Welcome to the State Of.....Limbo

Andrew and I have officially moved. We are no longer college students in a college town! We are confused people in a different college town than the one that we went to. We're trying to be big kids and get all settled into our new situation before Andrew starts his big kid job at a company called National Instruments (often referred to as NI) at the end of the month. The problem is that nothing has really gone very smoothly in this whole escapade. I would chronicle the whole thing on here for everyone to read, but that would take about seventeen years, and I don't really want to do that. So I won't. :)

I will tell you a few blurbs of what happened along the way.

(This is Andy, in the blue.  I know you may not be used to hearing from me here, but I decided to chime in as I proofread this post.  Anyways, these blurbs sum up just about the whole story as if it were all told.  Not sure how she avoided the 17 years, but we're lucky she did.)

Blurb Numero Uno: Austin Round One

Andrew and I came down to Austin on a house hunting trip in the beginning of May. This was just a few weeks after graduation, so we were as fresh as a patch of dandelion weeds (and almost as intelligent) while marching around down here. We were searching for a cute little rental HOUSE where we could live for a while, saving up for a down payment for a purchase later. After much searching and confusedness, we found a place that we liked. Really liked. Have you ever found a place that you went in, and you could just envision a haven of domestic felicity and marital bliss? You know, the kind that comes with Him walking through the door at 5:59, and Her having dinner ready on the table, and He says, "You wonderful babe of a woman, you, I'm taking you on a date to the theatre this evening!" and She says, "You wonderfully kind hunk, you, I've made you a scrumptious dinner!" and He says, "Mine darling, would you care to crochet while I read to you later this evening?" and She says, "Oh YES! I've been needing a bit of relaxing!" and He says, "And while I'm at it, why don't I give you a foot rub and tell you all the reasons why you're the best newlywed housewife in the world!" (She is, by the way.)

You know. That kind?

Blurb the Second: Signing and Waiting

Well, after all my bizarre delusions of grandeur, I decided that this was the one that I wanted. So we put in our application on the place, and we waited. A lot. Apparently all of the credit check agencies were backed up from Elko, Nevada to Moscow because of all the other people who also were trying to rent places to live.  (Texas in general, and Austin in particular, haven't seen much of an economic downturn and is a magnet for business growth these days.  And people too - the kind car rental person told us that 60,000 people move to Austin each year.) I don't see why the credit check people couldn't just see by my extraordinarily pretty name that I should be the first in line! I mean, really- Natashya. Think about it. It's a gorgeous name. So we waited a week for what usually took just a day. And then we got the news- "Yall got the house!!! I'm going to send you the contract in a day or two!"- from our real estate agent. (Who pulled all the strings for us, but still didn't get things to work out.  She deserves some cookies or something)  We liked that news.

Blurb Terceiro: Making Moving Arrangements

We signed the contract with relish and flourish, savoring the moment. Our first rented house! We called the moving company, and scheduled everything to be moved the last week of the month of May: we were to move in on June 1! (It should also be noted that whenever I say the words "We called... scheduled... set up..." and other such phrases, unless otherwise stated, I mean "Andrew" instead of "we.")

Fourth Blurb: Flergh to all Mondays and Phones!

On Monday, that fateful Monday................................ Something TERRIBLE happened! You know when the phone rings, and you just get that feeling- that feeling that comes with foreboding, like you just know that it's your project partner calling you to say that he or she didn't do their part of the presentation, which is due in about 30 minutes, even though they had 17 days to work on it? That feeling that comes with a gnawing sense of dread that hangs on to the corners of your mouth and pulls them down towards the earth? That feeling that comes with unease that grabs on to your eyebrows and drags them in and down towards your nose, forming crinkles of worry on your concerned brow?  (Oh, all too well.  Most group projects in school were terrible.  Except for a few my senior year, like the project for Kinematics where we made a chime-piano, or for Dynamics where we-- but that's another story. Or several.)

The phone rang on that fateful Monday, and it was accompanied by THAT kind of dark feeling. I didn't want Andrew to answer it. I knew it would be bad. Besides, Andrew was napping, and he can get cranky when he's tired. I shouldn't have to deal with bad news AND a cranky Randy. But answer he did. And I wished again that he hadn't.  (Though, it should be noted that I didn't get cranky.  She did.)

It turns out that our brand new landlady had be served with divorce papers that morning, and was therefor by law unable to let out the property. (And WHY is it called being SERVED with divorce papers? That's hardly an act of service to anyone. It's bad enough that they they ruin other people's lives, but to ruin their own marriage? That's just a mean thing.) So........................................ we don't have that house anymore. It's kind of heartbreaking, especially after all of those silly little daydreams I concocted for the house. I knew where my garden would be, where the flowers would go, where my craft table would go, and what kind of curtains I would make for the windows.  (Except the last part, I hadn't got to that yet in my fantasies. But I would have shortly after. It was the next step.)  (Guys - did you know that girls do this all the time?  News to me.  I had no clue any of this had gone on in her head.  Also, they apparently all have their weddings planned by something like age 12, while us guys even age 25 have come to the decision that maybe they might like to get married if they could someday.  Consider yourself warned.)

And I should also add here a cute story-within-a-story.  Tashya was furious at the soon-perhaps-to-be-ex-husband of the landlady for taking this to court at this time.  She was just shy of wishing some imagined past mafia connection resurface and exact its vengeance on him.  But! - not before wanting to give the landlady (She was apparently the one wanting to lease to us.)  some cookies and a hug.  

Blurb Five: Homeless and Not Much Time

We knew that we were moving in a few weeks, but we had nowhere to move INTO! We got a little nervous. So we looked online again, saw that all of the other houses that we were interested in were taken, and that we were either going to have to live far FAR away from work, or live in an apartment. There was an APARTMENT (Note the capitalized HOUSE in blurb Numero Uno) complex in the area that we had been looking in, and we heard from some friends that it was a nice place. We signed a contract without ever seeing the place in real life since we needed somewhere to live. We'll see it for the first time tomorrow, when we can officially move in to our new home.

Lurbbay the Ixthsay: Sitting in Austin and Waiting

All of our stuff is on a truck somewhere, including our car. We've been staying in a temporary living place. I know that sounds like we're staying somewhere we'll only be alive for a short amount of time, but it's actually just a furnished apartment. No death traps or superhero stuff. It's really not all that dangerous!  (As far as we can tell!!) Except for the fact that we moved in above a guy who just had abdominal surgery, and wants us to "not step too heavily" for the next two months while he recovers. I don't know which is worse: being the healing person or being the person tiptoeing around being paranoid about being the fat oaf that disturbs the healing person. I suppose that I'll get over it a lot faster than Downstairs Man will, though. I'll be cured as soon as we move into our new place.  He may take a while to heal...

Also...when the Downstairs Man left us a note on our door, it was addressed to Ignacio and Mauricio.  I'm not sure what prompted that.  Did we sound overly Mexican or something?

Blurb Last: The Wrap Up

So ya, that's the basics of what's been going on with us. Now that we're not dying of dehydration or stress anxiety, and rather more amused at the fact that humidity makes my hair curly, I'll try to keep people more up to date on things in the Heim world. Does that sound good to people? I hope it does. Because that's what's going to happen.

Have a glorious day!
Your friendly local (or non-local, as the case may be) Moi
(And also Andy)