I'm sure this will all work out in the end

About the time that we are all but moved into our new place and all but out of our old place - the offer on the Tatanka house was accepted.

This will mean that we have between two and three months of purgatory before we can resume our roles as debt-ridden homeowners.

Which is not to say that the rental is a waste - it was absolutely going to happen with or without the offer going through - now we know that it will be over sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, we're re-learning the joys of rental property:

• Second-guessing decisions about putting nails into the walls.
• The inability to fix/replace minor items that annoy the crap out of you (like ruined door-stoppers).
• Mapping which plugs be relied on and which plugs are controlled by a wall switches.
• Lugging the trash down to a communal dumpster that is forty yards from my door and behind a locked door. (Always fun in 18 degree weather)
• A drive-up mailbox (with a key) that is sixty yards from my front door (also fun in 18-degree weather)
• Heat that (while free) purges the house of all moisture and makes you start every morning on the verge of a hangover.
• Giving my new address to the same pizza company we've been writing checks to for years and being told that "we don't take checks."
• A washer and dryer whose capacities are barely adequate for a pygmy living alone at a nudist camp.

The endgame puts us in a big house for the right price (barring horrific defects like last time), so I suppose I should suck it up - but I'd forgotten what I'd hated so much about renting.

Bring on March.