On Unsettledness

I hate being unsettled. I often quote the Nelly McKay line, "God, I'm so German, 'have to have a plan," and man, is that ever me. So imagine my fitfulnes as a six-month pregnant lady who was not sure what house, let alone what state, she was going to live in in a few months.

Well, now we have something settled. Michael and I made the monumental decision to a) stay in Tennessee until he's done with his PhD, and b) move to a different house within Knoxville. We found a house on our first day of looking, which is a little unsettling. There should be more of a struggle. There should be endless phonecalls to landlords and frantic e-mails back and forth and mapquesting all over town going on, but no. Instead, we made three viewing appointments today and were certain that the very first one we looked at was the one for us.

As a funny sort of sidenote for the day, the second house we looked at was HILARIOUS! Seriously, Michael and I will be laughing about this place for years to come. This hairy-backed, delusional landlord is looking to rent this house for $850/month. It was the most rundown shackety-shack I have ever seen and it had ZERO appliances in it. Imagine: wood paneled walls, disgustingly dirty carpet, holes in walls, doorless closets, and nary a single kitchen appliance in the dump. And this dude wants to rent it for $850 big ones! Normally, I'm very forthcoming with landlords about disliking a place if it does not suit me, however, I had this horribly creepy feeling walking into the place as the landlord shut the door behind us. If Michael were not with me, I would have felt like I had just entered a bad Lifetime movie wherein I was about to be sexually assaulted. So with that feeling sending a chill through me, I kept my mouth closed other than to say to said hairy-backed landlord that we had other places to look at before making a decision.

That was a long sidenote. Apologies. Anyway, all these changes make me feel uncomfortably unsettled, which is a terrible state to be in as it tangles up loneliness, self-doubt, fear, and melancholy inside of it. So I've got all of those emotions raging through my hormonally-charged pregnant body.

We are signing a new lease tomorrow and hoping, praying, counting on our landlord being able to rent our current home before our lease is up. All this up in the air-edness is not doing anything awesome for my German self. Sometimes even having a plan is not enough.