Who said moving house would be easy? In the past 48 hours of our house-buying saga:

1. Appraisal report comes in (several days late) severely undervalue, causing us to scramble in last-minute negotiations for our new house. We end up buying the house for less money overall yet paying more on our monthly mortgage, because banks.
2. Negotiations concluded, the updated sale price has to be returned by the same appraisal company that borked us a few days ago. We are still waiting, and if past is prologue, we will wait for a few more days just because.
3. Something about a fridge. Apparently a box was checked on a form somewhere in somebody’s basement and now the fridge is a major issue. The sellers write out a bill of sale to sell us the fridge for zero dollars. This resolves the issue. Because banks.
4. Thanks to the holidays and all kinds of people taking extra days off, documents can only be submitted by Monday. And thanks to government knowing better than we possibly could, we have to take three additional days to “think it over” once those documents are in, even though we are ready to sign and have been ready to sign for four weeks. Because banks.
5. The lender financing the purchase of our current home has a last-minute issue crop up that requires immediate attention and a several-days delay. (Because banks.) Our agent finds this out from the closing attorney because our buyer’s agent for some reason doesn’t think this is useful information for us to have.
6. The lenders (both ours and our buyers) refuse to commit to dates and what they’ll be able to get done when, leaving the rest of us (those with their entire lives in boxes and moving trucks) in limbo and unable to even reschedule the myriad of services and family help and pet boarding and all of the rest of it.