The Great Fort Myers House
Closing Quest!
April 2006
Tuesday, 25 April 2006
Day 9 - CLOSING DAY!
I survived!
I had to sign a bazillion and six papers, and then they gave me my garage door
clickers and my keys.
I skedaddled over to my house, and the driveway was still blocked with a
stanchion of some sort. My realtor dude told me they do that so that the
homeowner is the first to drive on the pavers. I'm not sure if I believe that,
but since I was driving a rental, I felt that the RAV should have the honor of
being the first car on the pavers, when I finally "come home", so I parked in
the street instead.
The front door was open! Inside, a carpenter dude was finishing up replacing
the scratched cabinet doors. He was making quite a racket, and I had not had a
smoke since 11:45 am (it was now 2:00 PM), so I went to the lanai, had a smoke,
and called my mother to let her know that the deed was done.
My mother really knows how to spoil a moment. I should have known better than
to call her first. She did congratulate me, but also chose this time to tell
me that now that I am leaving the state, I have to visit the cemetery and pay
homage to the dead ancestors. "But Mother," I said, trying to sound
reasonable. "THEY'RE NOT THERE!" She knows I don't do
cemeteries. I do them
the day of the burial, and that's it for me. She's got this whole culture of
planting basil and begonias on the graves of the folks who "came over on the
boat" from Italy, and "visiting", and I'm just not right with it, and she KNOWS
it. My father is NOT in that grave. He's in my heart. We very nearly had an
argument, but I wasn't going to let her spoil my moment, and quickly got her off
that kick. Sheesh.
So, while I was out there, the cabinet man left via the front door, and I
noticed that the French doors from the master bedroom to the lanai reacted.
They kinda puffed out and then back in again. Huh, a wind tunnel draft through
the house, I guess - but the doors should not do that! I went inside and tried
to find some sort of bolt that holds one door, and then you close the other, but
could not find one. So I called my customer care dude and left a message to
come over and take a look.
Then I threw in the inaugural load of laundry, and peed in my OTHER toilet.
By this time, I was ravenous, as the thought of anything other than coffee this
morning made me want to hurl
So I went up to Publix (there's a road in the development that leads straight to
their parking lot) and bought a salad and a croissant and a Pepsi (couldn't find
any iced tea that was already cold) and some paper towels and toilet paper
(running dangerously low on the purse Kleenex, what with all this baptizing of
toilets).
Came back, ate, whipped out my trusty tape measure, and started to write down
wall dimensions so I can figure out where to place my furniture. Switched the
wash, and called to make an appointment with the Budget Blinds dude for
tomorrow, so he can measure the windows and the French doors and give me an
estimate. I told the blind dude that Alan referred me, and he remembered him.
(btw, don't you just love it that window treatments are done by a blind dude?
I crack myself up, sometimes.)
The doorbell rang, which startled me. It was the first time my doorbell rang!
It was a guy who was sent over to check out the French doors. He showed me the
sooper sekret location of the bolt for one door, and voila - no more wind tunnel
disturbances. Actually, it wasn't so sooper sekret, I guess, but since I've
never had modern French doors before, I didn't know where to look. I expected
to see a visible bolt of some sort, but it was on the part of the door that
meets the other door, and up high above eye level, so I didn't see it.
I then went around the whole house and tried my keys in all the locks. Here's a
neat thing - the builder's keys work until the first time the homeowner uses the
key. Putting the homeowner's key into the lock releases a tumbler inside,
making the builder's key not work any more. So now, no one can get into my
house except for me. I had held off on that, in case I wasn't there when they
came to look at the French door problem-that-wasn't-a-problem.
When I go there tomorrow to meet the blind dude, I will read the manual on how to set the house alarm. Right now, it just
beeps softly when someone goes in/out a door, on about a three second delay. I
want to know what's up with that!
Tomorrow, I will also try to figure out what the mystery key is for. It doesn't
go to any of the doors, so I'm figuring there's something outside or in the
garage that it goes to - maybe the box with the sprinkler controls?
So finally the wash was done, and I folded it up and took it with me, which was
kinda dumb - I'm leaving on Thursday, it's not warm enough up north for shorts
and tanks yet, so why should I schlep it back to Long Island? I think I will
make a pit-stop there before the airport on Thursday, and take home a lighter
suitcase.
I drove back to the island, changed my clothes, and met the low tide on the
beach in front of my hotel. Found some pretty things, including a large-ish
moon snail in excellent condition, which got me really excited - so often, you
can tell they were really pretty, but they are kinda smashed up.
The beach was very
different today. The low tide was really LOW, and Wispy Nanny had beached
herself again. Yesterday, there had been a bunch of teeny tiny stuff at the tide
line, and I got a lot of neat miniatures. Today, the teeny tiny stuff was just
above where Wispy Nanny had beached herself, and she was also hovering over a
huge tidal pool, where you could see clam holes spouting intermittently between
Nanny wisps.
The way I found the moon snail was by using my net-on-a-stick to move Nanny out
of the way in the tidal pool. I found a couple of neat apple murex, too - one of
them was about the color of the blue-green parts of my backsplash, which is sort
of unusual, and the other was candy cane pink. However, it was too much like
work to keep doing the Nanny sweep, so I basically stuck with the teeny tiny
stuff as I made my way west along the beach.
On the return trip east, I was able to walk in the water as the tide was coming
in, pushing Nanny up onto the beach, and found some more cockles that way.
I'm sorry I have not taken any photos of my shells this trip. It has been pretty
hectic. Maybe tomorrow I'll just dump them on a towel on the bed, not all neatly
laid out or anything, and take several shots on high resolution so y'all can go
cyber-shelling.
So, that was my exciting day of closing. I guess I should get a new ticker for
the day of I see my piano again!