Blessed Respite

As anyone who has the misfortune to live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area knows, we have been suffering quite the drought and heat wave this summer. We've had well over a month of very little rain and temperatures over 100 degrees (that's 38 degrees to all you celsius people out there.) I was so happy a couple of days ago when a welcome thunderstorm swept through town. When I went into the grocery store around 5:30pm, it was 102 degrees outside. When I came out, it was 84 degrees, windy, and just starting to sprinkle. By the time I got home around 7pm, it was 74 degrees outside. A drop of nearly 30 degrees in only an hour and a half! As I drove through the torrential rain, I could almost feel how happy my lawn must be, and I started fantasizing about the onset of autumn and the wetter, cooler weather that comes with it. I was so disappointed when I got home to find that the rain hadn't even touched my house, even though it came within a few miles of it, and the high temperatures were back the next day. Still, I was happy with the weather for a brief time, and it was a welcome diversion from the searing heat that we are becoming accustomed to here.

In other news, we are now juggling three houses and a myriad of housy chores as we continue to get the old house ready to sell, prepare to move out of the current rental, and prepare to sign a new lease and move into yet another rental. There are storage areas to rent, movers, painters, and landscapers to hire, packing and cleaning to be done, and of course, the impending move. Ideally, we will be finished with all of this by the end of September, but the realization of all that we need to accomplish within the next month can be very overwhelming if I dwell on it too long. Instead, I am compartmentalizing all housiness, setting timelines and relying on lists to allow me to spend only a small amount of time every day thinking about and doing what needs to be done. Note: I know "housy" and "housiness" aren't real words, so all you English Lit majors out there can relax. They're just my words because I like them!

Finding the newest rental has been quite a challenge. Every house we've looked at has fallen short of our expectations in one area or another. Too expensive, too small, no ceiling fans, no gas cooktop, dirty carpets and/or walls, no tile in bathrooms, too many stairs, etc. We applied for one house that was very nice, but a little small, and ended up backing out of it at the last minute on the advice of our agent. It turns out that the landlord was young, inexperienced, and in the opinion of our agent, not very bright. He wanted an extra deposit just because our last name was Indian, and wanted to come inspect our current house to see how we lived before letting us into his home. Our agent was afraid, and probably rightly so, that this guy would be inspecting our house and lawn three times a week looking for any excuse to keep our deposit. Last night I dreamed that I found the perfect house, and today we did! Well, nearly perfect, and nothing like the pale blue Victorian house in my dream. (I don't really want a pale blue Victorian house. I just loved it in my dream.) The house we finally fell in love with has only three minor faults: too many stairs (we prefer single-story homes,) no ceiling fans (easily remedied,) and a young, dead tree in the front yard (I'm trying to talk the landlord into removing or replacing it.) On the bright side, it does have a gas cooktop, a lovely kitchen, nice ironwork on the stair railings, a fenced balcony, a cupboard under the stairs, a big yard on a corner lot, lots of room for the children to play, a laundry room big enough for my oversized washer and dryer, and it's brand new, never lived in. These things make us so happy! I especially don't like moving in and having to deal with the previous tenants' dirt, and the new house smell is great!