Every year that our contract comes up, Jeff and I discuss moving. We talk about our location, our house, the school we’re so close to, and we decide not to move.
Until this year.
I really, really did not want to move. But we’ve had some major changes in our lives – we’re not studying every day at a university right now, the people we want/need to be nearer to are nowhere near us, and we’re going to have another baby…which means transportation just got a little bit more difficult.
So it was time to think about it. Moving, that is.
Jeff and I talked about it and decided that the only way we would move is if we could find a place that was comparable (more or less) to our place right now. We love our house – not only because of the memories (this was our first home on the east side, Macy took her first steps here, etc.), but because our landlord is awesome and did a great job furnishing and “decorating” it. It may have purple polka dotted curtains and a blue air-conditioning unit, but it is our home and it is hard to imagine leaving it.
So we started looking. The first few places were nice, but we wanted to see a variety of locations. Another place we came to we really liked too. Good location in the basic middle of town, nice landlord, nice furniture, and clean. The only downside was it was quite a bit smaller than our place now and had these like window-seats in every window. They were huge and took up quite a bit of space and I could just see Macy jumping off of them and busting her head open. Seriously, the one in the living room looks like a stage. We could throw Jeff and his guitar up there and he could give the room a little concert. The kitchen didn’t have a ton of room or cabinets, so I wasn’t too sure about it either.
So we kept looking. We found several okay places, but nothing that was awesome. After talking, we thought it still might be worth it to go back to that place and just measure it to see how much space we would be losing with all the extra “stages” – for lack of a better word.
So back we went with our measuring tape. (Actually, we forget to bring ours and had to stop and buy one on the way. Oops). We had expressed to the real estate agent that our first concern about the apartment were the uneven floors. While we measured a few things around the house, he took it upon himself to ask the landlord about the flooring. Surprisingly, the landlord offered to lower each and every stage (window seat). I had to ask for clarification because I thought surely he wasn’t really offering to do that much construction just for us. But he was.
Hmm. This place just got a little more interesting.
We mentioned the kitchen cabinets. He offered to add more.
We talked about the hall bathroom. It currently has a squatty potty (in Asia, most houses do not have Western toilets. They have a porcelain, well, hole in the ground. They consider this to be cleaner and it’s just the way they do it here.) We asked if we could put in a Western toilet. Sure, he said.
By the time we’d asked all of our requests and he just kept saying yes – I started thinking wow. This guy certainly is agreeable. Maybe the Lord is guiding us in this direction. Could this place and its location be worth packing? With a toddler? And pregnant?
I think so.
So we’ve signed our lives away – or just a contract – and will be moving in the next couple of weeks. Hard to believe we’ve only been back one week and a day. Although I’m a little sad to leave this place I’ve called home for so long, I’m excited about the new chapter in our lives. So many changes coming, I think this is just one of them.
Now I need to figure out where to buy boxes.
Every Moment Afterward 