I woke up this morning to an email from our landlord telling us he’s thinking of selling the house. He is worried that the market bubble wouldn’t last in its current state and that waiting too long to put it on the market may not be a great idea. Our original lease actually ended in April and we requested to extend a few months to give us time to get our ducks in a row. We agreed to a month-to-month setup until the end of June, when we planned to leave the property and into our first of many short-term rentals en route to Vegas. We didn’t sign anything legally binding, so I guess the landlord was free to do what he wanted. After the J-Man explained how $$$ it would be for us to find a last-minute rental, hiring movers, etc. and asked if they would be willing to pay us to vacate a bit earlier than we agreed, our landlord refused and asked us to consider this our 30-day notice.
Cue Billy Joel, who has been stuck in my head all morning in between frantic thoughts of all the things I have to do in the next month.
The J-Man wasn’t even a little bit fazed, bless the dude. “We are getting kicked out in 30 days,” I told him via FB Messenger, worried he might not have seen our landlord’s response since he was busy setting our eldest son up for his morning school meeting. “I guess we’ll just accelerate some of our plans,” he said. Immediately I hopped onto VRBO (which I found to be a fraction better than Airbnb, IMHO) and found a place for us to stay for the next month. I messaged family and friends who lived close by about the change of itinerary, as well as some of our neighbors. In under an hour, I had two places booked for the days we would have been homeless.
Cue Freddie Mercury and David Bowie because goddamn my veins are thrumming with so much nervous energy!
Anyway, it’s all good. After a panic-stricken morning, we took our kids to a playground in the city, got some sashimi takeout and tried a new Starbucks drink (which I thoroughly enjoyed), then went back home. After stuffing my face with what was meant to be my belated Mother’s Day treat, I went for a run in the sun and now I am writing this, reinvigorated with endorphins.
This is what we have been “training” for, I guess, with all our jet-setting and road-tripping around in the past couple of years. We seem to always have to do things on the spur of the moment, and as much as it can be stressful AF sometimes, we seem to actually thrive in situations like this. The last time we had to leave in an emergency and be somewhere over 2700 miles and 40 hours away, the J-Man went to a car lot, picked out a second-hand van, bought it, and drove it home. We packed 3-4 months worth of necessities and hit the road the next day. This time, we have to sell our second car, buy a trailer, fill that up as well as a storage unit with two years worth of things we can’t get rid of in time, and hit the road in 30 days. By our usually crazy metric, we are actually ahead this time around.
Cue Modest Mouse, because we’ll all float on okay.
See ya later! 🤟🏼