What the hell, Chicago?  What is up with the muggy-ass, bathwater-warm, sticky humid unpleasantness?  What is up with the daily rainstorms?  The never dry-ness?

I ask because there is some sort of MILDEW INFESTATION in my washing machine and all I really want to do is throw open all the windows and air this place the fuck out, but since it’s pretty much mildewy and humid outside, too, I really don’t see that helping.

I promise we are clean people.  I have no idea what has caused my washing machine to smell irreparably of funk.  Can anyone give me a suggestion as to what to do about it? It’s times like these I wish we still had a landlord to call to fix stuff.

There are two schools of thought on packing for a move:

The Pseudo School: shove all your crap into boxes roughly organized by room, working as quickly as possible to minimize the agony of packing. Throw all the boxes into the truck. Move.

The John School: Pick up each item to be packed. Turn it over lovingly in your hands. Contemplate the best box in which to place it, taking into account the size, shape, weight, and astrological sign of the object in question. Wrap it in foam. Place it in a box. Discuss with Pseudo whether the selected box is the correct choice. Remove it. Place it in a different box. Commend yourself on excellent box selection. Tell Pseudo the object has found its One True Box. Once all objects are in boxes, diagram layout of moving truck to plan where in the truck each piece of furniture and box should go. Diagram layout of new house and plan where each object will find its new home. Attempt to engage Pseudo in a debate about the dimensions of the new house and whether, in her estimation, particular pieces of furniture will fit in particular spaces. Ignore her when she starts to weep in frustration because she is the World’s Worst Estimator. Congratulate yourself on excellent diagramming skills. Debate best box in which to pack said diagram of new house, but decide really it’s better to keep it in your wallet so that it’s at the ready when needed. Move.

So packing’s going well, clearly.

We spent last weekend going to six (six! no joke!) different office supply stores in an effort to buy a filing cabinet that was actually in stock. I had a really long post typed about the anguished process of trying to just buy a freaking filing cabinet, for crying out loud, but it was so boring it made me want to cry, so I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that after finally getting one, we managed to get rid of about 40 pounds of old papers, which felt like a tremendous accomplishment. At the end of a major filing project, though, all you’re left with is a boring-looking filing cabinet- there’s no obvious external sign of your hard work. It’s kind of a let down.

We move in three days. Wish us luck.

Our mortgage application forms came through, and as John and I were signing our life away on approximately 432 documents, I happened to glance down at the one called “asset summary,” which said:

Borrower one assumed monthly salary (John): [redacted]

Borrower two assumed monthly salary (Pseudo): $1

Well, geez, I knew public interest work isn’t lucrative, but a dollar a month? So glad to see the bank has so much faith in my ability to contribute financially to this marriage.

If you wake up on a Monday morning and every fiber of your body is telling you to just stay home, you should probably listen, or otherwise you might end up trying your hardest to look nonchalant while you sob at the end of the hallway in the law school after a (different from last time! but equally psycho!) real estate agent threatens to sue you. Good times. So yeah, the charm of looking for a condo has definitely worn off.

My dad works in real estate and loves it.  Loves.  When I was interviewing with law firms for summer jobs, they always wanted to know what kind of law I wanted to practice, and since both “child advocacy” and “public housing” were unlikely to get me called back, I often said “well, my father works in real estate and I’ve always found it fascinating.“  Which, you know, is kind of a lie.

But now that we’re in the process of actually trying to buy a condo (we’ve made an offer!  fingers crossed!) I’m sort of starting to see the human drama side of real estate that’s giving me a whole new perspective.

The condo we are trying to buy is a beautifully rehabbed apartment in a vintage building, which we like a lot.  It has two smallish bedrooms and one bathroom, which makes it smaller than a lot of places on the market.  It has a nice fridge, and a cool den, and the bathroom has a really cool sink in it.  Pro.  It has no parking space.  Con.  It  has a gas range.  Pro.  It is dramatically overpriced for the softening real estate market.  Con.

We went to look at it over the weekend and decided we really liked it.  We poked around the various rooms, whispering furtively to each other where in this place we could put the furniture in our current place, plotting small home improvement projects, sneaking peeks at the other people entering or exiting the building to get a sense of who our neighbors might be.  We went home and talked about it, talked in circles, and decided to go back and look again.

My dad, (who works in real estate, remember,) offered to let us use a guy who works for him who has a residential real estate license as our buyer’s agent.  Excellent!  No need to interview agents!  Swell!  So we called the seller’s agent and told her we’d like to come by and see it again.  She was anxious to have us back.  The house has been on the market for over a month with no offers.  The sellers had recently reduced their price because there were no offers (if we think it’s dramatically overpriced now, it was really overpriced when they were asking $20K more.)  They seem nervous about this whole “no offers” thing.

So we walk back into the apartment for visit number 2, and the seller’s agent says “so welcome back, and I brought some more information for you about the apartment, and also this is going to be a dual agency deal with me representing both sides and I also brought the condo association’s annual report from 2006…”

Um, excuse me?  What was that part you just tried to sneak in there?  This is going to be a dual agency deal with me representing both sides?  Oh no.  I don’t think so.  My almost-lawyer self started to get my back up and I was about to say something really snippy (because, um hello, ETHICAL VIOLATION, there needs to be knowledgeable consent to dual agency oh my god did you seriously think you were just going to sneak that in there you sneaky wench?) when John, rational being that he is, saw me about to blow my top and beat me to it, saying “actually, we’re represented by our own agent.”

“Oh,” she said.  “Well, he’s going to have to contact me about the commission.”

“Of course,” said John.

Can you guess where this is going?  Our agent called her and proposed the standard 50-50 split, which is the default rule in Illinois, and she won’t do it.  Because she claims that between the first time we saw the place and the second time we saw it (a grand total of 22 hours,) she was acting on our behalf as our agent (without our knowledge or consent, BTW,) and so she is entitled to a larger percentage.   And she suggested that maybe she would delay presenting our offer to the seller until she gets her way on the commission.

I would really really really like to see the look on the current owner’s face if we knocked on their door and said “hey!  We want to buy your apartment!  And we put in an offer!  But your agent is quibbling with our agent over a quarter of a percent of the commission, so she isn’t showing you the offer.  Did you know that?”  Because I have a hunch that they are more interested in, I don’t know, selling their condo then in making sure their broker gets the bigger piece of the pie.  Just a guess.

So it turns out I was kind of right- real estate is fascinating- especially when you’re working with crazy people!