I debated over starting this thread, as I’m not a big thread-starter, but hey, it’s Mundane and Pointless beyond belief, and maybe someone else is having a crappy Friday and will enjoy my story.
So…here goes.
My husband and I decided to move back to Chicago a long time ago. NYC isn’t for us, it was always a temporary thing. And we planned it out meticulously. I would apply to nursing school (got in, yay, and gigi started a thread about it!) and start my program in January. In the meantime, we would buy a car and get an apartment in Chicago. He would get a job and move there when our lease ended (Nov 30th, a week ago tonight). I would stay here (on a friend’s futon) for two weeks and finish my night classes (prereqs for nursing); he would take the rental truck to Chicago and set up the apartment. I’d finish my finals and drive out to meet him. Got it? Sounds great. Everything was so tight–planned down to the day. My school orientation starts on the 17th, and I’m getting in on the 15th or 16th. No wiggle room, here.
Cut to last Friday. At midnight, he got out of town and I got settled in on my futon. I then realized that my car keys were in his pocket. Oops. Stupid alternate side of the street parking…he had to Fedex them back to me overnight. I spent two days being locked out of my car, with a bunch of my stuff in it. No big deal, I dealt with it. That was a minor setback.
At this point, I’m dreaming of the new Chicago apartment. My eyes are on the prize. It’s a house, you see, a single-story, one-bedroom (well, two, but the second will be a study) house, with a real dining room and a huge kitchen. A freaking HOUSE, for $800/month. We were told that we wouldn’t have basement and attic access, because the guy who owns it still uses them. Oh, and he lives in the back. But he’s a retired cop, no sketchiness there. A friend of ours did the walkthrough for us and took dozens of pictures. Maybe it was naive of us to go into this sight-unseen, but a flight to Chicago just to look at the place seemed too expensive. The friend who did the inspection is an architect and a very trustworthy guy–we couldn’t have asked for a better proxy. But the agency left something out. Something really, really important.
Cut to last Sunday, with my husband getting in to our apartment. He called me as he was unpacking with some friends.
“Um, Millit, the guy who lives in the back of our house might be crazy.”
“What do you mean, crazy?”
“Well, he sneaked up on me in our pantry. He can get in to our apartment. And he watched us moving in through the crack in the basement door.”
“What?!”
It turns out that he’s got a severe form of dementia and that he is living in squalor. He owns like 18 cats and smells rank from ten feet away. Kind of like a homeless person who gets on the train, I imagine. My husband has had a few friends over, and they completely agree that the guy is batshit crazy. So my husband called the rental agency and told them about his access to our apartment. They brushed him off and told him that the guy’s harmless. They assured him that he couldn’t get in to our side of the house. Now, my husband is no wimp, but he’s been freaked out enough by the guy that he hasn’t felt comfortable sleeping there alone. Everyone that he’s spoken to (including a friend who is a doctor and his very reasonable, practical, brilliant father) has told him that it’s time to break the lease. In short–get out while you don’t have much unpacked.
Cut to Wednesday night, after a particularly long organic chem lab. I came back to my friend’s place and gave my husband a call. He was almost in tears as he dropped the bomb on me. “I don’t want to live here.”
Now, I’ve been really, really calm about this whole situation. I’m normally a little skittish, not a very strong person in general (hell, maybe my Dopername fits in this case), but I had lasted by myself in New York for a whole five days (a LOOOONG time for us), without my car keys, without anyone to talk to, with three night classes (I’m basically a full time employee and a full time student) to keep attending and a stressful job that I have to leave without a successor–I hadn’t cried at all until that moment.
I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t sad, I was just…disappointed. And lonely. I know this isn’t my fault, my husband has been awesome through all of this, and I can’t even blame the crazy guy. But we had picked out and bought paint, for crying out loud. It was going to be our first real place since we got married–not the crappy, bug-infested shoebox that was our apartment here in NYC. I went out to my car (didn’t want to weird out the friend who’s loaning me his futon) and cried for a while, and I called my husband back. “It’s OK,” he told me. “I’ll get a new place, I’ll move the stuff, I’ll get our money back, I’ll get everything taken care of. You’ll still move out here and find a beautiful apartment, all set up for you. Oh, and I’m getting you a fish aquarium for Christmas.”
I don’t think I’ve been so emotional in a long time. I’ve always wanted some little fishies of my own. My husband = perfect. I told him I trusted him and to do whatever he needed to do.
So today he called me–we have a new place (courtyard building!), and he’s signed the lease already. We’re getting our security deposit and some of our rent back on the other place, which is more than I could ask for. We’ll be farther from my school, but that’s OK. I found out today that I can move one of my exams up to Tuesday, so I might be able to leave town on Thursday instead of Friday or Saturday. Everything is working out. I am feeling relief like I’ve never felt before.
So why am I staying in on a Friday night, all alone, drinking brandy, and watching Ugly Betty on DVD? (Fun show, by the way. I needed something to get my mind off things, and Netflix hits the spot.) Because I’m incredibly, desperately lonely. I miss my husband and I got done with class at 8:30, so I have no where to go and nothing to do. I should study organic chemistry, but I’m too busy celebrating with myself. Or something.
Cheers.
So anyone want to buy me a drink tomorrow? My last weekend in the Big Apple, and I have a car and nowhere to be. I guess I shouldn’t combine the car with the drink. I’ll work something out. Anyway, if you read all this, you’re almost certainly pretty bored. Please don’t Pit me. 
