The New Digs
So the other exciting event that I would make for an interesting entry is the search for a new place to live. It was quite an adventure with an exciting conclusion that I haven’t really shared with everyone, so here the story….
My current lease is to expire on March 31st and based on previous experience with finding a place to live I decided to start looking early. To say I went back and forth with where I wanted to live would be an understatement. I think I changed my mind about once a minute, if not more.
Living close to work, church, friends, and the ministry were HUGE points for keeping me close to Fairfield. Friends, my adorable niece and nephew, church, where I grew up, were strong points for moving to Norwood. Staying in Fairfield or going to Norwood were the top 2 options. There were other areas that I looked at but they fell off the list for one reason or another.
When I started the processing my “dream” was to find a small, single family house to rent. I dreamed of it having a porch, driveway, garage, central air/heat, basement with laundry, and a yard for Kaya.
The search was not fun honestly. I don’t even know how many hours Stephanie and I spent surfing the web and classified ads. Not to mention the hours spent driving around and checking out places. At one point we made an excel spreadsheet with the facts of all the places we visited so that we could compare them all.
When I found ads for the place that sounded like the dream it would end up being a scam or whoever was renting it would never contact me back. Heck I left 8 different voice mails for one place and I NEVER got one call back. Frustration was setting in. Then everything turned a corner…
One night I was surfing Craigslist (even after I had said I was going to stop looking on it because it was all scams) I stumbled across a listing for a place in Norwood. Double irony is I had said the night before that moving to Norwood was out because I wasn’t finding anything.
The listing sounded perfect and the pictures were just adorable….it was so perfect and adorable that when I sent off an email I fully expected it to be a scam. So when I got a response the next morning I was floored. The response wasn’t the typical scam response and the email came from someone’s email, not a fake address.
When I replied I was still very skeptical, in fact I confess to asking a friend in Norwood to drive by to make sure the picture matched the house. I then had a convo with another friend that suddenly started the domino effect. My friend knows several folks who live on the street and I shared with her who the email was from. And much to my surprise, she knew who the person was. The person is the husband to a girl that was in color guard when I was in marching band – someone I knew and went to high school with! I knew the person who had the house – HOLY CRAP! (Honestly it’s Norwood it shouldn’t have been such a shock but it was.)
So when I realized I knew one part of the couple I calmed down and realized this is not a scam it could be “the house”. As I learned more about the property I learned that it was a small, single family house for rent and it had a porch, driveway, garage, central air/heat, basement with laundry, and a yard for Kaya – not to mention a huge open space across the street for fun.
The day that I was set to take a tour of the property I was poking around on facebook (wasting time) and I thought to myself, “man her husband looks super familiar.” Then something clicked – HOLY CRAP!! I know him! His band played a couple different times at the Underground back in the day. I enjoyed the band a lot. They were one of the few local bands whose music I played at home. Heck I even went to check them out one time during another event because I liked them so much. Honestly it cracked me up. I joked that I needed to sing it’s a small world or something.
So we toured the property and went through the application process and I will be moving back to Norwood into this adorable little single family house on June 1st.
I have a few pictures that I can show you. Keep in mind these are not my pictures or stuff in them, but they give you a glimpse…
This is the front of the house. Notice the porch!! I plan on putting my lighthouse on in the flower bed. Notice the driveway on the right!
When you step in the front door you walk into the living room. The fireplace is decorative and the door leads to the dining room.
This is the dining room. This is the view from the steps that go upstairs. The door leads to the kitchen (no pictures currently). There is a door on this wall that goes to the living room.
This is the master bedroom that is upstairs. This is from the door. It is a little bigger than the photo shows.
Upstairs is also the bathroom and second bedroom (no pictures currently).
So who wants to help with the move?! :)
