Wheeee! Gulp.

Well.

We just bought a house. Yes, it's the one from the last post. Want to see the front hall? I have frosted-glass French doors to my living room. Here it is:


I am very happy. Here are some of the deets:

1) The location is fantastic: The house is about 200 feet away from where we live now, on a street filled with young families, a quiet street with toddlers and young couples in old houses with compact fuel-efficient foreign cars parked in the driveway. We met a mom with a young toddler out for a stroll and she named babies and parents all up and down the street, university people and computer-industry people. They have mommy clubs. Urban pretenders, just like us, I guess. But I won't be afraid for Munchkin to veer off the sidewalk on the trike we're thinking of maybe getting her for her 2nd birthday. I will put out decorations for Halloween in anticipation of a load of kids at the door. I will sit on my covered front porch with a beer on summer evenings, listening to wind rustle in my trees rather than traffic whooshing past at 70km/h. Imagine this, but with less snow:



2) And it's like we won the lottery: When I first saw the house three weeks ago, it was listed for $359,900. We bought it today for $335,000. This leaves us, after our settlement with the Condo Jerks, signing up for a mortgage of $255,000, with $30,000 in hand for all the moving / closing costs, and the immediate needs of updated (ie, insurable) wiring, probable new furnace, and air-conditioner. Whatever is left we save for next year's kitchen reno. No matter what, we're in a better position financially than we were before, and have an $80,000 chunk of real equity in the home the minute we move in, as well as actual cash money for the inevitable surprise expenses. When I get sticker shock, I try to think of it as a $255K house, rather than a $335K house, because it's the lower number we're actually on the hook for.

3) We've got breathing room for the move: We close on the new house house one month before we have to be out of our current house: easy move, time for electrical work to be done, no need for 24 hours of sheer panic of in and out. Compare to my contingency plan of moving us out of our current house and into rental accomodations if we couldn't find a house in the next month, and you will find extra cause for relief.

4) Convenience: I think I'm about 200 feet closer to Starbucks in the new house; and 200 feet closer to work, also.

And yet? I can't sleep. Because I'm freaking out.

Here's the actual point of my post: how do you stop yourself from worrying about everything? I am finding, to my great dismay, that the older I get, the more anxious I become. Yesterday I worried our offer wouldn't be accepted: today, I worry that the 1950s-era kitchen cabinets of my new home won't be deep enough to accomodate our dishes. Or that our mortgage won't be extended. I run the gamut from the most detailed of minutiae to the largest or setbacks. Can't stop that hamster wheel of anxiety from revving up my heart rate, robbing me of sleep, even though, god help us, I have the FLU and have been barely able to carry myself upright since Friday morning. So now I'm worried additionally about what tomorrow morning is going to look like, if I'm setting this whole family up for a lousy Monday and ensuring that once more I accomplish nothing at the office. How very helpful of me.

Seriously. How do you stop worrying?

I've got to put a stop to this. This should be a post about my family doing the happy dance. And I am doing the happy dance, I am. But I am, simultaneously, worried about ... um, everything.

I want to know if you have any tricks, preferably not involving alcohol (that, I already know about, thank-you-very-much). I really want to enjoy this moment of triumph and success for the Family Breach. We are truly fortunate and this outcome is the best of all possible cases (barring the home inspector discovering cracks in the foundation this week ... fingers crossed ...)