The Universe Has Spoken

OK, for as worried and stressed as I've been the past week, I'm that happy tonight.

We found a place!! It's one block off our favorite walking neighborhood in Oakland, full of cute stores, restaurants, a lovely old movie theater, everything you'd ever want or need in a cute city neighborhood. Also -- it's safe. And no mold!! Yippee!

The apartment itself is also lovely -- we totally lucked out. Or maybe it wasn't luck. More on that in a minute. It's a big, pretty upper apartment in a pretty old-fashioned fourplex. Hardwood floors, a big working fireplace, antique built-in in the dining room, etc. The compromise is the kitchen -- it will require a little 'fiddling' to make it how I want. Plus it's old-fashioned. But, the minute we walked in, we both loved it. We knew at once.

Not just liked, loved. I had a feeling we would, so I had prepared credit reports, applications, references, everything -- all in advance. I wanted to be able to just hand it all over and give it to her right then, if we liked it. And we did.

All during the day we'd gotten signs that something good was coming. All the other places we've looked at hadn't felt right, but this place felt right, even before we saw it. We got multiple signs all throughout the day that this was the right place (or that it was coming). Terri's little totem animal, a hummingbird, came up to the bedroom window this morning. Our neighbor had another one of his gigantic water leaks (spilling through the floor into the garage below, flowing out into the street). Church bells rang when we were inside the apartment, falling in love with it.

After worrying so much about this, this feels like such a gift. Not only do we get to move away from the mold, we get to move somewhere beautiful in a neighborhood that we are so excited about.

Thanks, universe. We really, really needed that. Ok, actually, because I don't want to jinx it, we have it on contingency that our references check out. So... if you get a call this weekend, please say nice things about us. :)