Where oh where?

I am too sporadic of a writer to have a good blog - I will the first to admit it. But this time I think I have good reason. Life turned upside down for a while on me...

Jesse and I went out of town for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and came home late late Tuesday night - as in 1 am late. We agreed to walk in the door, dump our suitcases on the floor and head to bed, as we both had to work in the morning. I was supposed to be at work at 8 am.

We did walk in the door and we did drop our suitcases, but couldn't quite make it to bed. Our apartment flooded while we were away. The maintenance men or carpet cleaners had thrown our entire apartment into mayhem in the 24 hours between the flood and our return. The couches were pushed this way and that with small items piled on top of them. The coffee table was hiding in the middle of the living room, engulfed by furniture. The bed was pushed from the middle of the bedroom against the window so that my side of the bed was inaccessible, not to mention ALL of the items on the floor (under the bed, hanging out in the closet waiting to be donated, etc) were piled on the bed; some dry and some dripping wet. There was no sleep to be had in that condition that evening. We called my parents, who graciously got up and filled an air mattress so we would have a place to sleep for the evening.

It can be imagined that I was a little stressed.

A pipe broke in the apartment ceiling next door and flooded down into their apartment. The problem was that they were home and caught it right away but no one thought to check our apartment until later. Great. It's always exciting to see a hole in the ceiling drywall in your bathroom, about which your husband later receives the impression that they were just going to paint over it... we decided to move. Fortunately for us, our lease was up a week and a half later, and while we were planning to resign for another 6 months or so, we ended up moving altogether. A week later we had signed a lease and begun to move our things into our lovely new townhome. By the following Thursday we were completely out of the old place, which meant a rush packing and cleaning job. We did it!
We're loving our new place - it's bigger and nicer. 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath, bigger kitchen. It's nicer and we are enjoying having 2 stories. It makes it feel more "house-ish" even though we're just renting still. There are still many crates and objects looking for a home but overall we have the main things put away.

In other news, during this entire obstacle for life, we were staying some friends' house. They offered to let us stay there while they were out of town for a week, which was kind of them. The main drawback was that the friday they were leaving and we were going to stay there, they lost power and didn't regain it until at least 6 days later. Someone apparently ran into a transformer and then they discovered that the wires that were run for the power lines were too small for the amount of houses so they kept blowing. They had the entire neighborhood dug up while we were there, which meant detours and waiting for ages until the construction workers cleared a path for traffic. At one point I think I counted 31 work vehicles on the street through the neighborhood. It was unbelievable - and COLD! It was below freezing, snowy and icy most of the days. Miserable. We couldn't wait to move into our new place with power and our own bed and heat. :)

AND the same Sunday we signed our lease, we were elected to be Deacons in the church, which is exciting! We've always been interested in the Deacons, who do most of the mercy ministry and meet physical needs of the congregation and such. We were thrilled to be nominated a couple months ago and attended our first deacon's meeting tonight, just to observe what goes on. Training is sometime next month. It should be an exciting challenge for us both and we're excited to see how God is going to work in our lives through this new chapter.

So, that's about it. I'm up this late because I have some sort of stomach bug and couldn't sleep. It's been a pretty overwhelming 2-3 weeks and I hope that it calms down just a little soon.