No Doubt this was all Orchestrated by a Higher Power

Okay. Okay. Okay. So much has happened, not in a chaotic way either. In a mysteriously orchestrated way. Where do I begin? Do I go back to a year ago when people bought the foreclosure next door that was abandoned for a year, spiffed it up (like you wouldn’t believe) and how it helped the sale of my house?

Do I start with the neighbors across the street who moved out and new neighbors moved in, unpacked all their boxes just as I was in need of boxes? I was on my way to buy boxes, (eye roll at the idea of having to buy cardboard boxes), when I noticed their garage was full of unbroken-down boxes. The new neighbor not only let us have them, but helped carry them to our garage. The exact number of boxes we needed!! Not one left over!

Do I start with the coincidences of how we got the new house and what uncanny reason the sellers chose our bid over the others for the same amount?

How casually I found the house?

The freaky odds that I would actually remember to show up for the open house, call the best realtors in town, get my husband in there the next day during the middle of his workday, put an offer on the house an hour later, and find out we were in contract that night?

We weren’t even looking for a house. Not “looking” looking. I have been window-shopping for about seven years but always came home from open houses liking my house better.

Not this time. This time I walked into the house determined to find things I hated, couldn’t find anything, and fell in love instead. I urged Skye to go check it out. He looked at the pictures in the handout, read all the details and continued to eat his breakfast.

Later that day, I called Skye at work to say, “Other people are having a second showing. If we want that house, you have to leave work and come see it.”

My girlfriend asked, “How did Skye feel about the house after he saw it? Did he love it?”

“Well, he’s an engineer. His ‘feelings’ are measured on a ratings scale that goes from poor to fair to good to very good to excellent. He said it was excellent. In girl language, I think it’s fair to say he loves it.”

Let’s put it this way. He liked it enough to clean out his workshop that was buried in gliders, glider-building accessories, wires, glue, plans, and tools, to tile and grout said workshop floor, to help two guys we hired move the entire contents of our basement into a storage facility, to make several trips to the dump at dawn, to deliver van loads of stuff we may or may not ever use at Goodwill, to make umpteen trips to Lowe’s, to sell his motorcycle, and to repair a cement pad leading into our garage, even though he’d never worked with cement before.

So, yea. He loves it.

Okay, so here’s how we got the house over two other bidders whose bids were also list price.

You know how you’re not supposed to meet the sellers until closing? And you know me, right? How I like to do things I’m not supposed to do?

Well, this wasn’t pre-meditated and it wasn’t accidental. This was, shall we say, amydental.

I got confused. I forgot Vincent didn’t have school on Monday, the day I met the owners. I forgot he was at the zoo with some friends. I picked up James from his tour of his new school and then went to pick up Vincent, and not until I was two blocks from Vincent’s school did I remember that he didn’t have school that day.

But while I was in the neeeeeeeeighborhood of the new house, I thought I’d do a drive by. Only I didn’t just drive by.

No. I saw a sports car parked in front of the new home with a guy sitting in it.

I parked behind him and approached him. I said, “Are you the owner of this house?”

He smiled at me and said, “Yes, I am.”

I said, “No you’re not. I am! I’m Amy Kehoe.”

He laughed and shook my hand and said, “I’m so glad you stopped by! I have to call Jen! Can you come in for a tour of the home? We have so much to tell you about it! Do you have time for a tutorial?!”

I couldn’t believe it.

He takes me into the sunroom and his Doberman shows Maggie, my schnoodle, how to go out the dog door. Maggie hesitates at first but then shoves her head through and promptly craps on their lawn. Victory.

Jen comes home. We meet. We instantly like each other. She offers me a glass of water and we sit in the Florida room, The Room that sold me on the house, and we talk about something every buyer wants to know about – the other offers.

They tell me that there were two offers that came in right after ours for the same amount. Ours was the only one without a contingency other than financing.

Jen interrupts herself to say, “My license plate, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, says ‘two dobes’. One of them died last August. Her name was Skye. We prayed for a sign that we were selling our house to the right people. Then we saw Skye’s name on the offer and we knew you were the ones.”

We all rubbed the goosebumps on our arms when Jen told the story.

I mentioned that my friends Katie and Jeff live in the house next door and ever since I was a little girl I’ve always wanted to live next door to a good friend.

“Jeff?”

“Well, his name is really Jake, but he used to go by Jeff.”

Again, Jen starts rubbing the goosebumps on her arm. The former owner of that house was an elderly neighbor she adored, named Jeff.

Then yesterday, Katie came over to my house. She said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you this, Amy. In the last three houses I’ve lived in, as far back as 1995, I’ve always lived next door to another Amy. Now I get to again.”

This many signs along the way, takes all the fear out of the risk of possibly having two mortgages and the distaste for all the back-breaking work of moving. It was a labor of love every step of the way.

Two days after we listed our home, it sold. The closing is three days before our first double mortgage payment would have been due.

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