Well, I got a VM from my lawyer in New York (note to all you future Donald Trumps: you need a lawyer to buy a house in New York. Apparently, with good reason, too). It seems that if the seller or buyer's lawyer rejects the contract for any reason, the sale contract is void. So I can get my earnest money back but nothing else (ie, cost of transportation, house value assessment, etc.). This is as they say, "the cost of doing business". Well, I plan to ask for it back but no law requires them to reimburse me for it. It's not that much but it's the principle of the thing, really. Well, onward and upward! This week-end's trip to Rochacha will be, then, to find a new house.

In the mean time I have had to call my various contractors and tell them next week's Grand Plans are a total bust. This they are not happy about but it does happen a lot, apparently. Maybe however if I can fanagle my way into a temporary housing situation (my five cats are mere complicator in this fashion; they are after all, very well-behaved!), I can still get this house on the market by mid-July. According to my realtor down here, August is a bad month for real estate in general, though here in the DC area, the scene is more forgiving (demand is the mother of forgiveness, as an economist might say). So in the mean time I am still packing and have a boatload of trash and stuff to move out onto the curb for pickup tomorrow. I did call the trash haulers and warned them of the mountain of garbage I would have in front of my place but they were surprisingly blase about it. We'll see how blase they are when they need three trucks just to do this one place! :)

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