Fall                                                                                 Samain Moon

Mover. Selected. Home Insurance. Selected. Appraisal. Done. Sleep. Disrupted. 58 pages of documents collated and faxed in addition to the 30+ we sent out on Monday. Done. Whole forests must shudder each time a realtor makes a deal.

A list of 25 things that need to get done between now and move in. Examples: Inside work list. Paint bid. Carpet bid. Pick a moving date. Get specific house measurements. Buy washer/dryer. Contract for perimeter fence. Estate lawyers for Colorado estate law. Medical insurance in Colorado. Medical records to Colorado. Wireless setup. Utilities transferred. And on. and on. and. on.

Due to early rising to complete more document discovery, collation and transmittal both Kate and I are a little (ok, a lot) fried. Sleep deprived and wrestling with detail overload. I don’t feel overwhelmed, but I am pretty whelmed.

This two weeks will probably be the most intense of the entire process if our mortgage application is accepted. Here’s an example from the Hadean realm of the underwriter. When I sent them a copy of our IRA holdings and our Vanguard holdings, I did not print the second page. I never do to save paper. But, if it says page 1 of 2, the underwriter has to see the second page. Even though it contains nothing. So, reprint. Resend.

How this process ever got accomplished before fax and e-mail, I’ll never know. It must have required logistical expertise of military strength. In the early 1980’s I was involved in a major settlement with the Keith Heller folks. They brought you those lovely cement slabs with swatches of colored panels on the West Bank. When the community group with which I worked finalized the deal, we faxed my signature to Washington, D.C. to HUD. This was such a big deal-the faxing-that I have a picture of myself in the act.

Now there’s fax, e-mail, scanning. Document retrieval, sharing online. And electronic signatures. Without all this there is simply no way we could have contemplated finding a house and trying to buy it in a period of three weeks. Which also means, I suppose, that we would not have had this fun, super compressed period we’re in right now. Hmmm.

Fall                                                                                  Falling Leaves Moon

Getting back to a rested state after hyper nights. Wake up in the night and there, flashing before my mind’s eye, not sheep, but possible problems: the underwriter’s crazy pants behavior after almost wrecking our financial system, insurers who might not insure, too much money siphoned out of our cushion for a bear market, altitude sickness, escaping dogs. You get it.

If not problems, then possibilities: a sauna in the new space, perhaps built in above the garage where my workout area will be? A reading room with the fireplace, our two chairs, the small oriental and lamps. Our couch, TV, laundry, bedroom and bath all on one level.

Nights outside looking up at the non-light polluted sky. Working through Ovid and Caesar with a view of Black Mountain across the way.

Or how about all the new work building an extended family with Jon and Jen, Ruth and Gabe, Barb (Jen’s mother.)? Figuring out birthdays and holidays, opportunities to see them all at various times. The not always smooth nature of family life.

Then, too. Those side trips. Staunton State Park is 19 minutes from our front door. Maxwell falls 19 minutes in another direction. Gold mines to explore. Vintage railroads. New places to listen to jazz. New Mexico. Utah. Wyoming. All close.

See how a guy might lose sleep? Still, I need the rest. And I’m very glad to be returning to replenished.

Fall                                                                               Falling Leaves Moon

Whew. Third moving estimate. This one from A-1 moving, found on Angie’s List. Fred seems like a straight up, customer oriented guy. If his price is right, we’ll probably go with him. Refreshing, like our mortgage consultant Valerie Fischer he treated us as adults. Business is easier if everyone does that.

As you come into the Denver airport from the Frontier gates, there is a long exhibit on craft beers. How much Denverites drink. Most in the nation. How many kinds. How brewing works. Actual labels and bar pulls. Some history. It struck me as odd. Then I read an article about cities to which young college educated folks are moving. Denver’s in the top three. What’s one of the things this demographic gravitates toward? Craft beers. Ah.

Now the vibrations of Colorado have begun to invade Minnesota. We’re talking to Colorado bankers, realtors, insurance agents. Family. We’re moving, in our heads, our furniture into 9358 Black Mountain Drive. Considering how to fence the property. Where to keep the dogs at night. The slope has definitely tilted toward Colorado and Minnesota has begun to recede. Not in all ways, and not forever, but it’s receiving less attention now.

Fall                                                                                   Falling Leaves Moon

Second moving estimate today. Third tomorrow. Sent documents to mortgage consultant via fax. Used a bar coded letter that they provided. She couldn’t find them. When I told her we’d used the bar code, she said, “Oh. That puts them directly in electronic docs. I’ll look there.” Things can go astray several different ways.

Down to Sears Outlet to buy a new stainless refrigerator to replace our faithful refrigerator which has worked without incident since we bought it 20 years ago. When considering fashion, functional takes a distant second place. Not for me, but then we won’t be here to see how this works out. A good deal though. A $2,200 refrigerator for about a third of the price.

It’s all moving, all the time. Push, push, push since we’re shooting to close this deal on October 31st. No slack in getting things done. When this is over, if we finish by that date, all this will have been worth it. Right now, in the middle of it, it feels like I’ve descended into a whirlwind of legal documents, decisions needed right now.

And insurance. There’s always insurance. Conifer is in the Colorado red zone, a high risk area for wildfire. So, niche insurance. Which =’s expensive insurance. Have to insurance to close. And so on.

Fall                                                                                              Falling Leaves Moon

It was a quick trip. Out Friday mid-morning, back early Sunday morning. But I got to spend time with a mortgage banker and time with the new house.

When there’s a lot of details to sort out in something, I focus, a form of move-stupid, and become almost affectless, plowing through things I don’t like to do, but things that stand between here and there. Getting all the particulars of a mortgage application sorted out is a steady drip of correct dates, dollar amounts, the right forms not the wrong ones, doing things on a timely basis. That’s an example.

Going through the house and the matters necessary to make it our home. Better, but still preliminary to the desired end result of a living there. In both of these cases it becomes difficult for me to remember, journey before destination.

Been contacting fencing contractors. A top priority for us is dog containment. That’s a sine qua non before we can take our furry friends to the mountains. Boy, are they gonna be surprised.

Checking out the mountain trails, the waterfalls nearby (Maxwell, upper and lower), the Arapaho national forest that starts within two miles of our new house. Driving through the funky mountain town of Evergreen, realizing that we will be living where many people come to relax. Better yet.

More details and faxing and promising and committing tomorrow. There will be a time, perhaps sooner than we imagined, when the move will drop off as a posting category and Colorado will replace it. May it come soon, but not too soon.

Fall                                                                                      Falling Leaves Moon

Back in the  business center, still unrecognizable by my own computer. I’m saving fixing it until I return to Minnesota.

Forgot to mention yesterday the no-fingerprints woman. When my laptop wouldn’t recognize me and I needed to do some work on the mortgage, I called Valerie, our mortgage banker and asked her if I could come to her office. And I did, driving through southern Denver to her office in Greenwood, an Edina close suburb. Gotta love that Garmin.

When I got there, I had two surprises. First, she was a pleasure to work with, the first time I’ve encountered such a person in the Wells Fargo system. Second, when I explained to her that my own computer wouldn’t recognize my face, she said something surprising, “I don’t have any fingerprints.”

? as the spanish say. Her family is “one of 50 in the world” according to her that are born without fingerprints. She showed me her fingertips and sure enough they continue the smoother skin of the more proximal joints.

She has to have a security clearance by the FBI (money-laundering) every six months. They come in and she says, when about to be fingerprinted, “This is not gonna work.” The reply, she says, is always, “Oh. It’ll work.” Then they have to an old fashion manual clearance.

How about that?

Today it’s off to Black Mountain Drive for the inspection. Jon, who recently completed an extensive addition to his own home, will be along to advise me.

Fall                                                                                          Falling Leaves Moon

Writing this in the hotel “business center” because my relatively new Lenovo laptop has a biometric passcode which uses facial recognition. It refuses to recognize me. Frustrating since when I try to enter the password it times out before I can finish. The perfect circle.

Anyhowl.

So I arrived in Denver and ended up spending all afternoon with a mortgage broker. So, I arrived back at the hotel, checked in, took a nap, got up and had some sushi, then decided on a whim to drive out to 9358 Black Mountain Drive. Night had fallen, but I had wanted to drive there straight from the airport but got caught up in the wonders of mortgage  banking software instead.

When I left Denver metro at a mile high the temperature was 57. By the time I reached Black Mountain Drive it was 38. It took 45 minutes to get there, winding up some chicanes, past signs for falling rocks, wildlife and national forests. When I pulled into the driveway, I could only see the house in the headlights, so I got out.

The quiet, even more profound than Andover hit me. I remembered then I’d wanted to to up there at night, for precisely this reason. But I hadn’t counted on the sky, clear and high, no light pollution, just stars. I knew I’d come home.

There are still a few things. Like the mortgage, for one. Getting it approved, though we’re far down that track. Fire insurance. Kate found some. The costs, which seem to metastasize. But even on the drive up I had a sense that this was a moment not for reason alone, but for adventure. We’ll absorb the costs somehow and have a third phase home for both of us.

Great job, Kate.