They're Gonna Yell At Me

It seems strange, as it always does when I take time off, to not have to prepare myself to go to work tomorrow.
Of course, the weekend will fly quickly past, and soon I’ll be back on my regular days off and it will only be a blink of an eye before I’m back at work once again, my time off just a fleeting memory of freedom.
It looks as though I’ve managed to jump over the earnest money hurdle, and so tomorrow I will, apparently, be signing a contract on the condo, and assuming the financing goes through, I will be well on my way to becoming a homeowner.
Of course, I’m operating on the assumption that despite the fact that my credit is decent once again after a long, dark period, and I do have a decent income, something will go wrong when we get to the financing portion.  If nothing else, I’m of the opinion that somehow, even though they shouldn’t, the monthly payments will come out to be more than I can afford and I’ll have to back out of the whole thing and I’ll be back to throwing money away on rent.
Naturally I’m being pessimistic because…well, I’m naturally pessimistic, but also I feel as though I’m being set up for a pretty big letdown, so I want to be prepared.
Quite honestly, this whole thing is causing me an extreme amount of anxiety.  I feel sick to my stomach and as if I’m just barely restraining an overwhelming sense of panic.
Why?  Well, for one thing, it really is a daunting prospect.  I mean, we’re talking about a LOT of money here.
And for another…well, as irrational as it may sound, I feel as though things are going to fall through and I’m not going to be able to buy the condo, and not only will I be disappointed but all of the people involved will yell at me for wasting their time, and then I’ll be banned from ever even trying to buy a place again.
They’ll put up posters of me all around the Metro DC area that say, “This loser can’t buy a condo,” and there will be an article in the Post about what a deadbeat time-waster I am and how people should spit on me if they happen to see me.
…
Okay, at the very least I’m worried that they’ll yell at me.
I just wish the whole process were simpler and more straightforward.  Like someone says, “This is how much you’ll have to pay a month.  Sign here. Here are your keys.  Congratulations.”  And then, like a Nextel commercial, done.
But no, it has to be a long, drawn-out, confusing, and aggravating process that leaves me stupefied and looking like a simpleton (“Do you have any questions?”  “Duh, me no have question.  Should me have question?”), and which pisses me off to no end.
To make matters worse, I keep getting crap in the mail like the thing I got today telling me about some other condos that are bigger, nicer, and while more expensive, come with mortgage plans that would make the monthly payment roughly equivalent to rental rates in the area.
So that makes me wonder if I’m making a mistake going with this place instead of the bigger one, or if there’s some scam hidden in the fine print that I’m not able to pick out because the whole process of trying to buy a home has rendered me mentally incompetent.
*Sigh*
In any case, beyond the condo-buying stuff, not much else is going on in my life.  Even though I’m technically on vacation I went in to work today for a meeting.  It won’t count as overtime, but it will at least make up for the money I’ll lose in differential pay for not working on Saturday and Sunday.
I also went for a walk in the afternoon, despite the chill in the air.  My timing was lousy, though, as I ended up caught in the rush of elementary school children walking home.
As a result, I’m beginning to believe that childhood is itself a form of mild retardation, one from which most people aren’t able to recover.
Several of the more obnoxious of the little monsters kept screaming at passing cars, saying that they were “hitchhikers” and needed a ride.  I began to believe that the finest thing the children could do, in fact, would be for them to get in a stranger’s car.
Of course, I did not seriously wish them any sort of harm – though I did think about picking up some rocks and throwing them at them – but I did want them to shut the hell up, or at least drop their voices down forty or fifty decibels.
The old saying states that “children should be seen and not heard.”  
I think that would be a good start.