Should We Just Move?

Before we actually took on the job of homeschooling, we decided to give a last ditch effort by moving to a different school district. The town I used to work in also had a good reputation and was where I really wanted to be anyway. I wanted to find something out of our current town because I didn't want my tax dollars to pay the administration's salary if we weren't going to take advantage of the schools.

Yes, I realize that's pretty selfish, and that lots of people pay their taxes and don't have a reason to take advantage of the local education system. What can I say? I was angry and a little bitter that it ended up like this. I don't like when I feel I'm being taken advantage of, I don't like being a sheep. I certainly couldn't believe that even the parents that did know about this didn't spread the word across the school. Did they just not care that the school could be making people sick? I felt like people just didn't want to make waves. Parents were busy and wanted to drop their kids off at school, or what I sometimes saw as just a babysitting service, and pick them up after the day was done. They didn't want to be involved in any way and just kind of let it gloss over.

We visited a school in the town I'd worked in. Met with the principal and took a tour of the facility. Clean, nice, well taken care of. Was it perfect? No, and I wouldn't expect any school to be, but it was more than an acceptable option. There may have even been a way to have the kids go to this district and potentially have our current township pay for it but I think we had to prove some kind of medical necessity and apparently allergies didn't count. Besides that, PEOSHA already signed off and declared the school "clean of mold". We really didn't have a leg to stand on.

We put the house up for sale. We'd only been here for a few years so it wasn't really tough to clean things out and get the house ready for market. We met with our Real Estate agent and discussed our options. Once on the market we had a few people come and look. I asked our agent to hold an open house so she planned one for the following Sunday. That Friday we had a showing from another agent.

That same night our agent called and said that the other agents client wanted to make an offer but was concerned that if they did, and we still went through with the open house, they could potentially get into a bidding war and lose the house. I told her that if he offered us full price, we'd cancel the open house. I had an uneasy feeling when those words came out of my mouth, but I wanted to sell and move no matter what it took. They agreed and offered us our asking price, we accepted their offer and cancelled the open house.

It was my understanding that you needed to have the information for an open house into the newspaper by the Friday before because it came out in the Sunday edition. The Real Estate section of the Sunday edition actually came out on Saturday night so people could plan their open house visits. So even though we cancelled the open house, it was a little late to get it out of the paper.

All of use went house hunting that Sunday in anticipation of finding a new home and moving to a new school district. We found a couple of nice places but none that really spoke to us. It was a little frustrating but we returned home just around the time the open house would have ended. My neighbors told me that there were actually quite a few people that came by to see the house. The open house notice was not removed from the newspaper so people that saw it came to look.

Not too long after we got home, I got another call from our agent. The buyer was reneging on their offer. They decided the house wasn't big enough to accommodate their family. All I could say to her was "WHAT!?". I was furious. They couldn't tell us before the open house? They had to wait until it was too late to salvage the day that they didn't want the house? I wanted to hurt someone real bad. I just walked around all day fuming and then found the "buyer's" agent's card. I called her cell phone at 9 PM on a Sunday night. She was at a party and I didn't care. I told her who I was and then let her have it with both barrels. Especially after she told me that she thought he was going to do that and told him to not make the offer unless he was sure. I told her I held her fully responsible for the issue and wanted to know why she didn't tell us that. Why would you let me cancel an open house if you knew there was a chance he would pull the offer?! She had no answer, but wanted to see if he'd consider coming to see the house again. For some reason, I guess I was hoping he'd change his mind, I agreed.

They came on a week day after I got home from work. My wife was on the sofa with Seth who wasn't feeling well and had a fever. There was so much going on I don't even remember if they went through the house again. I remember them being in the back yard talking. In retrospect, with Seth ill, I wish I'd just shut the door in their faces and told them to do something that was physically impossible and probably not ethically sound (I'm trying to be nice here and not have the Philly boy potty mouth take over).

Needless to say they didn't change their mind on buying the house. With my wife trying to run a business and keep the house up for showings, it just got to be too much for both of us. The house had been on the market for a few months but we felt It was time to lick our wounds, put our tails between our legs and walk away from the market. We both believe that things happen for a reason and for some reason we weren't supposed to move right now. We were staying put. No other town, no other school district, homeschooling was the option.