March: The Wrath of Hell Engulfs Us

Upon his arrival in Utah, Paul hit the ground running. We were in a time crunch for finding a home and Paul only had 2 days before starting his new job. We had been looking at properties online on and off over the last year, therefore we knew finding a home would be challenging. During his two days before starting work, Paul drove from one corner of our search area to the other and concluded that our search for a reasonable home would be more daunting than we even realized. One factor or another, whether price, location, or curb appeal, ruled out every single available property, of which there were really very few. We were selling our paid off home and looking at having to spend over twice as much on something we would have to just settle on. Paul started to feel very discouraged and hopeless about not being able to find a home to bring his family to.
Monday. March 21st arrived. It was Paul's first day at his new job. The week would be spent in orientation and training. On day one his eyes were opened to how woefully understaffed and unprepared for the new project this company was. There were 6 engineers to work on a sizable chunk of aircraft structure. Only Paul and 1 other had received security clearance, thereby allowing them to work on the project. Only Paul and 1 other had ever worked on airplanes; the others, only rockets. It was a salaried position, but the project and deadlines would dictate the need for longer hours. Paul texted me during that first day of orientation and his hopes of our move to Utah bringing improvement to our lives were already fading. This job was going to run his life.
Day 2. The realities of working on a top secret project began to come clear- working in a building with no windows, depositing his cell phone in a box before walking into the building each day, no outside internet connection, NO FREEDOM. Throughout the 10+ years of his career, he has always been afforded the luxeries of freedom and flexibility, to which he has grown quite accustomed. Working under these conditions felt like consigning himself to prison for 8+ hours a day.
By this point, Paul was terribly homesick for the comforts of home, his family, and familiarity. The fear of not being able to find a home we would be happy about had taken a toll, but the nightmare of the job situation sealed the deal. Paul wanted to pull the plug and come home before we had invested any more financial resources into the move, before we had pulled the kids out of their schools and moved them to Utah only to hightail it out of there later. He had concluded that Utah was not going to be the utopia we had envisioned that it was going to be for our family. He told me through a text message to slap him if he ever proposed a plan that would involve uprooting our family again.
I contacted our real estate agent and informed her that, although we were under contract to sell our home, we couldn't go through with it. As expected, she was not pleased with this announcement. She relayed to me all the things that could happen as a result of trying to cancel the contract. She hid behind other individuals and entities while threatening that we could be sued and held to fees/commissions. She told me that we were legally bound to sell our home "even if one of you were to die the day before closing." She told me "I don't care about the commission, but the broker may still require you to pay commissions because commissions have been earned." And that was before she even told the buyer's agent. Then came the threat of the buyer wanting $10k or he would pursue legal action. We decided our best course of action was to proceed to closing, rather than risk sinking thousands into legal fees.
Paul was still in Utah during the back and forth over our house. It felt like our life was spinning out of control and we had absolutely no control over it. On something like day 3, immediately after Paul got off the phone with the real estate agent when he was informed about the $10k request, he got a phone call from the company hauling his brand new 2016 Honda Pilot to Utah. They had bashed in the roof during transit. **That is a whole separate nightmare that I will not devote any more time to on this post. Suffice it to say that it was one more detail that made the whole madness seem that much more unreal. Trying to navigate a resolution to that particular event has proven to be a complete fiasco and it has still not reached an end to date (mid-May).**
Having made the final decision to get out while he could and come back home, he was still looking at having to wait in Utah for his car to arrive and then drive it home. Having received the call that it was damaged, and that the vehicle had only made it to Georgia at that time, he demanded that they send it back to South Carolina. Mine and the kids' tickets to Utah for spring break were cancelled and Paul bought himself a ticket home as soon as possible. He quit his job Thursday morning and, though his flight wasn't until late afternoon Friday, he headed to the airport bright and early, eager to get the heck out of there. He arrived back on SC soil just as Friday night was turning into Saturday morning. And he arrived jobless, carless, and homeless.
The kids, of course, were excited to wake up to Dad being home again. Only Sam was disappointed to not be moving to Utah after all. We faced some uncertain days ahead, but life had to go on and the kids were officially on spring break. We had generously been invited to Mark and Crystal's house for an Easter egg hunt. The kids had a blast and had their first experience with dying eggs.

The next couple of days felt like an eternity, as we mulled over scenarios for where to move, where to work, and how to save our home. We had suggested to our real estate agent that we had found a loophole in the contract. The buyer had failed to provide us with proof of financing within a specified window. She spoke with the lawyer handling the closing on our home who agreed that it was reason enough to initiate a cancellation of the contract. We were elated and allowed ourselves a deep breath. Then, of course, we received notification that, magically, the buyer HAD provided that information (which was never provided to us), and the brokerage declared them to be in compliance with the contract. 

Unwilling to give up without a fight, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We still had two more opportunities to cause the sell of our home to fall through. The inspection had been done and had come back clean. They asked for a couple nit-picky repairs, which we refused, and they didn't care. However, the appraisal and termite inspection had not been done yet. We decided to attempt to sway the appraiser by making our house unappealing. We were desperate. Claire couldn't believe her luck when I gave her a crayon and asked her to practise her new talent of drawing family portraits, right on the kitchen cabinets. I couldn't help but giggle as I dumped crumbs all over the floors, both in the dining areas as well as the carpet upstairs. Paul pulled trim off a window, removed random knobs from bathroom cabinets, and left stinky onions in the garbage disposal and trash can. I skewed several of the blinds randomly, left every dirty dish from the last several meals, plus any trash from food packages right there on the counters. The place was a mess and I couldn't stand it! Luckily we were leaving town. 

Facing the prospect of having no employment options in Greenville, even after only a couple days we were feeling antsy and were already thinking of ignoring our feelings that South Carolina is meant to be our permanent home. Paul knew that he could still go back and get the job in Virginia if he really wanted it. Though I hated the thought of living in that place when we visited, so much that it made me cry, the money was very appealing at the moment. We decided to go back up there, to give it a bit of a second chance, and to have some fun, since it was spring break and all. We packed up our bikes, some overnight bags, and left our nasty house, hoping that the appraiser would be appalled by our work.