When we woke up at 7am this morning, this was our to do list:

1. Pack the kitchen
2. Clean the empty apartment
3. Close on the house
4. Meet Charter person for internet at 1pm
5. Meet appliances delivery people at unknown time
6. Meet MassSave in home assessment person at 3:30 or 4pm

By 10am, when we had completed zero tasks, we made a few calls and edited our to do list to the following:

1. Pack the kitchen
2. Clean the empty apartment
3. Close on the house

Adulting is hard and clearly, we initially signed up for more of it than we are adult enough to do.  The good news is that when you’re an adult, you can sometimes decide when and how much adulting you will do in a given day.

Right now, Carl has gone to collect the final piece of info and meet the others for signing/closing so we can give them all our money and officially move into our beloved, yellow home.  I am supposed to be cleaning and packing the last bits in our apartment, and I have been, but the baby fell asleep in her swing and I decided to take just a few minutes to sit down, drink a beer, and tell you all a little bit about our hole in the ground before we leave it for good this evening.

When we found this apartment, my sweet Sunshine was just under two months old, we’d been living in hotels for nearly three weeks, and had looked at more apartments than I care to count.  Some were in terrifying parts of unfamiliar cities, some were in skyscrapers, most were too expensive and ALL prohibited any pets the size and breeds of my dogs.  I was completely disheartened.  My older dog, Why?lee was fifteen at the time and I have never left him behind in my life except for the one month we spent apart when I went to work at camp with Carl in the summer of 2005.  It was impossible for me to imagine leaving him or our eleven year old dog, Orion behind, and yet, things were looking grim.

Then, one sunny September day, I had a list of three apartments to visit.  The first was in a  skyscraper in the middle of Worcester and didn’t take dogs over 50lbs, the second was twice what we could afford, and the third was so perfect when I pulled in, I sat in the car for five minutes preparing myself to find out it wouldn’t work without crying.  I was tired of looking, tired of living out of a suitcase, and tired of eating out all the time. Although I was returning to Idaho in a couple of weeks, I wanted to know Carl was squared away and that when we finally moved in December, our dogs could come, too.

The first thing I noticed was the coffee shop right at the entrance to the complex, I just knew it was a good omen.  Then I noticed there were tons of children playing out in front of the older, brick buildings.  A family place.  Yes.  Then I toured a ground floor apartment with the manager.  There was one available, in our price range, that happened to be right next to the laundry room, and as close as you could get to the shared dog run.  Next to the dog run was a bike rack and about twenty bikes, none of which were locked up.  It was even more than I had ever hoped to find.

Then the apartment manager asked what kind of dogs we have and my heart sank.  Here we go, I thought, bracing myself for the word, “No.”  But when I said we had two, large dogs–a Shepard mix and a pit bull mix, he just smiled and said, “Cool.”

A week later, we moved in and for seven months this little place was home.  A safe, happy haven for my daughter and the many other children living here and a rare apartment complex willing to not notice what kind of dogs I have, making it possible for us to all be together while we searched for our permanent home.  So while I’m beyond ready to move into our house and I won’t miss apartment living, my heart is warm and full of gratitude for this place.

Onward!  : )

(Photo taken our first night in the apartment, Sept 2016.)