♪ take you to the good times
♪ see you through the bad times
♪ whatever it takes is what i'm gonna do
it made my heart melt when i saw the dark comedy The Skeleton Twins with bill hader and kristen wiig, and the brother and sister character would dance and act out the song to each other even in grown adulthood. apparently it's not just me!
for years after third grade, i remembered this song, but couldn't find it on the radio (it was passe) or on CD (this was before napster) because in those days, there was no way to look up the artist for a song. no internet, no apps, no shazam, no web sites for radio stations. you had to sort of use the "ask around" method of figuring it out, or go to a well-informed record store to discover the artist for a single, and then often you might have to hum or sing it to someone for them to recognize it, which was embarrassing, especially with a cheesy-as-hell song like this one. but i found it eventually in college and hearing it always brings me back to third grade. it is beyond cheesy, but i could visualize myself someday moving into a cool house with a good-lookin' husband whenever i heard this song! at last, we're there.
2017 was one of the hardest years of my life emotionally. it felt like a series of strength tests and no punching bag to release our frustration on. jose kept asking between March and April whether i wanted to give up on selling our last house 'cause there was so much work to do every weekend and we had visitors coming in the middle of everything, but i was like "no way!". so we listed it as planned, we moved out and rented a cool place in Malden while selling Waterbell over the course of a week. we also went to cape cod for two days. the dogs were pretty chill then.
when it sold fast, we were thinking we might have to rent apartments for a year before finding a house, but we watched the weekly open houses religiously. in July, we wanted this blue house in Hyde Park, but were pretty sure it was going to get sold to another couple. there were 19 offers on it, in fact. we put our best feet and paws forward, enclosing some heartstrings in the note about how much our charming dogs were shopping for a better yard.
but then, the appraisal wouldn't come up with the cost that we had offered to pay for the house and the bank was pretty fixed on not re-doing their appraisal. so that was a grueling three weeks of hemming and hawing about the price and whether to walk away. we finally did a second appraisal with another bank and everything was kosher. then the owners asked to stay in the house 5 weeks from closing, which was 4 weeks after our own closing. and in the midst of this, my sister was in the hospital in California, having a health crisis, so it was sort of all raining and pouring for a month.
it was hard to find dog-friendly short term rentals, so we used airBnB and hopped from one place to the next, bringing 1 suitcase and about a dozen grocery bags that contained toothbrushes, socks, laundry detergent, a can opener, some wine or beer and basic groceries. usually when we moved out of a house, jose had a weekend job to go to, so we'd trek around in the car with all our belongings in the trunk for 7 hours until the next move-in was ready for us.
when we moved out of waterbell, things were great for our buyers there, and i only wish i had rented an apartment with a yard for the whole time because (as you read, below, in "azulita") lucy ended up resenting the lack of space to run around in our Cambridge AirBnB rentals, and I think all of us were generally depressed about moving on a weekly basis. jose's back got very sore from all the stress and different beds. it sucked, in short.
then i decided at the very end of labor day weekend, after a ton of thought, to quit my job. this position was so financial that it often felt like it was learning Trigonometry in Japanese and in this metaphor, it would also be that i had only learned algebra so far. no matter how positive my attitude, i just couldn't like the struggle of learning this job and the effort was exhausting me. so i gave about 8 weeks' notice and decided to try and help them with the transition while focusing more on life: finding a job that is more suitable, and maybe job hunting from home for a while this coming October.
moving in here last week was seamless and comforting. the neighborhood is so sweet that there was even an ice cream truck approaching the house upon our arrival (i still can't get over that)!!
we have a lot to unpack now, but we're a combination of relieved, excited and wagging.
the house is designed so well already, everything's blue (we both love blue), and the back yard is paradise. the commute is pretty relaxing. i hope it's all going to be UP! from here. (cards by jessica scissorhands)
photos of this past week via intagram.com/lara_sue
the dogs' new license to live in Boston:
azulita's profile picture
a few hours later, his wife brought us a ginger pumpkin bread that was such a delightful surprise. wow.
