There's No Place Like Home

So I was thinking the other day, "I am not nearly stressed out enough." I mean, all I have to do is plan a wedding, figure out how to budget said wedding and still have somewhat of a life, keep up with summer projects I have been assigned by my school, and somehow get to Montrose and get a classroom going again. I mean, really, nothing. So I thought to myself, "What can I do to liven things up a bit?" And then it came to me. "I know! I'll move into a new apartment!"

So, on June 30, I made the 90 minute trip to Montrose and informed my property management company that I would be out by the end of July. Sounds like a rash decision, right? Allow me to take you back in time about a year...

About a year ago, I moved in with a friend. I had just finished the teaching program and was working as a summer nanny for a family that didn't pay much. I was also working part-time for a golf course. After a year long full-time teaching internship with no pay, I was broke. My friend offered me a room in her condo to help me out. She was wonderful - a good friend and sister in Christ. But I longed to have my own place. I wanted my dishes and furniture and "stuff" out of storage.

A few months later I got a teaching job 61 miles away. After nine weeks of driving three hours a day, a friend of mine from the teaching program (who got a job at the same school) offered me her spare bedroom. Within a week the move was done. She, too, was a great roomy. We had a lot of fun together and became great friends. Despite the fact that splitting bills and rent made life easier, and we had a blast, I still really wanted a place to call my own.

In March, everything started falling into place for me. I got an apartment right by the school, and was able to move in on April 1st. April Fool's Day was an appropriate date for this move!

The day I moved in, Mom, Dad, Aaron and I walked in to a peculiar smell. Upon walking around, we quickly realized that the place had not been shampooed (or cleaned at all for that matter). We figured the smell, whatever it was, would go away whenever they got around to their responsibility of having the place cleaned. We went ahead and started moving in the boxes we had brought with us. Right after we finished unloading two trucks and a jeep, a guy from the property management company showed up (a day late) and offered to shampoo around my stuff. As soon as the carpet got wet, we realized what the smell was... cat pee. Everywhere. The living room, the upstairs bedroom, all the closets. Which is funny, really, because this is a place that does not allow pets. We immediately reported it to the company. They responded by spraying deoderizer on the spot in the living room. Instead of spending my first night in my new apartment, I drove back to my parents' house to sleep a few more nights on the couch, because it simply was not livable. This was only the beginning...

Other than the fact that my mom spent the day cleaning bugs out of all the light fixtures and replacing every lightbulb in the apartment, while I peeled chewed up gum out of 13 places, the smell was by far the biggest issue. The company told me they would not fix anything until I turned in my move-in checklist. I filled it out in detail and turned it in the next day. I also mentioned that none of the four blinds worked, and that there wasn't a single screen on the windows. I also made sure they knew that all the towel racks were being held up by rubber bands. They assured me that they would fix everything.

What was the result of this check-list? Another layer of febreeze on the carpet (which really made it worse since it got it wet again) and my dad spending a small fortune at Ace Hardware and making another trip out to fix everything for me. To this day, I still have one set of working blinds, because they decided to fix 1/4 of the broken ones. At this point I was getting mildly irritated.

Over the next two months I put in six complaints about the horrid smell. The result? Six coats of deoderizer on the carpet. This gave me about 18 days total of relief from the smell. At one point, they told me that if I moved everything out of the room, they would fix the smell. So I did. I spent an entire evening (on a school night) transplanting my living room into my kitchen. The next day I came home to an incident report letting me know they had sprayed deoderizer. Yay!

Over the last three months, I have spent more nights on my parents' couch than I have in my own apartment, and I haven't spent a single night there since the last day of school in May. I have gone back a few times to water plants and work on classroom stuff. Each time, the smell is worse. There is not a single cooling thing in the apartment (no a/c, swamp cooler, fans, nada). Do you have any idea what cat pee smells like at 110 degrees?

To make a short story long, I will be out by July 31st, and this really was not a rash decision. The decision to move in was. I should not have been so desperate to have my own place. So, even though it will be a lot of work, and I am (mildly) stressed out about it, I still look forward to having a "home sweet home" I can breathe in. Please pray for me as I begin yet another quest for a decent shelter. (And forgive me the tangent I just went on).

Anyone have any ruby slippers I can click together?