backyard from the dogs.

But in the two years between being nastily retrenched and becoming gainfully employed again, the house felt like a mill stone around my neck.

I just kept falling deeper into debt, the dogs were the only ones who used the backyard and the upkeep of a four-bedroom house and a big mortgage was overwhelming.

I wanted out. I wanted a simpler, cheaper life.

The only problem is that I’ve sold at a time when there is nothing to buy. Literally nothing came onto the market in my price range last week.

Luckily there were a few places to check out with my posse on Saturday – after our walk my friends Emily and Fee and DD spent four hours hooning around.

I fell totally in love with a two-storey penthouse in North Sydney, but realised it would not be practical for dog sitting if I wanted to go away, as it only had a small, enclosed “wintergarden” as its balcony. But oooooh it was soooooooo nice. It even had a “sky lounge” in the building for parties …