It started out with us still living in St. Louis, working from home like usual. Then sometime around my birthday in June, I said we should start looking to buy a house. We'd been kicking around the idea a little, so it wasn't out of left field. We started the extremely frustrating and grueling task of looking for a house and securing a mortgage loan. We had no idea what to expect or how long it would take.
On my birthday we went to the Anheuser-Busch brewery and met the Clydesdale horses and went on a tour, it was fun, and we got some free beer. For my mate's birthday, we went ice-cream hopping. She decorated our faces with face paint and we dressed all vividly, in vibrant colors and went to a bunch of different ice cream shops and tried different samples and it was a lot of fun. The face paint was a hit.
We didn't really go many places or do a bunch of stuff while in St. Louis. We did see the Indigo Girls perform with the St. Louis symphony which was really cool. We drove to Kansas City to see Patrick Hinds for his book tour and in June, went to a comedy club to see one of our favorite podcast's live show, for I Think Not. Both of these were a lot of fun.
We stayed home mostly and I enjoyed cooking with Hello Fresh.
In September, my mate came to me and said she'd found a nice house that we should buy. It looked like a pretty nice one and was priced lower than we were looking so we had our real estate agent (who became our friend) check it out, and it was pretty great so we put in an offer. The offer was accepted and we bought the house. We moved our stuff from St. Louis to a storage in Illinois, as a half-way point between St. Louis and our new house in Indiana, and made 3 trips on various weekends. On one occasion, there was a dirty drunk fellow with no teeth who's truck slammed into the back of our Uhaul. That was an adventure. Anyway, most of our stuff was safely in Illinois.
The stuff that wasn't, was being moved from the apartment, to the storage units below us on the first floor. In the process of moving, we discovered someone, for the third time since moving there, had broken in (or tried; this time we had amazingly difficult locks to break) and stolen everyone's things. They could only get an arm in to one of the units we had, but ended up stealing some rare books that we had in there. Jerks. St. Louis is full of assholes. The theft and subsequent apathy about it is appalling in that city.
We went to closing in late October, and moved in to the house one month later, and now here we are.
It was rather sad though because in early November, late October, our oldest cat Goose started not doing well. We had to wrap him in a towel, feed him, bathe him, and he couldn't walk or anything, it was not good. So, on our (unfortunately) 14 year anniversary we went to the vet to say goodbye to our little furry buddy. I miss him. He was such a sweet, gentle kitty, and had a big heart. He was my mate's best pal, and she's going to put his ashes in jewelry so she can have him around everywhere she goes.
All of that made it so that It was a crazy year because there were up and downs both in the events and also in my mood and it made things a little more difficult. And, Let me tell you, this house is IT! So glad to be free of renting, and also, it was such a pain to buy a house. I didn't realize all the steps you had to take. It was insane doing this and that to end up living in it. And we made a cool friend out of it which is great. But wow there's a lot involved!
We are still not exactly settled in, we have a lot more unpacking to do. We have to kind of wait though, because we need to paint the rooms first before we put stuff in them so it's kind of a weird limbo.
So.. 2023. It was rather tumultuous and I think it was a year of transition, definitely. I was disenchanted with St. Louis and felt like I wanted to hurry and get out of there. I'm glad I did. So this wasn't a year of opportunity, or luck, or settling into things, or anything like that. It was a year where we were meant to be in the middle of changing our lives.
If there's one thing I've learned in 2023, it is that I'm an adult, and feel grounded now that I am in our own house. I feel responsible, mature and hopeful again.
Cheers to 2024.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Drop a line