Remind me again why we're doing this NOW?!

It's Monday. Dennis returned from his hunting trip last night, and I'm feeling incredible pressure for us to make decisions NOW because the holiday is screwing up this week and the closing is so close.

Among major decisions we need to make in the next 12 hours or so:

• Whether we'll have a walk-out basement or a walk-UP basement
• What the ceilings will be like
• What the orientation of the fixtures in the master bathroom will be
• Whether to upgrade the bathtubs/countertops/shower/you name it.
  

And we get to decide these things without doing little things like, oh, visiting a kitchen/bath showroom or even freaking Home Depot.

In other exciting news, Fidelity screwed up and is now *mailing* me a check for the $$ amount in my brokerage account (an account I closed to get cash for our downpayment, due on 11/30). Yeah. I have 11 days to receive a check and get it deposited, and a couple of those days are holidays. It *should* be OK. But if it isn't, we'll be $13k short on closing day, and I will be VERY angry.

That, of course, is assuming we get to close at all. I spoke briefly with the appraiser this afternoon, who said we were paying a fair price for the lot, but that most of the houses on the street were only worth $X to $Y, and if someone really wanted to stretch it, they could put a $Y+60k house there. We want to put a $Y+180k house there.

It's the first time in this process where I'm thinking it might not actually happen. And if it doesn't happen, we will have busted our butts for nothing, and we'll find out at the very last second, so it will be a long, fast, very hard fall.

Maybe by tonight I can come up with some way to spin this positively. I resolve to try.