I am writing this on Thursday, which feels calmer than yesterday, and 100x calmer than Tuesday. We officially arrived in Memphis on Tuesday, after three nights of camping in the Smoky Mountains, and living in a friend's townhouse for the entire month prior. I have only had access to the possessions we could cram into suitcases and our cars since May 20th. I have not had the ability to sit on a regular-sized couch and comfortably watch TV while also scrolling Instagram and getting incensed by Twitter since then, either. I mean I can still get second-hand Instagram jealous and stay up-to-date on the latest Twitter memes, but it's only been from a 50-year-old arm chair your grandmother probably wouldn't have let you sit in anyway, or a front passenger seat, or the bed in the camper, or a hotel room. I haven't fallen asleep and dropped my phone on my face in over a month.
We drove directly to the new house on our way in, the new house that we put an offer on without ever having seen it in person. Another agent in the same real estate office came and met us there and let us walk through it. It looked the same as it did in photos and on FaceTime, except that it didn't, because pictures and FaceTime can only do so much. It is more tired on the inside than I thought, and dirtier. Not in a completely cut and run, abandoned way, but in a "we have lived in this house since 1991, and the wife passed away at some point (there were black and white wedding pictures still on the wall, but just one name on the purchase agreement), and our kids are now grown so no one has probably lived upstairs in a lot of years, and we vacuumed before we took the pictures and that's the extent of it." Like I knew that it needed work, but it's hard to really prepare yourself for what that actually means.
I left the house feeling excited but also tremendously overwhelmed. Matt says he still would have put an offer on the house even if we would have been shopping for it like regular people (in person) which made me feel better, because I'm always overly-sensitive about what he thinks about big purchases. There are some suspect water stains on the ceiling. The water heater was installed in 2002 -- frankly I'm impressed it's still there. It needs all new carpet upstairs. The kitchen is dated and needs to be attacked with Clorox. We are prepared to put in work, but I was not prepared for how I would feel about that after over a month of being homeless, with another month to go (we do not close until the end of July). All I want to do is just get STARTED on it, because it looms large. But we can't, obviously. The inspection is on Monday, and we will just go from there.
After the house we headed to the hotel we are staying at, which is up in Millington near the Naval base, about a half hour away. It reeked of skunk and death outside when we got to the hotel, which was not a good omen, and didn't help my mood (TO SAY THE LEAST). The hotel is tiny. We have stayed in these specific ones before in San Diego and in Norfolk, and they have been very large and up-to-date facilities designed for families who are PCSing (changing duty stations). We lived at the one in Norfolk for three weeks when we first moved to Virginia, and Bug actually started Kindergarten from there. But that one was set up like a mini apartment -- a decent-sized kitchen (for a hotel room), a couch and TV, and two bedrooms off either side of the living area. Super doable for an extended amount of time. This is a regular-size hotel room with two queen beds, and then a closet-sized kitchenette off one corner. What was great about the VA one was that we could put her to bed and still live our life (the bane of every parent's existence when staying in a hotel with small children) ... that's obviously not the case here. And don't even get me started on the "kitchen."
Coming off the visit to the house, I was in less than a good mood after we checked into the hotel. I JUST WANT TO BE SOMEWHERE THAT IS LIVABLE. Nothing around me is livable for the foreseeable future. AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH. Then I had Matt drop me off at the YMCA down the street and I swam for an hour. On our way, we saw the offending skunk carcass. (Update: It's now Thursday, and it's still there OMG)
Wednesday morning we were all up at 3:00 a.m. to drive Matt to the airport so he could catch an early flight back to Norfolk to get our other car and the rest of our belongings to drive back here. The original plan was for Bug to stay in the room by herself asleep with the dog (we have been experimenting with this for short times on some early early mornings, and it has generally been just fine) while I drove him to the airport and back. She ended up waking up as we were leaving (see: crap hotel room setup) so she and the dog came along. We dropped him off and came back and somehow we all fell asleep for a bit again, which was good. The three of us (dog, Bug, me) made it through a trip to Ikea to window shop new bedroom stuff for her, a lunch of Swedish meatballs (her), and then a trip to Target. If you're wondering about the dog, we have this nifty bag from Timbuk2 called the mutt mover, and it's been a GAME CHANGER. It's probably not the most rule-following thing, but we essentially put him in the backpack and take him inside wherever and no one is the wiser. It does have head holes where he can poke his head out like a turtle when it wouldn't be frowned upon to see a dog, but I keep him all zipped up at most places. We're usually pretty incognito (he doesn't bark) but yesterday while we were checking out at Target someone squeaked a dog toy SEVERAL FUCKING TIMES and I thought the backpack was going to wrestle me to the ground. We managed to make it outside on our own (i.e. we were not escorted out) even after I asked for a roll of quarters so we could do laundry at the hotel and the woman counted out forty quarters individually.
I went to swim early this morning at the Y again and left Bug and the dog at the hotel. Naturally when I came back the power was out at the hotel, because shit like this only happens when you're like "OK, nothing will go wrong, I will be back as soon as I can!" But she was pretty calm about it. Don't worry, I bought her Starbucks afterward.
Matt comes back early this afternoon, and then... I don't know what we are going to do. Twiddle our thumbs.
No comments:
Post a Comment