When I came to visit for the month of September, the primary item on our agenda was to find a new home. Something small and homey, with room for the dog to run. Each week we looked at Craigslist and Zillow, the local newspaper and the Loomis Facebook page. We told everyone we knew and even had a local realtor friend checking on upcoming properties for us.
Finally, on the last day of September, just hours before my return to Ohio, we visited what this week became our new home.
But not without lots of minor hiccups along the way.
The current tenant hadn't yet given her landlord notice, because she was waiting for everything to be finalized with the home she had just purchased. So we didn't actually know if or when we would be moving in.
I had more than one meltdown about where I was going to work and where the dog was going to sleep and how I was going to feel about moving to California in November and living in a place that wasn't ours. Out of suitcases until this place came thru. Which prompted Randy to wonder if this was in fact the place for us, or if he should find us somewhere that we could immediately move into on or around November 10 when we'd be arriving after a 16-day road trip.
But 3 days into our trip, the last week of October while at my grandma's in Arkansas, we got word that the current tenant had given notice. We were then able to speak with the landlord, fill out a rental application, and sign a rental agreement, all over our cell phones. The place would be ours! We just had to wait until December 1.
Meanwhile, Randy had an office all setup for me in the condo he was living in, and a place for the dog to sleep. My clothes found their way into the closet and we enjoyed a comfortable three weeks together, hoping each day that the current tenant would decide to move out early so we could get in and settled.
She didn't.
In fact, she injured herself so she wasn't able to clean the place, an assignment left to her by the landlord who was out of town getting a face lift, having left another one of her tenants in charge of caring for her 35 indoor cats.
So when we finally did get into our new home we found nests of black widow spiders, earthworms creeping along the tile floors, a distinct cat smell, and two days worth of cleaning on our hands.
Nevertheless, we enjoyed cleaning side by side, creating the welcoming environment we had dreamed of.
When the day came to move in our stuff, a mix up meant Randy's suburban was not at our disposal. And there was no way we could move everything in my car.
So we went shopping! Where we found a great deal on a washer and dryer. And my credit card was promptly declined.
99 percent of the time I appreciate Capital One's fraud protection which automatically declines "unusual" purchases. But this was not one of them.
Then, at the same store, while admiring a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, we broke the one ornament that decorated its pitiful branches.
Still determined, we gathered Randy's son and another friend and made our move on Wednesday. Even while the rain poured down and my phone repeatedly alerted us to the flash flood warnings that made our new country living driveway a muddy mess and drew even more earthworms into our living room.
But here we are at last! Happily making a home. Not even letting the mountain lion that lives in our backyard deter us from loving life together!
No comments:
Post a Comment