If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been MIA the past couple of weeks, the answer is that I’ve been in the deep, dark depths of moving hell.
As much as I love my house in the mountains, I wanted to be closer to my gazillion siblings, their delightful offspring and my parents, so I made the (very hard) decision to move back to Minnesota. Since my house is smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, I figured that it would take a long time–months, if not a year–to sell the Colorado property. If we were we based in Philly there’d be options we could use; A local we buy house company would be familiar with the area and able to sell it quickly, but Colorado is a very different state for that. It can take a long time for any property to shift in the market when you go outside of the big cities like Denver due to the lower demand, or so I thought. Since there are so many great Lots for Sale/New Homes and Land in Ogden Valley, I assumed that I’d struggle to sell my place. Nope. Within a week, it was under contract, and I started scrambling to find a new place to live in MN.
If it had just been me, it wouldn’t have been a problem. I could’ve couch-surfed with relatives or gotten a short-term rental or even stayed at a hotel while I found, bought, closed on and moved in to a new place. The problem is that it’s not just me. There are also three rather large, fairly obnoxious dogs.
In a stroke of desperation-fueled genius, I called my wonderful former landlord, Pat, and asked if he had any rentals available. He did, and the conversation went something like this:
Pat: Uh, just so you know, it’s not as nice as where you lived before.
Katie: No problem. You heard me when I said I had three dogs, right?
Pat: No, I mean, it’s really not as nice.
Katie: Is it my truck? Because living in my vehicle is Plan F if this rental house falls through.
Pat: I just don’t want you to arrive and say, “Oh my God, Pat!”
Katie: I promise I won’t say that. [Pause.] Okay, I might say that. But, even if I do, I’ll live there anyway.
After that conversation, I was expecting a cross between a cave and a crack-house, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a semi-decent place.
Sure, the interior smells like old cheese (no idea why) and years of cigarettes, but nothing is falling down. Okay, so maybe one of the windows in the kitchen fell out of its frame the other morning, but not too many things are falling down. Yet.
The basement does scare me, however. I think its the wall slime. Or maybe the kill room in the back corner.