The Seattle Saga, Continued

Hello, my name is Aarwenn (Hi, Aarwenn, and why the hell couldn’t you have picked an online handle that would be easier to spell?) and...hey! Want to go ride bikes?

Hello. I am easily distracted. As a person, as a writer, as a thinker, as a resident. Some of you may remember the Seattle Saga from before. Just now, in writing this post, I re-read a lot of my old posts from March and April. I can’t believe now how scared I was to move, and how scared I was of the crippling emotions that haunted me in West Seattle, and how scared I was to live alone. I moved in April, and it was such amazing experience that I never looked back! I forgot that I was scared! I finally have this “living” thing all worked out!

HA! Said Fate.

The Seattle Saga, Continued

In September of this past year, a very weird and bad and scary thing happened, and I talked around it at the time, but there’s no point in hiding the truth now: Titan attacked the mailman at my old apartments.

It was a random and terrible occurrence. I had Titan off leash and he ran down the stairs ahead of me and before I could get there, the damage had been done. The mailman was fine, physically, but he was extremely unhappy. It was not good. I was terrified that Titan was going to have to be put down. In the first few hours following the incident, I would have happily pushed the plunger myself. I owe a lot to Tacompton Tiffany and T-Town, who consoled me over the phone for many hours as I roamed the streets on that warm September night. The Animal Control Officer came two days later to assess the situation. Fortunately, he loved Titan—who doesn’t?—so the incident passed with just a report and a small fine for his unlicensed state. (Who knew you had to license your dog in Tacoma AND Seattle?) No doctor’s bills, no lawsuits. And as far as I know the Post Office has not been purposely sneezing all over my mail.

I was in the clear with the law and the Postal Service, but the apartment complex refused to renew my lease, not surprising, although they gave me an additional month to find another place to stay and wrote me (and Titan!) a good recommendation. Not that it helped. In early October I was still pretty shaken up, and in the middle of October I was celebrating the LT’s birthday, and in late October we were in Boston, and so it got to be the 24th or 25th of October and I still had no place to live. Come November, I would be homeless.

It was around this time that I thought I might buy a condo instead of renting. Someplace permanent! They couldn’t just kick me out! I wouldn’t be wasting rent! Ha. Yes. Has anyone ever tried to look for a condo in the dead of winter in the Rainy City? In the first two months of my search, maybe two or three condos appeared that would even come close to fitting my criteria. And they were terrible.

So, my condo search was failing and I hadn’t put any work into finding an apartment instead. Enter my friend Bobby, who had this on-and-off boyfriend, named Mike, and Mike owned a house in the Central District, and he had an extra room, and Bobby, may his possible children be blessed for all eternity, approached Mike FOR me and asked him if he’d be willing to rent to me, and Hecate be blessed, he was. So much so that HE emailed ME and offered his extra room. October 30th had arrived and suddenly a new place had fallen into my lap.

“It’s for six months or less, because I’m looking for a condo,” I said, and he said, “Great.”

Hello, January. By early January, a scant two months later, I still couldn’t find a condo, I was getting tired of looking, and Mike got some news: He was being transferred to the Heartland of America and had to sell his house! He sent me a frantic email: “I need you out ASAP! Sorry! No offense!”

Me: “...ohshit.”

The condo market was still sluggish and I was giving up hope, and so I decided to look for apartments again, and within five days, I found two perfect ones. I lost the first one and got the second one, and so, ladies and gents, on February second I am MOVING AGAIN. This will be the third time I have moved in ten months, but of course that is nothing unusual.

The new place is great, and I have included another map. This lease is a year long. The idea of not having to rent a moving truck for the next twelve months is my idea of heaven.
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