Fear of pen and paper

I decided to celebrate Halloween this year by doing the scariest thing I could possibly imagine . . . signing mortgage papers.
Seriously.
Terrifying.
Experience.
I mean I am really quite proud of myself for not fainting, barfing, screaming, crying, or really showing any overtly visible signs of the minor mental breakdown I experienced. The entire series of events seemed orchestrated to bring about my demise. First of all, my incredibly patient loan officer and real estate agent both assured me that the escrow officer would call me to schedule an appointment and that I did not need to call her. Basically this was their nice way of allowing her some peace and advising me against subjecting her to the same level of harassment out of me to which they had already become accustomed.
So I took their advice and I waited. While I waited I called each of them. I also emailed each of them. I also made my husband email them and perhaps I even pestered said husband to call them as well. I am not really such a neurotic person it’s just that things do not register in my plane of reality until they have a color-coded place on my Google-calendar. Therefore a lack of a solid appointment or even a specified day that appointment would take place, meant that I did not feel confidant the signing of our mortgage papers would ever happen.
Then, on Friday October 31st and about 11:00 the phone rang and it was our escrow officer. Now it is entirely possible that it was in my best mental interest to schedule the appointment not too far in advance of it actually occurring, thus giving me less time to stress out and increasing the chance that I would not curl up into the fetal position at the thought of that much debt and therefore be unable to leave the house much less drive to an office and appear mentally competent enough to enter into legal contracts. Yes it is entirely possible that if the escrow officer had called days in advance like I wanted her to, I would have been dragged into the office by my husband whimpering and slobbering all over myself. BUT if I could have been called perhaps, oh I don’t know, 30 min to an hour before I needed to be there? That would have been just awesome.
Instead a very cheery lady called me to find out if I “had time to come on in and sign papers” RIGHT NOW. So in a flurry of paperwork and forms of identification and phone calls to previously mentioned, incredibly patient, loan officer and real estate agent we made our way down to the title company’s office. Where we were greeted by a receptionist who offered me candy (because it was Halloween) and coffee (because the only thing in the world my nerves needed less that sugar was caffeine.) So I am sitting in the lobby vacillating between thinking that I might have some coffee because it would be comforting and realizing that I am already shaking and even decaf would probably send me over the edge into full on convulsions, when a cheerleader comes out and announces she is our escrow officer.
Yup, a cheerleader.
This annoyingly cheerful woman was so fit and thin that she was apparently able to fit into her old high school cheerleading outfit 20+ years after the pom-poms were put down. I, on the other hand, had not yet managed to do my hair, put on make-up, or even eat breakfast. Sigh. I can tell you that God is up there somewhere though because she was very efficient and thorough and we were out of there in under an hour with zero questions to take back to our real estate agent. I will however, probably be unable to attend football games due to my new phobia of cheerleaders.