Monday, May 23, 2011

Two Out of Three...

The big THREE have been haunting me for quite awhile now -- I think of them almost every moment I am awake, unless I am gloriously distracted by some other matter, and even many times when I am asleep, having vivid dreams and nights of tossing & turning. These three big matters are HOUSE, CONDO, and JOB. Incredibly, after months of horrible anxiety and stress over the big three, within the last week's time two of the three have been resolved and, fortunately, in quite the best way possible.

I listed "house" first, but I'll actually get to that last, since it is the one that is still unresolved.

Let's start with "condo." As you probably know, Gearry and I have been carrying both our condo in Indiana and our rental house here in Savannah for almost a year now. That's a year of essentially throwing away money on a residence where no one was living -- Between mortgage, utilities, & HOA fees, I'm not even going to get into how much money, but it's certainly enough to make you want to cry a little. After almost a year of unfruitful activity on the real estate market, we finally made the decision a couple of weeks ago to pull the condo off the market and list it with a property management company in hopes of renting it out. Well, two weeks later... the new resident of our condo is signing her lease today! She is a middle-aged medical professional and sounds like she is going to be a great tenant and because Gearry and I are paying the property management company to take care of everything, we get the financial benefit of being the owners but not the headaches of being the landlords. She moves in next week! Rent is enough to cover all of our expenses plus a little extra for us to keep each month, so this is an amazing relief. If it goes well, we may just continue to keep the condo as an income property.

Alright, now on to "job." What I thought was a wasted day back in April spent navigating Savannah's horrible traffic to drop off resumes and cover letters at a few private schools around the area actually turned out to be a career-and-life-changing move. My resume caught the eye of an athletic director who was looking for a coach for their high school rowing program. Realizing I needed to teach there in order to coach there, he helped set up a couple of informal interviews with the school heads. From there, it was up to me. The whole process was scary but went very well, and after a couple of tense weeks of not knowing, I got a call last week offering me a full-time pre-k teaching job -- a dream. I also get to coach again, of course, and all of this at decidedly one of the top private schools in the area. I couldn't have asked for a more ideal situation, except that it means leaving the school I am at now, which I love, love, love. But I am sure that I will love this new school, and I will certainly love having my own classroom (finally!) and really feeling like I am getting going in this career that I have worked so hard for. I got to go and observe at the school the week before last and I loved the atmosphere and all of the people. I am nervous (eek!) but confident that it is the right role for me and so so so grateful to God for helping guide me to be in the right place at the right time with the right credentials.

OK, so that leaves "house." We've been renting a guest house on Talahi Island since Gearry moved here at the beginning of July, our original intentions of only staying for a few months until our condo sold gone with the wind. It didn't sell, of course, and we didn't leave the guest house, because it was a great deal and because we really wanted to have the condo taken care of before we purchased another home. Well, our lease runs out at the end of June on the guest house and when we found out pretty last minute that our two-month lease extension request was NOT being granted (long and bitterly-toned story), all of the sudden we were in super scramble mode. We HAD to start looking for a house, whether we were ready or not, whether the condo was sold or rented or not. Of all the thousands of houses for sale in Savannah, we found ONE -- yes, just one -- that was both in our price range and satisfied our many non-negotiable demands: by the water, two-car garage, mature trees, etc., etc. We offered on it on Thursday, received a counter back on Friday, countered later on Friday, and are currently waiting anxiously for a counter back today by 6:00 p.m. (It's 2:30 and still no word... I kind of feel like I want to throw up.) Both the house and the neighborhood are beautiful... One block from the marsh & river & marina, where we can launch our kayaks anytime we want. The house needs just some basic cosmetic work according to our tastes -- new paint colors mostly -- and is a perfect balance of being almost move-in ready yet having room for many little projects that we can do over the years. I really, really, really want this deal to go through and will be crushed if it doesn't, not to mention potentially homeless in about a month. I can't decide if because two out of three of the major things I have been most worried about have worked themselves out in the last week that this one will too, or if I've used up all of my good fortune.

We shall see...