Please hold... Your house will be with you shortly.

Today is originally the day we had planned to move. We were going to close on the 12th and then take the long weekend to get the new house ready for us to move in. We were going to paint and clean and shampoo the carpets. It was going to be perfect! Except for the fact that it didn't happen that way at all.

There are a couple of reasons why we are still living in a tiny condo, which is filling up with boxes at alarming speed. I think they might be mating and giving birth to litters of boxes while I'm at work. It's pretty disturbing. The Octo-Mom has nothing on the boxes in our second bedroom.

One reason I am without a new home is the owners of our new house; they have nowhere to go once the sale is final. They have an offer in on a short sale, which... well, just say "no" to short sales, you guys. It's not worth the agita. Long story short, they aren't able to move into the house they want and they haven't found another house to move in to and they don't want to have to move twice. This is the second time we've postponed the closing because of their situation and, while we're pretty flexible about when we can move, my patience with these people is wearing thin.

The second reason we didn't close when we had planned is due to the stupid United States Senate. Two Sundays ago, I casually mentioned to my husband the fact that the Senate had put a $15,000 tax credit for anyone who buys a house in their version of the economic stimulus bill. Knowing my husband as I do, I should have realized that the chance for $15 G's would be too good to pass up and he would want to do anything he could to make sure we got that money. Sadly, I did not. I had naïvely expected that he would be mad that we didn't qualify for it but, since we were just days away from closing, we would move ahead with everything as planned. Instead, we agreed to postpone the closing (making the owners happy, since they got a reprieve on their impending homelessness) until the end of February so that we might have the chance to get that $15,000 from those angels at the Senate.

Little did we know that the very next day, that provision in the Senate bill would be completely cut out in favor of an $8,000 credit, which is available only to first-time home buyers. My friends, we are not first-time homebuyers. Well, technically, I am a first-time home buyer, but my husband has bought, like, a million houses, so this does nothing for us. My comments to the Senators who put this in the bill in the first place went a little something like this: "What the bloody fuck, you guys? You put so much unnecessary crap in your bill, even though you knew the President wanted it to be under $800 billion, it makes me think you didn't even intend to keep this in there from the start. You are tax credit cock teases, which is totally NOT cool."

This brings us to today, as I sit in my office, while the millions of boxes in our condo make sweet love and produce offspring exponentially until one day Joel will come home and find me smothered to death under a pile of boxes that read "Living Room-- FRAGILE" or "Joel's Dresser" or "PORN." Pray for me, you guys. Better yet, pray for the owners of our house so they'll find a place to go because, so help me God, if we're forced to postpone again being homeless will be the least of their worries.