rivka

Still home. Waiting for the midwife to call back.

( disturbing material, as usual )

I had to walk down the baby aisle at Rite Aid to get to the pads I need for the bleeding.

I had been doing so well, this morning. Cuddling Alex, making her a special breakfast, pressing my cheek against her hair and reading her stories. I was able to play with her and even laugh. My real live girl. I thought, I'll survive this.

And then there I was in the Rite Aid parking lot, icy rain bucketing down on my bare head, sobbing so hard I couldn't fit my car key in the lock.

I don't think this can possibly be my life.





I'm sorry. This is just going to be an awful journal to read for a while. I honestly won't mind if you don't.

There's not going to be a baby.

There was never a baby.

( disturbing material below the cut )

We've started the sorting/discarding/organizing process which will one day lead to packing. Yesterday Michael took a first load of stuff to Goodwill: five big bags of old clothes and toys, and a chair. We've also gotten rid of three 30-gallon bags' worth of trash. It's a good start... but it's also just a tiny dent in our three-story house full of stuff.

We're not precisely pack rats. We don't have emotional attachments to most of these things, or vague ideas that someday they'll turn out to be useful. It's more a problem of inertia. Things come into the house and get stowed away, and when they've outlived their usefulness we just never get around to throwing them out. We probably have more storage space than is really good for us.

I filled a 30-gallon trash bag just with things that were in my desk, on my desk, or stacked behind my desk in the little space between my chair and the wall. The black cardboard folder I used when I was planning our wedding, with rough drafts of the guest list, extra invitations, and sample menus from the restaurant where we held the reception. Cartoons one of my old housemates drew of my ex. The Lesbian Avengers handbook. Every single card we received when Alex was born. A highlighted guide to the competitive races in the 2006 election. A list of books I read in March of last year. Old Mac-formatted backup disks with my college senior thesis on them. Back issues of Mouth magazine. Printed-out drafts of academic papers. Posters I once presented at conferences. Manuals for electronics I no longer own. A 56k modem card which, if I recall correctly, doesn't even work, and which belonged to a laptop I got rid of in, um, 2002?

It's kind of exhiliarating to get this stuff cleared away. And it feels so good to imagine moving only needed, useful, appreciated things into our new house. The new house will have vast quantities of storage - there's a full basement - but we will not just move our junk.

Keeping the new house decluttered is going to be a different story, though. Anyone have good decluttering or clutter-prevention resources to recommend? Anything that's actually, you know, follow-able?

Our landlord called tonight - the first time we've spoken to them since they gave us notice. Ostensibly the call was about the BGE guy who came out to check some faulty radiators on Monday. But then he segued.

"So, uh, I got a call from someone named Rosemary, asking for a tenant reference for you guys."

"Yeah," I said. (Rosemary is the agent for the owner of the house next door, the one we really, really want.) "I hope you told her we were acceptable tenants."

"Oh, I told her you were just great! ...Have you signed with her? Because my brother is thinking about buying our house, and he would use it as an investment property, so, um, he'd be renting it out. But we won't have an answer from him for about a week." And it would be a lot more convenient for him if he could get the house with renters pre-installed, plus then I wouldn't have to do the renovations I would need to do to sell the house to strangers, he didn't add.

I told him that, given that we've found a house we really like, we would now prefer to move. Then I went on to let him know how shocked we were to have our lease terminated so abruptly, and how we hadn't budgeted for a move so early in the spring, and what a difficult situation this was for us. I told him that we would appreciate it if they could cut us a break on the last month's rent.

"I guess we, uh, I guess we had a misunderstanding," he said, "because even though we'd originally asked you to stay an extra year, we told you last fall that we hoped to sell the house in the spring."

"Our lease would've been up May 31st," I said. "That's still the spring, so that's what we thought you meant."

"Oh." He told me he'd have to discuss it with his wife, and they'd be in touch.

Five minutes later, the phone rang again. It was his wife. Who had no idea that we were unhappy about receiving notice! Why didn't we call her right away? She feels awful! She doesn't want there to be any problems or hard feelings. ...When am I due? Would it be helpful to stay out the original rental term? "...And are you really, really sure you don't want to buy our house yourselves? Did you talk to your bank?"

I explained why we don't want to buy. I explained again that, having found a house we like, we think we'd better go ahead and move. But we don't really want to pay double rent for the month of March, given that we weren't expecting to have to budget for a move just then... could they help us out?

The final arrangement: we're going to move the bulk of our things as early in March as is practical for us, and they're not going to charge us anything for the couple of weeks it takes us to move and clean. And she swears that we'll be getting our full security deposit back. And she's very, very sorry for having caused us even a moment's distress.

Feeling somewhat better about the landlords now. But I'll still be happy to get into a different place. And it's really looking like the house next door will be ours - Rosemary said that all she was planning to do was check our landlord references, and if our current landlords gave us a good one we should be in the clear.

I just quoted a science fiction author to a client, for what I think was probably the first time in my career. Lois McMaster Bujold: "The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."

I don't tend to use quotes or aphorisms much in general, but then again, it isn't often that a quote perfectly sums up a client's entire therapeutic journey of several years' duration. And comes to mind at precisely the moment when she can receive it as an apt phrasing of what she has already come to know in her heart, and not as a lesson or lecture.

She was really moved. I am really pleased. I like to think that Lois would be, too.

Very busy afternoon of touring potential new homes today.

You know how used-car dealers have this tactic where first they show you some awful pieces of junk, and then they bring out a decent car and you're so grateful that you fall in love with it immediately? Today was much like that - except that the place we toured last really was fantastic. Fortunately.

( Read more... )

Our landlord called this evening, while I was at OWL and Michael was trying to get Alex to bed. He reiterated an offer that they've made once before: they'd be happy to sell us this house at below the price at which they intend to put it on the market. Michael told him no. This isn't the house we want to settle in long-term.

Okay, our landlord said. In that case, we're giving you 60 days notice to vacate.

What?!?!

Last spring they told us that they wanted to put off selling the house for a year, and asked if we'd be willing to stay an extra year. Our lease year runs June-May. Here's the thing: when they asked us to stay an extra year, they never got around to actually dropping off a written lease. We didn't - okay, everyone cringe along with me here - we didn't think we needed one. We've been living in this house for almost five years.

My first response - which apparently mirrored Michael's first response completely - was horror, outrage, and a determination to fight. My second response was, "Huh. Why do I want to fight this?"

There are actually good reasons why it might be better to move now than at the beginning of the summer. We searched and found six places that we think are worth looking at - although one is mostly just on the list because the area is so cool that we're in willful denial about the probable commuting problems. (Baltimoreans: it's just a couple of blocks from Cross Street Market in Federal Hill.) Mostly, for logistical reasons, we'd like to stay fairly near to our current location.

Without a written lease, obviously it would be hard to fight the landlords' decision - although under Maryland law, a verbal contract is considered binding in some situations. I do think that it might be possible to win some kind of concession from them, if we remind them forcefully that they asked us to take the place for another year. I'd like to ask them for the last month's rent.

I think we can do this. I think that in the end this will prove to be one of those challenge/opportunity things that leads to an eventual better position. But damn, did I want more than 60 days' opportunity to sort, declutter, and clean the detritus of five years' disorganized residence. I'm just not ready.

Eek!

Alex woke up hungry and thirsty this morning. She's drinking an adequate quantity of electrolyte solution from a cup. And she even ate, and kept down, a couple handfuls of Cheerios and a dry toasted bagel.

One of the amazing things about kids is how sick they can get, so quickly. Another one of the amazing things about kids is how quickly they can bounce back.

The fly in the ointment: now Michael seems to have it. Although his case is much milder - he's having no problem keeping fluids down today.

We'll get through this.