Absent. . .

I haven't written anything for the last 2 days because we're in a desperate search for a house. We finally sold our house, after 3 summers of trying, and now that it's sold we have nowhere to go. This is causing us some serious anxiety. Unfortunately for us, the housing market where we live (the windswept boonies of North Dakota) has not suffered the same fate as the rest of the country, (at least in the cities...in small towns the houses sit collecting dust as the tumbleweeds fly by) and houses are still overpriced and selling before they even make it to the MLS. There are no rentals and no for-sale-by-owner.

We have to be out of this house by December 12th. I can hear the clock ticking.

We made an offer on a house today which the seller bought 2 years ago and is now selling with an asking price of 20,000 more than they bought it for. They rejected our offer because we offered them a mere 2000 under their asking price. They won't budge a dime. That pissed me off. Unfortunately, it's still the most reasonably priced house in our price range. Dang.

Our realtor told us she could get us a great rate at one of the hotels in town. So where do we put everything we own while we're living in a hotel? Park the U-Haul in the parking lot and stare at it from the hotel window? I don't think so.

So tomorrow we're going to look at another house we can't really afford, and a possible rental that is a mere yards from the major north-south highway in the state (there's one major north-south highway and one major east-west highway in ND...it's a simple state), and 13 miles south of the city, where we really wanted to move in the first place.

On top of all that, if we ever find a place to live, we'll be moving right in the middle of finals week.

Can anyone say nuclear-event-stress-meltdown?