Jinx'd

It's my fault. I should never have let Jeff play around on the Sherman-Williams website. See, it's kinda cool. You can load a jpeg of a room on there and then change the color of the walls and trim to your heart's delight.
And of course, I'd mentally put my hive of bees out back and established my puppet workshop in the basement.
We might as well have hung signs around our necks saying "Kick Us!"
Here's the delio: we were --no, we ARE -- in escrow. The house inspection (400 clams thank you very much) passed with flying colors. We talked with an agent about home owner's insurance. We patted ourselves on the back for getting it done by the end of April so that we'd get the tax credit. We figured out a way around the FHA requirement of mandatory connection to the public sewer system. All that was require was the inspection of the septic tank and we (and Sherwin Williams) would be good to go.
The way is was phrased to us was "The septic tank has reached the end of its life." As if the tank were lying in a dimly lit room, propped up on pillows, surrounded by loved ones.
Now, here's what I just don't get: the connection fee to the local sewer --not the pipes, not the labor, just the privilege of connecting to a service that will then bill you monthly -- is $16,000.
To be this close and have it yanked away. It feels like a taunting.
I feel like I've been run over by a cartoon steam roller and am now an eighth of an inch thick.
Weeks of stress and sleepless nights and it's square one again.
Ah well. I suppose the good thing about being run over by a cartoon steam roller, instead of the real thing, is that all it takes is a bicycle pump to be back in shape.