Someday, the spiders will rise up against me. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates I’ve probably killed about 400 spiders in my lifetime, and yesterday probably added another dozen to the death toll.

I’m glad you asked. Yesterday, I took down all the draperies in the house I bought (more on that later) and discovered so much dirt, so much dust, and so many spiders that I concluded the drapes had never been cleaned, ever, and had probably been in place since at least 1991, when the previous owners moved in. There is a possibility that the drapes had not been cleaned since the house was built in 1892. Planting things in the accumulated soil atop the window treatments was not out of the question, but I felt it would be hard to reach up there to water, so instead I just discarded the drapes.

So yes, after a protracted search and a longer mortgage process, I succeeded in purchasing a house here in New Jersey. It’s more like two houses – an old, original 1892 house, with a new, 2002 addition that kicks ass and includes a master bedroom/bathroom combo that’s larger than my first apartment and includes a giant two-person soaking tub. I plan to live there.

Closing on a home is nothing I would wish on anyone. Getting the lenders the documentation they needed, filling out the applications, arranging insurance, and staying on top of everyone to reach a coordinated closing date is basically a full time job. Sadly, I was unable to manage both the buy side and the sell side, which meant I was forced to rely upon the kindness of strangers – in this case, unorganized, messy strangers – to make sure they, too, were ready to close on the agreed-upon date.

That’s an interesting phrase – “closing date.” It implies, among other things, closure. It also implies a date. Both of these things, together in one phrase, imply completion of a process by a specified date. Throw in a time, and voila! – it’s almost like a deadline, isn’t it?

Not so for everyone, it turns out. Oh, the sellers wanted to close – actually, what the sellers wanted was their money. What they did not want to do was leave the house.

The closing was set for noon last Friday. I knew there was a problem when I tried to schedule the walk-through inspection for Friday morning. I was told the sellers’ moving truck was showing up a 6 am so they wouldn’t be out till at least two in the afternoon. Okaaaaay….. Not how I myself would’ve planned it, but fine. Whatever. If the sellers want to stress themselves out on closing day by trying to move AND close, it’s their picnic. I agreed to do the walk-through inspection at four o’clock.

At noon, I arrived at my attorney’s office and we signed paperwork for an hour. (My last name has thirteen letters -- I know a man named Ng, and I am planning to propose.) As we neared the end, his paralegal walked in with a fax. The township building inspector, who needs to issue a Certificate of Occupancy to certify that each home sold is fit for habitation, had identified a number of items that needed to be fixed before I could move in. My attorney handed it to me, I gave him a blank look and asked what fresh hell this was, and he took it back as he speed-dialed the sellers’ attorney and said no way was I paying a dime to fix anything.

Much back and forth ensued, during which it also came to light that one of the seller’s previous mortgages, since refinanced, had never been formally cleared, so title was also held up. I sat back and let my attorney do his thing. The seller’s attorney came over, and the lawyers had some conversations out in the hall that I could totally hear. So my attorney, who knew this, would occasionally make it look good by sticking his head into his office to get my official buy-in. Eventually, the other attorney left, and since I had signed everything, I left, too. I had been there for three hours.

At four, my realtor and I arrived at the house for the walk through. The husband met us at the door and told us his wife was really stressed and would prefer that no one came in, but he realized it was no longer up to them. One step inside, and my realtor turned to me with a look of horror. Unpacked bookshelves and the stacks of boxes we saw in the foyer turned out to be the least of the problems we found. As I had feared, the attic was still packed full of junk that hadn’t been touched since the Reagan administration, as measured by undisturbed dust. The basement was probably worse, because the seller wouldn’t let us down there. (Ostensibly because the dog was down there, and had recently hurt his leg so was unreliable with strangers. Um, sure.) When I tentatively asked the seller for assurance that he was going to remove all the stuff from the attic before leaving, his response of “I’ll try” did not warm my heart. My realtor gave him The Look and he immediately responded with “I will, but it will take a few hours.” My ass. That was a full-day job looking me in the face if I ever saw one.

How anyone accumulates the sheer volume of crap these people owned is beyond me. During the sale agreement process, I had my attorney insert specific language to the effect that all personal belonging and debris would be removed from the property prior to closure. (He thought it was overkill, but did it for me anyway. It’s one of the few times in life I was sorry to have been right.) See, the living areas of the home had been effectively de-cluttered, but the basement and attic – well, did you see Silence of the Lambs? Remember that scene where the FBI goes into the self-storage unit and comes out with somebody’s severed head? The basement and attic of this house were scarier than that storage unit.

My realtor and I regrouped and concluded that, despite the seller’s promises to stay till nine that night to finish up, the Sox had a better chance of winning the World Series two years in a row than I did of moving into that house over the weekend. There was also the small matter of the Certificate of Occupancy, which the seller also swore he’d get taken care of by the end of the day.

Depressed, I returned to my beach house. Now, I have to say that for the last two weeks of my occupancy, the beach house was not a bad place to be. As the days grew longer, I was able to haul my expanding self down to the boardwalk for long walks up and down the beach each evening. It was great thinking time, and it felt wonderful to finally breathe the fresh air again. Plus, it had the double benefit of 1) getting me some exercise, and 2) keeping me from sitting on the couch eating crap. Nevertheless, it was not my goal to spend yet another weekend there, but the Ewe came up on Sunday to keep me company so it ended well.

On Monday, I left my office at lunch to drive by the house. I saw a huge garbage truck sitting by the curb, and a work crew busily carrying sacks of crap out of the house. Cheered, I returned to work where I got a call from my attorney – the seller requested I release $5 thousand of the funds to pay the garbage contractors. I thought not. (I think I might have actually laughed.) I felt a little heartless – by now, I had the strong feeling, bolstered by some other information about large outstanding bills, that the sellers were in serious monetary trouble. However, business sense said to hold the money, and business sense is usually the way to go when you’re dealing with unreliable people.

At four, my realtor and I went over to do another walk-through. Again, the husband met us in the front yard, and begged me to release any money at all. I told him I’d see after the inspection, and by the way, did he have a clear Certificate of Occupancy yet? He went to go get that while my realtor and I inspected the house. This time, the place was truly vacant. Other than the window treatments throughout the house, and some cleaning products in the kitchen, the house was empty. The seller returned with the CO, I went to my attorney and authorized the money to move, and everyone went home happy.

On Wednesday, Mom and Dad (and their dogs) came up and helped me move my possessions from Point Pleasant Beach to here. It was, naturally, a day of record heat for the area, and I learned the air conditioning in my car wasn’t working. Sigh. Nevertheless, it was great to finally get here. We spent hours cleaning out basic areas – the master bedroom and bathroom, mostly – and unpacking my suitcases. The bathroom drawers were disgusting. If the previous owners are ever in trouble with the law and a DNA sample is needed, I have bags of their hair I can supply.

I brought in Cookie the floor guy to sand and refinish the floors, and after that, I attempted painting. A few points here: painting is harder than it looks. Especially when your ladder isn’t designed to hold a paint tray, so you’re trying to hold the paint tray AND the roller while sort of leaning into the ladder so you don’t fall over backwards as you paint the area directly over your head. In retrospect, it’s really quite a miracle I didn’t end up on my ass, awash in a paint tsunami. As it was, I ended up using a brush to paint the ceiling. This worked OK until the brush sort of snapped back during one particularly forceful stroke, flinging little yellow paint droplets in a perfect arc back over my head and all the way over the drop cloth such that they landed on the newly finished hardwood floors like a gentle rainshower. I stopped painting and called my mother.

Over the years, my mother has been an unfailing source of support and reassurance. She truly seems to believe I can do anything, and whenever I am feeling discouraged, she always finds words to bolster my courage so I can pick myself up and get back on whatever horse just threw me. This time, she just laughed and laughed. After a while, I interrupted her to make sure she knew I was still on the phone. She acknowledged her awareness, then laughed some more. I made lunch, changed some lightbulbs, organized my sock drawer, learned to speak Mandarin Chinese, and by then Mom was calm. She then decided that this sounded like a mission for her and Dad.

On Tuesday, they arrived in the minivan with paint supplies, food, tools, dogs – the full catastrophe. I joined them after work and was filled with shock and awe at the beauty and speed of their paint job. We ate Mom’s ziti and went upstairs, where I curled up on the Aerobed with the dogs while Mom and Dad got into my bed (over Mom’s objections – her plan was apparently for all four of them to sleep on the Aerobed). Sleeping with the dogs was kind of nice, especially as it was quite chilly and Spaz (the German short-hair) likes to curl up with you. Actually, what Spaz needs to do is get under your covers, not easy when you’re in a sleeping bag. So I unzipped the sleeping bag, which was OK for a while until it became apparent that Spaz is also a covers-hog. Sped (a shitzuh) is fine for a while until she gets exasperated by Spaz’s constant movement, at which point she trots up the mattress and collapses next to your head. Eventually, we all got to sleep.

Tomorrow will be Return of the Dogs Who Mean Well, as Mom has planned a big wallpaper day. Next week I head up to Boston to supervise the movers as they pack up my cozy, beautiful house. I miss my house, and wonder if I will miss it less once the contents are here. My fingers are crossed. Meanwhile, I keep busy here – there is always another closet to clean, crack to spackle, or floor to sweep. And eventually, I am sure, I will succeed in reducing the house’s spider population to the point where I don’t see one every time I walk into a room – and my fingers are crossed about that, too.

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