We went to Texas last week to look for houses. Here's our story.
We woke up at around 3am in the morning on Thursday the 24th and headed to the airport. We got our bags checked in and headed up to the TSA checkpoint here at Norfolk International Airport.
We removed all possible terroristic items from our clothing; belts, shoes, my sons Godzilla toys, etc. My wife and son get pulled to the side to go through the metal detector and I get chosen for the Body Scan. I'm the next in line to get scanned when all of the sudden the TSA agents start freaking out. Everyone is told to stop moving and talking. Agents start piling in, then the supervisors. Everyone is looking at the xray machine and some guy is on the other side freaking out. Apparently they found something on this guys clothing that was an explosive so they are now trying to determine if this 24 year old white turbo nerd who looks like he lives with his parents in their basement is in fact an ISIS operative. They eventually get all of this sorted out, leaving me and my family 5 minutes to board the plane before it pulls back from the gate. We fly from Norfolk to BWI (where I had a Chipotle burrito at 8am -I highly suggest it) and then head to Love Field in Dallas, Texas.
We get off the plane, go to the rental place, get scammed into more charges by Thrifty Car Rental (just got off the phone with their customer service department) and hop in our Dodge Journey. While we are doing this, our realtor team tell us they won't be able to come show us houses. We were told they would be showing us two on thursday, two on friday and then possibly some more on monday. This was not the case so we decided to drive by the four that we were looking at to get a feel for the area.
The first one was in Venus, Texas which appears to have taken its community notes from the Korean DMZ. We scooted out of there as quickly as the potholes and packs of loose dogs would allow and then headed to Joshua, Texas, where we noticed the house we were looking at just would not work. We're talking nice McMansions across from Meth Lab Mobile Homes. We checked two other places and on the last one we finally got a call from the realtor team and they then asked us what we were looking for in a home, not to mention telling us that they wouldn't be able to show us any homes that day as we had talked about in email.
We had been talking to these people for four fuckin months and had just flown 1500+ miles. I quickly fired them that night while I was laying in bed at the hotel ( Super 8 in Weatherford, Texas, king size bed, nice place). The wife contacted the listing agent on a house in Azle, Texas and set up a viewing for the following day, Friday.
We meet up with the agent, tour the house and like it. Come to find out she is good friends with a Chief I know through work. The house is nice, in a good area and within reasonable driving distance of the base. We told her we would be in touch. That afternoon we head up some three hours away from the DFW area and go to my grandmothers house and spend time with all of my family members. We stayed there for Friday and Saturday night. Sunday, my son starts complaining about his ears and then starts screaming, so we take him to the ER in the little town of Rotan, Texas.
Here is where more fun starts. The doc who sees him has a Trache and a voice box. We can't understand shit he says and he has to speak through an interpreter. My cousin is the Administrator of this little facility and stated he was an agency doctor, and I make a mental note to tell my cousin how hilarious the whole thing is. He says the boy has an ear infection and prescribes meds. The hospital has never heard of Tricare and doesn't have a pharmacy to get him his meds. We load up our stuff along with my parents and we book ass down to Sweetwater, Texas which has a Walmart. Problems ensue with the meds, of course. One of them is no longer made. They also look a bit weirdly at the prescription for Tylenol with Codiene(fuck spelling) for a seven year old.
Of course not. Dr. Trache's info is a bit out of date.
We make our way back to the Weatherford area with my father and mother leading the way in their car.
Now, while we were visiting family we found out that my Uncle is a Realtor in the FW area and he had been contacted by my mother (his sister) to help us. Holy crap has he ever helped us. He found more houses to look at and cleared his schedule for this Monday and Tuesday, but we'll come back to that.
We get to Weatherford and by this time my sons double ear infection has turned into a full blown weaponized medical clusterfuck . His ear is leaking nasty fluid, he is screaming and crying since the pain meds wore off and when we get to the hotel we find that he has a whole body rash and strawberry tongue. It appears that the Scarlet Fever he had a few weeks before never fully went away and is now coming back full force. We go to the local ER where they pump him full of antibiotics and then discover he might be having appendix issues, so of course a CT scan is required. That happens, no appendix issues, more antibiotics, morphine and then checked out.
At 3am. We have to meet my uncle for showings by 10am (this is now Monday).
We get back to the hotel, get some rest (HA) wake up, my mom offers to stay behind and watch over my son Gage while me, my wife and father look at houses with my uncle. We look at 8 or 9 houses and in that time we encounter dogs that are in heat, multiple people touring while we are, a family of seven cooking the meanest smelling curry while we try to look at their house and a guy who had been foreclosed on who essentially told us to fuck off. The last one was fine, seeing as the neighborhood looked like a dumpster fire in front of a baby shit factory.
We narrowed it down to two houses, then to one.
We flew out this past Wednesday from Love Field in Dallas just in time to miss the storms, but I did bump into Charles Krauthammer in the TSA line next to me, so that was cool (even if I don't agree with him much of the time).
We made it home, were happy to see that our cats had survived 6 days of tons of food, water and extra litter boxes, picked up our dog from a friends house and actually really relaxed for the first time in a week.
That is until I realized the rental car company screwed me even more than I originally thought and now I have to call them. I started the process on that, so we'll see.
We start looking at the one house we had settled on. The listing agent had provided us with a home inspection report (for some reason). We scrubbed it heavily and found a few things that worried us, my uncle found things that really worried him so we didn't pursue that one. Then we found a house with more room than the one other that was left on the list and which had a lower asking price. It's in the area we want and has much of what we want in a house. They had other offers on it so we came in at $10,000 more than list as a first and final offer and it looks like we have a good shot at getting it.
Overall a fun and productive trip with tons of roadblocks, but we managed. I won't ever do it again though.
