Fuuuudgesilcles.

This week (8 months?) has been an emotional roller coaster I tell you. We got great news yesterday morning when we heard that Jeff's 'Lost' pieces sold (AWESOME! Cha-ching!) which was promptly followed by a phone call from our BofA mortgage loan underwriters asking us to submit our 2009 tax return ASAP. Um... don't we have until April 15th? NO! We were waiting to submit them because we were going to use a CPA this year AND we wanted to cash in on our $8,000 tax credit for buying a home. Well no. Since Jeff is self-employed, they need hard proof of what he's raking in so we needed to get on it right then. It was painful. We did it together on H&R Block online (which was really easy to use actually and I'm glad we did that instead of shelling out $500 for a CPA) but it took awhile and we were hit hard. Hard enough to pretty much wipe out that $8,000 coming back to us. I guess it's a good thing that we owed that much, it meant that Jeff brought in a good chunk last year, but I need to get used to forking over a check like that every April. I was pretty grumpy last night. We saved accordingly during the year though so we're going to be okay, it just sucked.

Plus, because we submitted our taxes one week before we're actually buying the house, we couldn't claim it just yet so our tax credit couldn't pay our taxes, our poor savings account had to. I thought that meant we couldn't get the 8K until we filed 2010 taxes and I almost cried. A little internet research told me we can file an amendment after we get the house and so we'll get that money back pretty quickly. Phew.

Jeff keeps saying "Nothing is ever easy!! ARGH!!" and it's kind of true when it comes to being self-employed and buying a house. There are so many steps to this process and so many highs and lows. To have ridden this roller coaster for 9 months has made us both want to puke and we can't even fathom what it's going to feel like on March 26th when we sign that last signature and become members of the landed aristocracy...