Picture this... it's April 2013 in Whitefish Montana. I'm sweeping my kitchen, I'm 8 months pregnant with our 3rd child, my kids are watching bubble guppies and my phone rings. It's a well known realtor in town and he's asking me if today was a good day to come put a for sale sign in our yard.
Como say, what?
I proceeded to explain he must have the wrong number and that we are renting this property and the house is not, in fact, for sale. He then repeated my address and the name of our owner, which I kindly confirmed, and then he not so kindly confirmed that our house was really, for reals, for sale.
I held back panicked pregnant lady tears, as I hung up with him and called my landlord. She said she had heard nothing of the sort, and that she would call me back when all this mashugana was straightened out. She called back an hour later and for the 3rd time that day I was told our house was for sale.
This is wear I pressed the panic button.
So many things went racing through my brain and I think I went into a weird shock. I immediately ran around the house packing all the regular and LED candles into a box. Then I taped the box shut and labeled it "Candles." Then, I put it in the garage and for some weird reason I felt better.
Over the course the of the next few days, I learned that because we had a contract with our landlord, regardless of whether the house sold or not, we could stay until October...whew, relief. THEN I learned they would be showing it whenever they dang well pleased and that I need to keep it in showing condition, while almost 9 months pregnant with a 3 year old and 5 year old in tow. Aaand the relief is gone, please pass the tums.
Luckily (but not so luckily) our house sold in ONE day. My brain almost couldn't compute it. I decided that the most important thing was to focus on my family and our impending arrival of an adorable little baby that deserved our full attention and excitement. So right then and there I very quickly, conscientiously, and a little too willingly, went into full fledged denial.
When our new, little, adorable, baby Miley was one month old, the housing panic came creeping back in. Even though I knew we had 8 months to vacate, I still felt pressure and stress. We live in a resort town where it snows 8 months a year. That means rent prices are HIGH and things only come up for rent during the very short summer. You have to strike when the iron is hot, or you could end up living in a shanty apartment, paying out the wahzoo.
I started looking for houses to rent and after seriously considering moving into the abandoned fire station above City Hall, (not kidding-wish I was) we decided on a reasonably priced townhouse that was 1/3 a mile from the lake. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than homeless with 3 kids. We set our move out date for June 22, which meant we had three weeks to pack up and move our stuff, our 2 big kids and our 7 week old baby. The task seemed daunting, at BEST.
Little did I know it was about to get WAY worse.
Our lovely house on Cedar Street.
The kids still lovingly refer to it as "Our Blue House"
1 comment:
Reading these posts - I had no idea! Craziness!
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