Pirkle Truck or... Purple Truck?

After my round of screw ups I wrote about nearly two weeks ago, I've only had one more big one that had the potential to be life threatening crazy.  Lots of small stuff, but thankfully only this one last biggie!

Picture by Linda Deal on http://fineartamerica.com/

Coming home from my therapist's office right after we'd talked about the dog fight and the knife I saw a purple semi truck and found it so distracting that I started turning the steering wheel to drive head on into it...  My mind wasn't, however, completely blank like in the previous incidents.  I was remembering Myrtle Olsen and a phone conversation I overheard, anyway I heard her side of it, at the drive-in restaurant she owned in Shelley, ID when I was a kid.  Now this was back in the days before everyone carried cell phones and trucking companies depended on GPS tracking to know where their trucks (and drivers) were at every possible second... and a dispatcher for Pirkle Transport had called Olsen's Drive-In, knowing that the driver she was trying to reach with an urgent message about his load, frequently stopped there.  For at least half an hour Mrs. Olsen, getting ever more frustrated and angry at the disruption, insisted there was no purple truck parked outside.

Simple misunderstanding, I'm sure.  "Pirkle truck" does sound very much like "purple truck."

But still... that little flash of memory had me headed toward plowing right through his grill.  And that was disturbing enough that I had to pull off on the next road and get myself together to finish driving home.  I was truly scared that my mindlessness was going to cause real bodily harm, or even death, to someone.  Maybe even me.

These are the kind of things that make driving exhausting!  I feel like I have to keep an iron grip on the steering wheel and have a constant stream of self-talk reminding me to keep my eyes on the road and not on trees, junk, road kill, advertising signs or whatever might be off to the side.

My therapist, his name is Tom and I guess I should start calling him that because it's easier to type and... it is his name... Tom thinks I'm still over-thinking about mindlessly letting the dogs out in the yard together and causing that huge bloody fight and that's making me read too much into a simple mistake.  He said more experiences that turn out ok along with time and self-permission to simmer down the hyper-vigilance about it will show me that it's ok to forgive, forget and move on with life.  I hope so!  It would be so nice for something to feel normal and right again.

The Waiting Game

Job, the dude in the Bible who contended with plagues and crickets and boils and such without losing his faith in God, set an impossibly high standard of faithfulness.  I simply do not have that kind of patience dealing with all the trials the Lord saw fit to happen in his life.  Oftentimes I wonder if I have the patience to deal with the trials the Lord sees fit to have happen in my life.

Waiting, for example.

Waiting on anything important makes me anxious.  The incessant hurry up and wait feeling when you are buying (or selling) a house is a very stressful thing.  It is for me, anyway.  And it is for most people I've talked to.  I think it feels like such a terrible trial because your fate is in someone else's hands.  We all have an inner control freak that screams to determine our own destiny and it's hard to be forced to sit back and let someone else make decisions that can change your life in drastic ways.  You can make yourself a little crazy worrying about it.

Is this really the house I want to live in for the next umpteen years?  Is the funding going to be ok?  (i.e. Do we have enough cash?  Or, more often, will our mortgage loan be approved?)  Is the seller going to accept our offer?  Or counter offer to get repairs done?  Is the appraisal going to come in where we expected it?

These are the kinds of questions that have been keeping me awake at night.

A lot of people who don't even know you or care about you get to make decisions about your life.  Sellers, realtors, mortgage officers, inspectors, contractors and sometimes other people decide what happens and when.  And to them it's just business.  But to you, it's personal.  It's your future they're messing with.  And while you want to get down to the fun parts of owning a new house like picking paint colors and buying fluffy new bath towels, you can't.

You have to wait.

Have I mentioned before that waiting stresses me out?

It does.

And my body's reaction to stress is a near constant stream of tears.

And that freaks out everyone around me.

Then I feel even more stressed.

And cry some more.

Photo credit:  http://xaxor.com/photography/28239-heartbreaking-
sad-eyes-a-tears-photography.html

I really hate that I can't cry like a movie star all pretty and dainty as a single tear makes it way, with heart-wrenching mournful slowness and awesome background lighting, down a perfectly made-up face.  But, oh no, God did not see fit to make me a pretty crier.  My kind of crying has to be as big and clumsy as the rest of me.  Just a couple of tears and for the rest of the day it's.... eyelids swollen shut, hopelessly plugged nose, raspy nasal cartoon voice, blotchy skin and my eyes are so red people avoid me thinking I have a contagious disease.

All of this stress is just from being on the buyer side of the transaction.  I'm also selling a house.  Being the seller is just as stressful, maybe even a little more so, because everything the buyer asks for is taking money out of your pocket.  And... that feels a little overly personal, too.  Between the two, I am a complete and utter emotional mess.

The current issue on the waiting game is our counter offer back to the seller on the house Derek and I want to buy here in Georgia based on the results of our inspection.  We're asking to have the long list of punch out items his handyman hasn't yet completed on repairs that were already in progress done, service the ancient heater and make sure the chimney is safe and in good repair.  That's far from everything the house needs but we felt like it was reasonable to ask for a place that's structurally sound with safely functioning mechanical systems.  We're not asking for the world, just to move into a place that's safe to live.  So far he's agreed verbally but wants to have the chimney assessed before making a written commitment.  It was only fair to give him a few days to do that, because depending on the problem costs could run from a few hundred dollars to several thousand, so we won't know for sure until Tuesday.

If you've never seen an inspection report before and would like to know what you get for your money, here's a link to a sample report from our inspector's website.  See how it's helpful to hire an expert to uncover hidden problems and get a thorough understanding of all the systems in your house?  It's a good investment!