SOLD! (or sale pending ... whatever)/Shanti the cat

We sold our house this week!  Not only that, but we got a fair price that allows us to purchase the house that we like in Bethlehem.  Hooray! 

When we listed the house on the market, we included the piano with the sale of the house (or we said that we would get rid of it ourselves if they didn't want it).  This buyer wants to keep the piano, which makes me kind of happy that the piano will continue to live here.  Even though I didn't play it that much, it was a comfort thing to have around and I will miss it.

Actually, I think it ended up being a major selling-point, which is awesome. The piano and the cat -- those are the things she said she liked about the house. I keep thinking, "... and the house itself?" Oh well, she is buying the house so I'm happy with that!

I'm tempted to leave the cat here.  Shanti, while cute and soft (major pluses in my book), hasn't always been the best cat to us.  Let's take a trip down memory lane to see all the damage she has caused:

• Flooding the kitchen == new cabinet doors ~$500
• Whenever she has the opportunity, she has been opening the baby's bedroom door at 5:30am, going inside and meowing loudly until the baby wakes up == lots of lost sleep
• Peeing in the upstairs hallway because she didn't seem to like all the cleaning we have been doing for house showings -- the whole house smelled like cat urine because she started using the hallway as a bathroom more than once a day (I know, yuck!) == pull up the carpet in the hallway, finish the wood floors by hand, redo the baseboard trim, purchase a rug to cover up the sub-par work we did on the floors == lots of time (in the midst of everything else going on) and ~$100
• Ripping up the beautiful wallpaper we installed on the closet in our bedroom, just a week after we put it up == two years of living with ripped wallpaper and ~$50 to fix it (below is Alma's cousin Hayden posing with the ripped wallpaper; Hayden helped us remove some of it -- such a good worker!)

Anyway, we are fond of her and just hopeful that our next house won't crumble under her impact.

We close on both houses on September 30th.  Now we just have to deal with Joshua commuting for the next month while we also pack the house.  Let's just say that I'm tempted to start peeing on the rug these days in frustration at this move.  And it isn't like we have hit many snags.  I'm just done with the process and ready to be in our new place.