Pure unadulterated whining. You've been warned.

Do you know what today is? Today is the day my townhouse CLOSES. I am sitting here waiting for the instant message from Phillip that we are In The Clear, but he is Currently Away and my telepathic attempts to will him back to Online status are unsuccessful. What if the escrow company calls, but all they have to say is, "Hello Phillip and Maggie Homebuyer! We regret to inform you that your gigando down payment check bounced this morning! Bummer! No house for you!" And then the $3.99 champagne I have sitting in my car will have to be consumed in the OLD living room instead of the NEW living room. Where it will be used for drowning our collective sorrow instead of christening the new hardwoods. That will SUCK. So can the escrow company please just call already?

In the meantime, I am nursing a bum knee. This happens to me every so often, but this time I woke up with a still-sore knee and it's a little worrying. It's as if my body knows it will soon be required to heft large boxes up and down two flights of stairs and is only playing good defense. Maybe my body thinks that pulling an old lady stunt is going to guilt Phillip into performing all the heavy lifting, but I know better. So stop it, bum knee. Shape up! What's wrong with your knee when you feel fine just walking back and forth, but going up and down stairs is close to excruciating? I will tell you what. I conducted an Office Poll and the general consensus around here is that I? Am getting old. As the youngest person in my office by FAR, the old fogies have taken it upon themselves to heap large doses of Old Age wisdom on my sorry 25-year-old ass. "I know I'm not supposed to ask you this," begins The Boss, "but how old are you?"

And I reply, "You've asked me plenty of times before and I always tell you that I am 25."

"Ah!" says The Boss. "Then you are just Getting Old." And then proceeds to share with me the story of when he woke up, at the tender age of 23, to discover that his body just didn't work the way it used to.

"Ah yes," agree the Old Coworkers. "Welcome to our pain." Which they then describe to me, individually and in colorful detail.

WhatEVER. My knees have always been kinda wimpy and I blame this, like every other bodily failure, on four years of high school basketball misery. Okay, so maybe they started popping and cracking a lot more after high school and my occasional bouts of bum knee have prevented me from, oh, hiking up the Great Wall of China and also wearing high heels-

HEY! I wore heels yesterday. To church. Because I thought: Church! Must look respectable. Must wear shoes that convey fashionable yet appropriate grown upness. This is TOTALLY why I'm not going to be able to move myself in this week. Stupid shoes.

On the other hand, yay for not being quite old enough to use the Getting Old excuse!

Stupid escrow company still hasn't called.

Did I even tell you about going to sign the papers Friday night? So we drive ourselves all the way up to Everett which is, like, practically Anchorage when you factor in Friday night traffic. And then the five-inch-high stack of papers on which I was forced to write out Margaret A. Cheung in perfect script on every corner? After the fortieth page I totally had the signature for writing prescriptions. A big M, scribble scribble, flamboyant g, crossed t. A big star-shaped A, then a big C, scribble scribble, and one more extra-flamboyant g. (Except for the places where I accidentally started to write Maggie and then moved into the Margaret and where it looks like I misspelled my own name. And they let me buy a house. I know!) About five or six of these papers were about declaring my identity. Also Known As: every single combination of my nickname, married name, maiden name and with or without initials. "The lender is just being safe," explained the Oompa Loompa-sized lady with the big bug eyeglasses and the blazer with the 80's shoulder pads and the unfortunate choice in lipstick. But who, we were thankful to note, used about 500 bazillion less words than our real estate agent. "Can you imagine how long we'd have to be there if we were signing papers with TOM?" we asked ourselves. "Oh THANK YOU God of Real Estate!"

In short: I probably signed away my entire bank account, my firstborn, my red couches, my upcoming trip to Italy, my rights to party and pursuit of happiness. But at least I have a house!

Almost. WHY AREN'T THEY CALLING ME?!?!?!

UPDATE:

I HAVE KEYS! WHEE!