Temporary Lodgings

Still no house. Ohh, yeah. Still waiting.

We left Saturday evening and drove through the night. I was pretty apprehensive about how my car-hating-child would handle a 10-hour drive, but through the valiant efforts of several adults we kept her up all day, with the exception of a 20-minute nap. She slept most of the way, and we took breaks to feed, change, and release her whenever necessary. There were a few streteches where she screamed for 20 straight minutes, but on the whole it wasn't too bad. Ryan and his dad drove his parents' ailing Dodge minivan, which was crammed with us, our stuff, and all 9 of our cats. There was so much shit stuffed in there I barely had room for my feet.

The worst part was that I had to stay awake the whole time to make sure the two very tired drivers didn't fall asleep at the wheel, so even when the baby was crashed out I was poking Ryan in the ribs or asking my father-in-law if he'd ever been to Charlotte before and which basketball teams he was rooting for. Some time around West Virginia I ran out of polite conversation starters and since I don't know Ryan's dad well enough to just poke him in the ribs or pinch his arm like I did to Ryan whenever I saw the car start to drift or his head start to bob, there were several points when I very nearly screamed out "YOU ARE SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME. YOU ALMOST RAN OFF THE ROAD JUST NOW. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMNED MOUNTIANS, IT'S PITCH-DARK AND STORMING LIKE CRAZY. PLEASE PULL THE FUCK OVER BEFORE YOU KILL US." Twice I deeply regretted my decision to chug two Smartwaters and an Arizona Green Tea, because I damn near peed my pants as he started awake and swerved on the dark, wet road.

We arrived safe, but still have no house. Monday we were told that "the lawyers" who needed that 72 hours to look over paperwork had not even received said paperwork yet. Our mortgage person was reportedly "hopeful" that we would close later this week. Yesterday we got word that we're scheduled for this Friday at 3:00. If we get delayed again my head might possibly explode. I am not sure exactly who is holding up what and which pieces of paperwork are missing. I guess that's all for the best, because if I knew who the weakest link was, you can be certain that I would take Piper and all nine cats down to their office and camp out all day, every day, until each and every piece of paper needed for us to get this thing settled was where it belonged.

Ryan's roommate graciously agreed to let us crash here, as he is away on business at the moment. I am thankful he's letting us use his house (our cats are stashed in the basement, since the roommate is allergic), but it's...um...a bit like a college house. I can't seem to locate the vacuum sweeper and there is a staggering collection of liquor bottles on top of the fridge. There are jugs of apple cider exploded in the freezer, along with some sort of dribbly red alcoholic concoction frozen into wine glasses. They cleaned up a bit before we came, so the bathtub and kitchen floor are reasonably safe, but everywhere there are piles of expensive electronics (ahhh, to be a single male with disposable income), thick layers of dust, cd's, half-unpacked boxes, various types of weaponry (nobody was ever sorry they bought that mace when zombies attack, I guess) and keyboards and video games and glass figurines. The baby is perpetually covered in dust, crumbs and hair (yes, hair) and I have been going crazy trying to keep her clean and out of things.

Last night Piper was cruising along the front of the entertainment center and decided to give the deocorative screen-print tapestry hanging there a good, hard yank. Turns out it was held in place by two ceramic ashtrays, which fell direcly onto her little baby noggin. They didn't break, but a large seashell that had been resting inside one did, and the sharp little pieces flew everywhere. Piper is okay, she got a few small cuts on her head and scared both of us half to death. Two minutes after that I found an extremely large red fire ant trundling along three inches from the baby's leg. I snatched her up, stashed her in the playpen where she sleeps, and then took a shoe and killed the sucker. It was of alarming size.

Piper was screaming by now, standing up in the pack n' play and letting off howls of fury at being treated in such a manner. Despite that fact that it was 12:30 and my husband gets up at 5:30 for work, I marched into the room where he was sleeping, flipped on the lights and said "I don't care WHAT it takes or who we have to kill. We better have our house this weekend."