(But JOY, because I got a job doing what I love.)
Currently, I am living rent free with my two new roomies, Deidra and Carly. This is they:
They are darling. I LOVE them.
How are we living rent free, you ask? It turns out the housing market's dive helped some penny-pinching twenty-something chickies save a few bucks: our landlord had to foreclose on the house, and could no longer legally charge us rent. Ta daaah!! The girls have been living there for free since April, and I got to start reaping the benefits when I moved in early September. The house goes up for auction in November, but even IF it gets bought and the peeps want to kick us out rather than issuing a new lease, they have to give us at least 60 days to do so.
Abra cadabra: free rent until January.
"WOW!" all the blog readers exclaimed. "That sounds too good to be true!"
Whoops, it is.
Right before I moved in, the roomies had a goodbye party for another roomie moving out. In one ill-conceived moment of festive frivolity, the party guests decided to make a real fire in our gas fireplace. (They wanted to make s'mores.) The gas pipe melted, the gas began to leak, everyone screamed and ran away, the gas was shut off, and later, the gas man told us with a low stern voice not to turn it back on at any cost, unless we had already fixed it.
Normally a landlord would take care of that sort of thing.
But our landlord is currently fleeing the country.
Pish! Who needs heat in sunny September? WE'RE not going to fork over $1,000 to fix a house we're not going to be living in much longer!
But then October descended, and the frost creeped in, and the poor little fraulines woke up, shivering in their beds...
We really are shivering in our beds, our house was 54 degrees yesterday. That is FREEZING!! I could barely move my fingers to make red ink slashes on essays.
Our solution: keep the oven on full blast, and drag space heaters around. WE ARE RESOURCEFUL WOMEN.
However: it turns out space heaters use up lots of voltage. Also, hair dryers use up lots of voltage. Also, when there is so much voltage, fuses blows, power fails, and the world is plunged into darkness.
The afore-mentioned series of events meant that at 5:15am this morning, I was kneeling on top of the basement tool bench in my bath robe, hair soaking wet, reaching for the fuse switches, and cursing under my breath. What a way to start off Monday.
But hey, at least we have electricity, right?
Wrong.
We received an electric bill which heinously illustrated the frantic attempts of our former landlord to compile his debts and foist them off on poor innocent damsels in distress. The bill was for over $1,000, and represented electricity bills from his other properties. "What are we going to do??!!" we asked each other, appalled. WE can't pay that. Good thing it's in his name-- PAH! No debts attached to us. Solution: we just won't pay it.
Which means that the electric company will shut off our power.
Which means that in about a week, we will have no power.
Anyway, the point of the story is that I'm once more house hunting. Haha!
Another pertinent update includes this handsome dude:
Who, besides being dashing, is a good, good man and-- hooray-- in mutual big-time crush with me. We were off to the ballet in this picture. He went with me to the BALLET!
So life progresses. Teaching is exhausting, stressful, and great-- I've had kids dress up like Beowulf swamp monsters, plan their own funerals (to consider how they want to be remembered-- don't worry, it makes sense), put on plays, blog, act out the Iliad, debate, and humor my many voices, theatrics, and slips of the tongue. (Note to all: it is inadvisable to call Jesus "fugly" when teaching at a private Christian school.) Marc-- the dashing scruffy one-- is terrific, and an incredible source of encouragement, support, and back rubs. And even though my housing situation leaves much to be desired, I have an income-- joy!!-- which makes new house hunting a possibility.
Praise the Lord: live goes on.
