8. (actual) Progress

Place to live: check!

We rented a place today! It's not final, final--we didn't sign the lease yet, but the owner is turning away the other offers and awarding the place to us. We sure didn't expect to be doing this now; the way places move around here (just the way this place moved--immediately!), we thought we'd look at the beginning of September. But our area tour on Friday led us to this cute duplex that has so much of what we wanted, we couldn't turn it away.

It's a large (for the area) place that feels like a home with a nice live-in landlord and hard wood floors, our own private outside space, and a garage which is good for storage and maybe even my torch. It's in a real quiet neighbourhood, an amazing 1/4 mile (really) walk to the train and downtown Menlo Park which has a wonderful bookstore, a yoga studio with the right kinds of classes, tonnes of great restaurants, as well as Draeger's (gourmet grocery), Trader Joe's, and Safeway. We can also walk to Palo Alto's downtown.

Our rent starts 1 August, which means we lose 1.5 months of safety net from our relocation plan. We lost a lot of sleep over the landlord's offer to take it starting 1 August when we asked for September. We went in circles and circles about it. Really it all came down to a question of faith: do you have faith that you'll find just as good an apartment later OR do you have faith that the house will sell? I woke up Saturday morning and my gut said: take it. Still, we went in more circles. In the end we had to go with the gut.

This is California, the land of gold and promises of abundance. It wouldn't be what it is without a little faith.