But the PM was right about 1 thing (foreshadowing)–the process did take a long time. In fact, when it came time to renew our lease in February (lease wasn’t up til July 31), we hadn’t heard anything else . And, since what we’d be served with was actually a request by the bank to initiate the foreclosure process, for all we knew they could have settled something.

So we decided to stay another year.

That was probably our second mistake.

At any rate, by the end of summer the notices were coming fast and furious (but by mail this time, no more 9 o’clock knocks), and included Todd’s name, now (probably since he signed for the first notices). We finally got a notice of the actual foreclosure hearing and decided (since we were named on it, and all), that we should probably attend it just to make sure we knew what was up.

In the mean time, we’d researched our rights under the Tenant Protection Act, and knew we would be allowed, by law, to finish out our lease. The PM also confirmed, via email, that once the foreclosure went through, we wouldn’t pay them the rent, we’d pay it to the bank.

Only, well, the lawyer at the foreclosure hearing filled us in a bit more. Banks don’t want to own rental property, they want to sell it as fast as possible, so usually a Cash for Keys notice is sent out by the office handling the foreclosure as incentive for the tenants to vacate quickly. We confirmed this with the appropriate office, and started to think that moving, especially with $1000 to cover deposits, transfers, and other expenses, might not be a bad idea.

We confirmed with our PM that we could shift our security deposit from the Longview house to another of their properties and forgo all the applications, etc., and we started checking out what would be available in December.

We were misinformed.

Apparently, even though the mortgage was held by US Bank (who are NOT easy to get a hold of, by the way), the loan was a VA loan, and those had to be transferred to the VA-approved bank, which happened to be Bank of America (another one impossible to get on the phone), and that could take several months. Cash for Keys wasn’t an option, but the wheels on our end had already been set in motion.

On December 1, the new title was filed with the Clerk of Court listing US Bank as the property owner. On December 6, I came home to a 3-Day Notice on the door. In other words, the PM was trying to evict us for not paying December’s rent. Despite the fact that their contract was null and void by the fact that the property owner… wasn’t.

The next 10 days were pure hell.

We’d found a property to move into, even signed a lease with the PM and paid the pro-rated rent for the last half of December on the new place. Only to have them tell us, the week of the move, that they wouldn’t honor that new lease unless we paid them December’s rent on the Longview house.

“To pay to whom,” I asked, “the former property owner?”

“I suppose so,” replied the PM.

“Over. My. DEAD. BODY!!!” I not-so-calmly screamed into the phone. At work.

Like I said. Hell.

Our options were pretty much

a) pay up and keep the wheels moving

b) find a new place and incur even more costs as we’d already made all the arrangements for the “new” house

c) squat at the Longview house, go to court to fight the eviction process, and take our chances

The sheriff was called, the clerk’s office was called, a lawyer was consulted, and we still went with option a. I’m still not 100% happy about it, but we compromised, a bit, in writing the disputed rent check directly to the escrow account that held security deposits. It’s been almost 2 years and the deed still hasn’t been transferred, because there’s a 3 year backlog on foreclosures.

Still, 2 days before the move I dropped off the December ransom payment, picked up our keys, and we got everything moved in exactly 1 week before Christmas. Part of the benefit of getting the move done then was that my office was closing the week surrounding Christmas, and I thought it would be better served cleaning out the old place and unpacking the new, which is what we did.

——————–

Why am I posting this long story instead of drawing it out (hah!) over the next however many months? Because it’s time to live–and draw–in the present. Drawing these old strips has been like pulling teeth for some reason, and this weekend it hit me: I need to change things up again.

So from here on out, Cocktail Hour will be a when-something-strikes-me-worth-drawing sort of webcomic. Or, really, not a webcomic so much as a sporadic something.

Because what I really want to do, now, after 5 years spent in comicdom, more or less, is work on short one-shots or longer-form works that don’t tie me to a weekly schedule. What this means for Where the Geeks Are, I’m still deciding. But I’m freeing up a little of my schedule a lit more at a time.

IIRC, we’d spilled some olive oil earlier and cleaned it up, but the tiny bit of residue and the slick bottoms of my sandals was a recipe for disaster. Thankfully my dress was long so it covered up the massive bruise on my calf and I managed NOT to bruise my arm somehow. It happened so fast there wasn’t even time for the slow-mo NOOOOO that I usually get when I fall (I’m seriously such a klutz) and Todd was just like, ‘wait, where’d she go?!’

The awesome thing was that I spilled MAYBE a 1/4 cup of the chicken stock in the measuring cup in my hand. I kept that bad boy pretty close to level despite my sudden change in altitude. And what did spill landed on my dress, which had a busy enough pattern that you couldn’t tell.

It was a comedy of errors kind of day.

As for the rest of the evening, it was the hottest, most humid June I’d experienced possibly ever, and even though the party didn’t start until 7:30 it was still sweltering. Luckily, Kara’s step-dad had one of those monster-sized shop fans in the back of his truck and we had that and an oscillating fan going to keep things tepid.

And those damn wings didn’t even make it an hour into the party before they fell apart.

The grill was a semi-surprise. About a month before Mom had mentioned wanting to get us a grill as a housewarming gift, but just didn’t think she could (being serious, not smoke and mirrors here), and I told her that was quite all right and that we didn’t expect anything like that from anyone. So the night before the party, at dinner with everyone, the family makes some noise about coming to help us set up (the rentals–tables and chairs) the next morning. Then there were pointed looks between certain people and whispers about when Jason could meet them with his trucks.

So I told Todd on the way home from dinner: My family got us a grill. Act surprised tomorrow morning. And, sure enough, that’s what happened. Of course, Jason and the truck didn’t quite work out, they ended up taking it out of the box in the home depot parking lot so they could fit the big hood bits into Mom’s backseat and the rest in the trunk, etc.

Thank goodness Andrew had his own car, lol.

And back to the flooding. I show Todd digging out the overflow pipe with his bare hands, but Andrew was down there with him, maybe even Aunt Marie, too–it’s hard to remember, now, but I do remember they spooked a little garden snake in the process.

We were such old-hands at the carpet drill, though, by the time the carpet guys showed up, all that was left for them to do was spray some anti-mildew stuff on the carpet and leave.  Still, it wasn’t exactly what we’d plan to deal with less than 5 hours before guests arrived.

I could have handled this better.

I completely realize that venting my spleen to underlings was not the best course of action available to me.

HOWEVER…

I still don’t think I was wrong to be insulted and disgusted. And here’s why:

1. This store has been around for forty forevers. And in the time I’ve been going in there (since high school, so 20+ years), their tech hasn’t changed much at all: manual cash register, prices on old-fashioned stickers applied with price guns.

2. The security at this place is laughable. It’s narrow aisles are crammed ceiling-high with all sorts of stuff piled on top of each other, no bar codes or electronic theft deterrent devices, etc. And if they do have cameras, there’s no way they’d be effective because of the clutter. I shudder to think at having to do inventory there.

3. We live in a college town and backpack checks are standard operating procedure. College bookstores have cubbies at the front where backpacks and tote bags have to go, but even they don’t expect a woman to leave her purse there, unattended.

4. I had been in the store a few weeks earlier (Memorial Day weekend, if I recall correctly) when they claim the rule was already in place. I talked with a worker for quite a while on that visit and no one said boo about the purse on my shoulder, so I claimed precedence.

5. I explained that I was in there for 1 thing, could I just leave my purse at the counter if it was that big a deal. Their response? ‘No, we can’t take that responsibility.’

6. This is very near campus and right on the bus route. I’m willing to bet a lot of their client base is made up of students. Students with backpacks and no cars. And they just expect them to what? Leave their stuff out on the benches in front. There’s also a fairly high vagrant population in the area–it is really smart or considerate to leave things out front for easy pickings?

But the biggest thing, the thing that pisses me off even more than that old woman with the white hair, and white t-shirt, and her finger waggling in my face, accusing me of being a shoplifter, is that they’d rather treat everyone who walks in their door as a criminal instead of a customer. That’s just not cool.

And it’s why I will never shop at the Magic & Fun Costume Shop in Tallahassee, Florida ever again. And it’s also why I refuse to recommend them to anyone I know. I generally like to support local businesses but not when they lose sight of their priorities. They made it easy for people to shoplift and, rather than change that, they made it hard for people to shop. How they stay in business is a mystery.

And I wish I was making that conversation with the neighbor’s daughter up. Oh how I wish.

Aside from the near-instant church invitation (product of living in the Bible belt), they were just happy to see someone moving in that might actually take care of the place. Until us the backyard had been left to grow to an alarming level of weedy wilderness and the front didn’t fare too much better.

But still, unloading a trunk full of alcohol is not the first impression I would have preferred, but there you go.

Across from us was another family, the husband of which would say hi when he was out in the yard, the older couple on the other side of Dusty were sweet, but the family on the other side of us? Not a clue. We knew they had 2 big dogs, a garden in the back corner, and an aviary. I think I got a wave from the husband one afternoon when we arrived home at the same time, but otherwise it was complete radio silence.

Oh, and there was the cookie bandit that made a few stops: containers of cookies accompanied by a Bible tract (one of them playing off of American Idol, I kid you not) appeared on our doorstep a couple of times with a very nice note but nothing else. We decided to be brave and eat the cookies–we’re not dead yet!

1. I was not driving, Mom was. She was the one who supposedly paid attention to the alternate route and it was her decision to try it. Because…
2. I had printed off directions to get us from the hotel to the ceremony and back AND from the hotel to the Zoo and back, and I’d book a hotel closer to the Zoo than the graduation ceremony, knowing that we’d be coming back late at night.

Neither of these things stopped us from ending up 1 county south (Jacksonville, for those not familiar with Florida geography, is in Duval county).

And, backing up a bit, that restaurant was kind of ridiculous. It could have been a chain, I’m not sure, but the name is Mimi’s and seemed French on the outside but rather Italian on the inside. And I really do find it hard to believe that it would have taken longer to make a club sandwich compared to the Cobb salad I ordered, but whatever. It was overpriced and not that tasty anyway.

This doesn’t have anything, directly, to do with Todd and I living together, but it happened just after the move and might have been left to waste away in my notebooks if I didn’t keep it loosely chronological, here. And this was a friend through work–the wife of a coworker, actually–and they didn’t know Todd very well, yet, so the invitation was just for Mom and I. Todd got to stay home and dog sit Molly and both of them were pretty happy with that arrangement, truth be told.

• Todd is much better at painting trim than I am–doesn’t hurt that he’s taller than me and, therefore, doesn’t have to stretch, even on the ladder, and he takes his time. I don’t, so much.
• I am a messy painter. I also will find a way to step or sit in paint at some point during a project. I now have a pair of shoes and shorts that are only for painting. Mostly because they have paint permanently on them. Granted, I dressed to match the paint color, more or less, so it’s not the worst problem, but it’s there.
• Todd and I work well together on home decorating projects.

UP! came out well after this room was this room, but looking back I see our two armchairs (Todd’s a big, beige recliner that swallows me whole, mine a smaller, burnt orange swivel chair) reflecting that mismatched yet go-together look that Carl and Ellie had. (D’awww!)

I suppose we could have used this room as an actual guest room–one of these days we’ll have one–but it suited us better to have a place for most of our books that could be left open as more space when we entertained. Overnight guests could still stay in there on an air mattress, but we had 3 couches they could crash on in the living room, too.

I thought wrong.

The entire time we were in the Longview house I could not put anything on the floor towards that wall (good thing I’d planned on shelves in that area, anyway) and even things like the legs of my stool–sealed wood–were not 100% safe from the damp that just would. not. go. away.

Shows what happens when you give a room a watery name, right? Though I had other reasons for calling it The Abyss, originally.

More will be revealed…

First I sprained my left wrist while packing, so I was not as much help with the lifting as I’d hoped to me (the brace I was in meant I could only grip with my fingertips–not so great with the heavy boxes was I). Still, I ended up carting things out to the moving truck while the hired guys (all 3 of them) loped around and took copious smoke and cell-phone breaks.

Then there was the issue about the credit card payment. I reserved the truck with the card, as that was the stated preference according to their website, and then I was told, once the movers got to me (and after Todd had already signed for it so they could start loading his stuff up) that there was an extra fee for paying with a credit card! Not only had they NOT informed me of this when I made the reservation and confirmed I would be paying with said card, it violates standard Visa/MC merchant agreements to charge a percentage-based fee when credit cards are a normal form of payment accepted by a business. (Never try this on someone who actually READ the booklet that came with her office’s merchant account.)

Her: “Oh, well, it’s actually a cash discount, the guy just said it wrong.”

Me: “Well, then, why does your form here list the fee as an additional line item to be ADDED, not subtracted?”

Her: “It’s the same thing.”

Me: “No, it’s not, and I’d be curious to know what your merchant services provider would think of this.”

Her: “We’ll take that charge off, ma’am.”

That’s what I thought.

There were other money things, too. Like the mattress bags–they charged me for 2, when they only used one. They also failed to wrap the sofas (because they ran out of the big rolls of industrial Saran-Wrap), but tried to charge me for that, too. When I informed the office lady of these things (always read EVERY line of the bill, folks), she was pissed and threatened to fire her guys for being so careless.

Now, I don’t know how I feel about that part of it–after all, do you really want to be responsible for the firing of up to 3 guys and they know where you live?!

Anyway, I also had to file a claim based on the broken coat rack, a tote that was crunched from being improperly stacked, and our television set that decided to go wonky once it was hooked up after the move. Unfortunately they refused to cop to the last one, since there was no visible dent, even though a quick Google shows me that shaking of a set can jostle loose certain connections. At that point I was tired of dealing with them and let it slide–the set was still watchable, just went color-wonky on a regular basis.

End result? We decided movers were not worth the money. Maybe some companies are more conscientious that this one, but I don’t think we’ll be taking that chance again.

Priorities, right?

Doing someone else’s laundry, especially underwear, just struck me as too personal. Still does, for that matter. *Spoiler alert*, lol, we still keep our laundry and our checkbooks separate. It works for us.

Oh, and I’ve only pulled the “fend for yourself” card maybe twice in the 3 years we’ve lived together, so I figure I’m doing pretty good. (Not counting the nights I decided to order take-out for both of us just because I didn’t want to cook, of course!)