If you've been following this adventure, I'm sure you are curious where exactly it is that I'm living now. Since returning from Dominica I've been in the north-eastern part of Southern California.
SoCal is huge guys and if you aren't from the West Coast you may not realize that when people say they are from "LA" they really mean "Greater Los Angeles," which is made of 3 densely populated counties.
Southern California is geographically larger than England. {Wikipedia said so.}
But in one of those moments when you realize that the world is actually a little smaller than it seems, my dear friend Stacy and I discovered that I'm actually living in her and her husband's first apartment. Like, the actual unit! I knew this was the same complex as I was apartment hunting but with over 200 units what are the chances we'd end up in the same one?
Back in August, this same friend and her husband offered me a room in their home while I job-hunted, found, and saved for said apartment. Their kindness and generosity is a true blessing, and something that I am incredibly grateful for.
The alarm sounded early this morning to wake up and help my husband get ready to fly from Dominica to America. My body was really confused between "is it really late or really early?" Don't you hate that feeling?
Flying back and forth to the states is not cheap, it averages us about $1000 round-trip per ticket. This break, we decided that it was worth it for Chris to go back to take care of some legal business for us and to visit his mom because she's had a hard time since his dad passed away earlier this year.
So, I've got the house to myself for the next 10 days. I made this tour of our apartment a few weeks ago to help an incoming spouse decide if she wanted to move in here (she did!).
I'm pretty sure that someday I will look back on our time in this little apartment fondly. There is something to be said for the simplicity of life in a 500 square foot home: or at least that is what I keep telling myself.
Please don't read my blog and think my life is perfect. It is far from it. Sometimes I read other people's blogs and think: I'll never have it together like she does. A blog is like good makeup. We enhance what we like, and hide what we don't.
Today though, I'm washing my face and showing you what's underneath. Stress. As of today, our tenants have paid neither rent nor utilities since January. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to actually evict a tenant from your home in CA. Even if they haven't paid you a dime in 4 months!
There is a multi-step eviction process, and we are on round 2 waiting for a judge to give us permission to have the sheriffs forcibly remove the tenants and their belongings from our home. Did you know that if you turn off their utilities or change the locks, the tenants can sue you?
In real life, I'm an anxious mess about what is going to happen. I've been worried every day for the last 3 months about what is going to happen when our savings runs dry, and now we are there.
On top of which, we now owe the IRS 5k in taxes from last year. Because we are no longer living in our home, we have to pay back the housing credit we took when buying the home. We didn't realize when we took it that if you don't live in the home for 3 years you have to pay it back in full, immediately.
So today, I'd like to send out a big "SCREW YOU!" to our tenants and the IRS. Better watch out for the Karma Police.
So begins Semester 2. We are happy in our new apartment, and the weather has been fantastic. I can even walk to school without sweating! The kitties got a new a scratching tower, made by Bruno.
Portsmouth Harbor at Sunset
After all the traveling we did, it's really nice to be back here on the island. Especially because my wonderful Mom bought me a ticket home for the month of June. It makes the next year seem so much more manageable. Now, back to school work.
Before we got here, we had to leave our house. That was the worst bit of this whole thing. Super hot, super sweaty, super tricky to get everything we own into one upstairs storage unit. The last two nights, I got about 2 hours of sleep because there was no time to stop. It had to get done and it did. Rodney Atkins says it all:
If your going through hell
Keep on going, don't slow down
If you're scared don't show it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there
Yeah, If you're going through hell
Keep on moving, face that fire
Walk right through it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there
Love that song. By the time we left, the house looked amazing. It is a night and day difference from when we moved in. Our tenant is one lucky guy, and we are one lucky set of landlords to have him. Here are some before and after pictures of our home.
After the carpets were cleaned and I handed my keys over to our Realtor, it was off to the airport for us. Chris dropped the Shelby off at his parents and then we went to the bank and took out a huge chunk of our savings in cash for the trip and to get our bank account started here. Then we headed to my sister Julie’s house, cats and all. Thankfully, the cats and carrier weighed exactly 20.0 pounds (see last post).
So with the kitties in tow, off we went to the airport still stuffing things into every last nook and cranny of our luggage. Chris even put on two shirts and was stuffing shorts into his sweatshirt pocket. Little did we know, the airline wasn’t even going to check if we had less than 70 pounds of luggage. After all that careful planning and weighing, we could have brought 30 more pounds each! *sigh* I’m sure that if we had packed 100 pounds of luggage each, we would have been held to the 70 pound rule, as life often does. Thankfully, Chris got to unload his pockets and extras into the luggage before it got sent off.
When we got to security, they told us we would have to take the cats out of their carriers and walk them through the metal detectors while they x-rayed the carrier and our luggage. Thank goodness we were prepared for this with harnesses! My mom is a genius for thinking of this ahead of time. The kitties made it through just fine, and back into their crate they went for another... 24 hours or so. If you can believe it, they were quieter than any of the children on board the planes. No one even knew they were there! And, no, neither of them had any “accidents.”
The flight from LAX to Miami was quick and easy. I slept pretty much the whole time until the captain came on the next morning saying that Miami was currently closed due to weather and we would be circling until it cleared. Great. A few minutes later the captain comes on again and says that our fuel light is on and we are being diverted to Alabama, or something like that. Fantastic. Then, on he comes again, but with good news! We are landing, but nearly an hour later than scheduled. Off we run to the next terminal to catch our next flight to Puerto Rico which leaves in 30 minutes. The last ones on the plane, they take Chris’s carry-on and without checking put down Puerto Rico as it’s final destination. So, once we landed Chris had to go out through the airport to baggage, find his luggage, and go back through security.
Finally, we made our last flight to Dominica on a teeny tiny plane. Customs was easy, it was even smaller than at Cabo. Of course, none of our checked baggage made it, but we were kind of prepared for that, and we eventually got it two days later on Saturday.
The first thing I have to say about the island is: It’s Hot! Not California dry hot, but out of control, dripping sweat, feels like you’re in a sauna hot. I’m sure I’ll adjust but it’s my biggest obstacle right now. Walking anywhere is just torture. There is no point in putting make up on, because it’s going to melt off. No point in doing your hair, because it’s going to be dripping with sweat in 10 minutes. God bless the people who have lived their whole lives here.
Our apartment here is actually pretty nice, now that we’ve moved. We spent the first 2 days in a middle floor apartment that was pretty small, but then our landlord suggested that we move to the top floor for $50 more a month to a much bigger place. Not only is it bigger, but it’s nicer with a full sized stove, working windows, a bigger bed, 2 closets, and a vanity. These seem like insignificant things until you don’t have them! Here's a video of our new place.
Pretty much, island life has been about survival for the last week. Getting the cat’s food (frozen ground beef), finding a litter box (literally a box of sand from the beach), learning to use a match to light the propane stove, figuring out what to do when your propane runs out halfway through cooking dinner, and more significantly getting Chris ready to start school with all the orientation stuff and check in’s, etc.
I’m going to be glad for things to settle down next week when his classes start. Maybe I can find a groove here. And after the groove, maybe a part time job or school. We’ll just have to see!
Hi, my name is Katie! I'm a lover of graphic and web design, educator, and live in the CaribbeanCalifornia Michigan with my med school husband & our kitty cat. Life isn't perfect, but it's wonderful!
