almost homeless

I don't want to alarm anybody but we're moving to Sydney in two weeks -- that's fourteen days -- and we have no place to live.  Still.  And now I'm alarmed.  My new year's resolution for 2012 was don't be homeless.  I'm not going to be happy if I can't keep this one.  In January.

Although we do have a completely non-working kitchen in our current house we could use if that were to be our fate.  The water dispenser does dispense imaginary water, hot chocolate AND milk.  Not everyone can say that.

The yellow pieces of paper are imported pineapple.

Here's what happened.  Our super clever plan where we were going to pick a place to live in Sydney from our living room in Auckland turned out to be endlessly flawed.  Supply and demand poked a thousand holes in it.  There is very little available property to rent and endless humans who want to gobble it up.  That means that open houses are only 15 minutes long and every place is a million dollars a week.  It also means that real estate agents in Sydney could care less what two American yahoos in Auckland were looking for and didn't respond to our emails.

So we quickly cobbled together a new plan.  A better plan.  Husband goes over there before me and the kids and battles this beast in person.  By offering six months rent in advance.  Six months!  That's a million dollars a week times four times six.  It was a costly plan but we had no choice.  So my husband went this weekend.  Driving his big, fat, stolen Brink's truck.  He saw property after property with busloads of people in 15-minute increments and didn't exactly want to gobble up of any of it.  Either the places were too small for a family of dwarf mice or they were dumps.  Really, really, really expensive dumps.  With a wait list of twenty people before him.

There has never been a more appropriate time for a parade of these guys:  &*%$!

After we put away our cuss words and wiped away my tears of defeat, we hatched a new new plan.  A fancy apartment on the water.  Right?  That sounds like a good plan.  It also sounds fancy and like we could pretend we had a boat.  The only only only thing I'm worried about with apartment life is our two boys and their inability not to wrestle, jump, scream, chase, bounce and be two boys.  And neighbors.  House neighbors and apartment neighbors, two different kinds of neighbor experiences.  If you're in a house and your neighbor sucks, build a really tall fence and dig a moat/rent a gator.  If you're in an apartment and your neighbors suck, you're stuck with sucky neighbors.  Who suck.

But.

Maybe they won't suck.  That's my other resolution rearing its beautiful head:  be positive!  If we rent a fancy apartment, maybe our new neighbors will be delightful.  Or maybe they'll have boys.  Or maybe they'll have no vocal chords or musical instruments.  Or maybe just maybe they'll be Mayans!  I could invite them to my December 22nd party on our boat.

So that's where we are.  Almost homeless.  But circling fancy apartments and pretend boats. Wish us luck.

Save the date, Mayans.