Chaos

Dear Dad,

Our lives are in chaos. Kati’s dad is not doing well. As a result, she has been spending nearly every weekend and much of her free time down in Delaware taking care of him. (But that’s her story to tell, not mine, so I will leave it at that.) With Kati gone, there’s more for me to do here with cooking and driving G3 to his activities. But we had been counting down the days until summer when, without school or work, we’d have more time and energy to focus on other things. Then on Thursday, our landlady contacted us to say that we need to be out of the house in which we are living by mid July so that she can move back in. Crap! We’ve been looking to move—actively house hunting—since last fall, and we haven’t gotten lucky. We’ve put bids on houses—one we really loved—and haven’t gotten them. Other houses were either too expensive or required too much renovation. There were a few we looked at that we didn’t love, but we didn’t exactly hate either. In fact, we could have made due with them, and we would have put a bid on them, if we knew the clock was ticking. But we didn’t, and so we let them go, hoping something better would come along.

Since we’ve been hoping to get out of Middlesex, when our lease expired instead of signing a new one, we decided to go month to month so that we could move more easily once we found a house. The landlady took this to mean that she didn’t have to extend us the curtesy of letting us know we would have to move as soon as she and her husband made the decision themselves. Once the initial shock wore off, Kati and I looked on Zillow and discovered that our landlady put her other house—the one in which she is living—on the market back on May 2. That was an entire month before they called us to say we had to be out. A sale on the house has been pending since mid-May, and she didn’t even bother to let us know at that point. During the month of May, there were three houses that we looked at. Three houses that for one reason or another didn’t appeal to us, but if we had known we needed to move immediately, we would have put aggressive offers on all of them. We might actually have gotten one of them, and if that were the case, we’d be gone in time for the landlords to move back in.

But the they didn’t tell us as soon as they knew. They didn’t have the decency to give us a heads up early enough so that we wouldn’t have to scramble. Why? My guess—based on past practices and other issues we’ve had we them—is they didn’t want to lose out on rent. They were probably worried that if they did the honorable thing, we’d find a place to move and be gone before they were ready to move in. Then, they’d be out of rent for a month or more. They wanted to keep the money flowing, and that was more important to them than not screwing us over.

So what are we going to do? It’s almost summer. I’m not here in the summers. It’s my time to escape and explore. Plus, G3 has the World Championship in Phoenix and Boy Scout summer camp out on Long Island. And Kati will most likely be spending much of the summer with her dad. But even if we were planning to be home, how do you move when there is no place to move into? We can’t even rent because rents are so astronomical that we can’t afford them. Rent in Bridgewater would cost us more than a mortgage. We’re stuck. Soon, we will be homeless. But where do you send your child to school if you don’t have a home? 

I wish you were here. You always had the answers. Even if you didn’t have the answer for us this time, you’d have suggestions for us to explore. 

Over the weekend, G3 and I watched the Deadpool movies. In Deadpool 2, one of the character’s super power is luck. I didn’t realize luck was a super power, but now that I do, it’s the one I want. From now on, when anyone asks me, “If you could have one super power what would it be?” My answer will be luck. The hell with flying or invisibility or super strength. Those powers would all be really awesome to wield, but none of them are as useful as luck. Maybe it’s because I live under a dark cloud and have been cursed with bad luck that this appeals to me. But even if I could borrow that superpower for week or even a day, what a difference it would make.

I miss you!