4/15 … Epilogue

Things do seem to be moving along … the home inspection went well, with just a few small items on the punchlist which got addressed last week.  The buyers’ mortgage appraiser has also been and gone, so presumably that went well also.  If things continue as planned we have a 5/3 closing date, and it will be a great boon to have this chapter tidily closed!

Wednesday, March 28 Most important meal of the day

Tom had kindly left eggs, bacon & bread on one of his plant-watering runs, so we were well-equipped for breakfast.  After sorting out the souvenirs, I drove Linda home and confirmed to my agent to accept the higher of the two responses to our counteroffer.  PHEW!

Tuesday, March 27 Leave the money and run

Well, finally we’ll have to go home.  With all the dithering about the house, I hadn’t gotten down to the pool or shore at all, so Linda and I strolled down early in the morning.  It really was quite idyllic, and we had the opportunity to meet our host who was out paddle-surfing.   

We agreed to meet at 11A and he’d take us to the airport, a pleasant courtesy.  Having double-checked all tickets, passports etc. we’re set to go … except that, rather than the invoice I expected in Pay Pal, our host is expecting us to settle in CASH right then and there.  Yikes!  But it worked out to be PRECISELY the amount of US dollars we had just received from Claudette.  So Linda (our designate banker this trip) goes home with a whopping ONE DOLLAR in her wallet, I have about $20.  Just a little slim.

Leaving the country was pretty easy.  Luggage gets riffled through, we surrender the remaining half of the immigration form we’d completed when entering Mexico, and we saunter off to the gate after purchasing some last-minute remembrances.  The flight to Houston is full, and the immigration line is lengthy but does keep moving.  We were told at the airport that because we were travelling together we’d only need one US immigration form, but that didn’t work as we don’t have the same address.  Poor Linda was left to de-code a form printed in Spanish while I processed into the country.  The big snag?  SANDWICHES!!  Because, you see, we are bringing FOOD into the country.  So I get a monster, Hester-Prynne-worthy, red A on my form and, naturally, we’re diverted for an agricultural inspection.  The first step is to muscle your bag onto a conveyor belt which is too steep for most bags, so you wind up pushing your suitcase uphill until the horizontal belt can catch.  I’m in the process of doing that when the people behind me start loading THEIR bags onto the belt … that was a little close-in but it all worked out.  Then I spend a good 3 minutes explaining to the health inspector about the sandwiches:  yes, they have meat … COOKED meat, from last night’s dinner.  Yes, some are chicken and some are beef.  Oh, the longer one is chicken and the rectangular one is beef.  Yes, it’s all cooked, by us, very recently.  FINALLY we are waved along with dinner still intact.

Now we need to re-check our bags, and then we fall into the food court for a decent table and a decent dinner.  Stand, stretch, head on down to the gate area.  It’s not especially full, but the gate agent is already calling out rewards for SOMEONE to volunteer to go home tomorrow.  She only needed one person or we might have thought hard about it, as the plane was due to arrive at O’Hare just before midnight.  But we do board, with our window/aisle seats, and though the plane is pretty empty, we have a fellow in the center seat.  He’s really, REALLY interested in being re-seated, but the crew understands more than we do … after a small delay from scheduled flight time, the plane explodes with people who have just arrived from Mexico.  A good number are seeking help as they have no English but can see that someone else is sitting in their assigned seat (we were next-to-last row, so we had pretty active supervision about seating).  Eventually everyone does get seated and the plane is utterly packed.  We head northeast in darkness and silence, mostly trying to stay awake.

Arrival at O’Hare was prompt and so was delivery of our suitcases.  The weather was pleasant enough (it had been warmer in Chicago than in Mexico virtually every day we were gone) so we waited outside for the limo that a Groupon was supposed to bring us.  After a while, Linda calls the agency … to discover that the number of our flight had changed, it had not occurred to us to notify them of that … they couldn’t find the flight and no driver is coming.  SIGH!!  Back into the terminal to call a suburban cab, who does come promptly and finds his way into my subtle driveway & underground parking.  He really didn’t want to take payment on VISA, but since that was our only option, eventually he caved.  We rumbled the luggage onto the elevator, rose to 4, padded into the apartment and fell right over.

Sunday-Monday, March 25-26 Helter-skelter, and trains

Well, the absolute story of my life.  My real-estate broker calls with a genuine offer which, truthfully, I was quite ready to simply accept.  He must have put in a call to the broker for the original low-ball bidders after that, though, because the next thing I hear is that they’re stepping up their offer … a LOT.  We decide to counter both offers with the same suggestion.  All this without really functional Internet – we are invited to displace whoever’s doing their PAYING job in the office and utilize that PC, which we do … of course, everything’s in Spanish and despite having watched a successful demo, I can’t get a document to scan and attach.  There’s a fax, which seems to be sending but also is flashing an error message which I can’t begin to decode.  Finally I have the wit to ask Google to translate it – it’s “please fix the paper jam.”  Well THAT was easy enough.  I remind all parties and anyone else who will listen that I will have to make my decision on WEDNESDAY as I’m travelling all day tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Claudette’s friend is driving down from her ranch in Tepic and we have encouraged her to sleep at our pad Monday night rather than drive the twisty, slow road twice in one day (and going home in darkness).  That seemed to be the deal … until Claudette got a call saying be ready in half-an-hour!  So we had a bit of a flurry of packing, sold the remaining pesos to Claudette for US dollars, met the friend and several family members, and stuffed all into the car.  PHEW!

Well, now we have quite a bit of extra chicken for dinner as we had been hoarding for an additional person, and now we have only two.  No matter, we cook up whatever’s left in the larder and save some for sandwiches for dinner during our long layover in Houston tomorrow.  We’ve been playing a fine board game, British Rails, all day long and are sorry to have to fold the board up and pack!