House closing saga

I'll not get into all the gory details, but the house closing has gone berserk.

The first act was the comedy of "Paint the House." This happened when our lender sent an appraiser out to the house one week before closing. She did the appraisal, which fortunately came out higher than our purchase price. However, she said she would not sign off on closing until our heroes painted the cracking paint. Enclosed in the package was a photo of cracked paint on the front porch and instructions to "sand, prime, and paint" this area. We also learn that hiring a painter will cost us a couple hundred dollars and require getting bids. With only a week to go, there is no time for a bidding process, so Kung Fu Knitter asks if she can paint, and is granted permission. She arrives at the house to discover that she must repaint two large railings on the porch and the outside of all the windows. Thank goodness there is no second floor. So she bravely sands off the peeling paint from all these areas, applies two coats of primer, and puts on one coat of paint. It takes two afternoons. The heroes let the loan officer know that the painting is done.

Now for "Re-Re-Appraisal." In this act, the appraiser appears to hold up the house closing. Apparently she did not get out to the house for her Friday appointment until late Monday, two days before closing. On Tuesday it is discovered that she will not sign off on the closing because chips of paint were left in the grass. Now, it's late in the day and the young couple is supposed to be at the Rabbi's for a Purim dinner that night. They can't go over there on a paint chip hunt, so the wonderful realtor swoops in and does it. Wednesday, the day of closing, the appraiser is sent back to the property, finds a lack of paint chips, and signs off. But it's too late. Everyone is irate, but our loan officer assures everyone that we'll close the next day. 2pm.

During intermission, the Kung-Fu knitter receives a request for bids on new appliances from the loan officer. Oh yeah, he forgot to tell anyone about about that. So Kung Fu Knitter flies around Maryland near the speed of light gathering and faxing said bids.

In the third act our heroes, the Knitter and Amazing E, are swept away to a place where the laws of time do not apply. The act opens Wednesday night when the loan officer says that he's working late and sending off the paperwork for closing the next day. According to him, everything is"clear to close." When he's contacted on Thursday morning to verify that he'd send off the package, he seems to reply in the affirmative. He has done everything that he has to to get to the settlement. It is at this point that time stops moving linearly. This odd phenomenon is first detected when the Amazing E receives a message that the title company does not have the loan officer's package. But he sent it already, right? Hmm. Someone calls said officer, and asks "WTF? We thought you said it was sent." He replies with something like "Well, yeah. But I can't do it now. Our system locks me out after noon for sending the papers." Someone's clock reads 11:55. Kung Fu Knitter becomes dizzy from the temporal dissonance and begins to sew furiously, almost as a nervous tick. The loan officer continues, "We never could have closed today. Government form A$&W!P* is not filled out. That will take at least two business days for all parties (including him) to look at and sign off on." It's not as if he didn't know about that form before time went out of whack, but in the great whirlwind of time it will hold up the closing until Tuesday if we ever return to the normal spacetime continuum. As the act closes, a great shout of disbelief is heard all over Maryland, this one louder than the one heard after the paint chip thing.

Seeing as how time is all messed up, we are assured that act five is written before act four, and has a happy ending with the young couple happy in their house. It's just thatno one knows at what point the final act will be revealed by the universe. It has happened, is constantly in progress, and has not yet come to pass.

In the fourth act, the heroes sit on their hands. They are not aware of the passage of time, and wonder if they will regain sensibility like Rip Van Winkle, several decades older. Or perhaps they will be returned to a time before they met. While they cannot directly observe the passage of time, they see signs that it's moving forward for others. For example, Kung Fu Knitter just received an email from the Rabbi and the Chabad house informing her that Shabbat is coming soon and that she should light the candles at 6:54 this evening.

So they sit, and wait, and wonder at what moment "Tuesday" will arrive.