I have decided to start a new blog. This one will keep going, but I have realized that it has really become a bit depressing as I tend to use it to vent my feelings and frustrations. I'm OK with that (and know I need it for my own sanity), but I don't want that to be the "only" thing I say, especially when I stop to think about all of the amazing things I am learning and desperately want to share with others. So...in order to have both a place I can vent and a place I can "muse", I have decided to become a two blog girl. We'll see how it goes ;)

You can check out the new one at La'asok b'divrei Torah

...and to find out what the heck that name means, you'll have to check it out.

Stubborn or just stupid

I've been trying to figure out over the last several weeks if I'm stubborn or just stupid in continuing this craziness. We moved here because we really felt God leading us here for me to work on my Masters in Biblical Studies but life has been messy (to say the least!) from the moment we got here. We've gone from living in a slum of an apartment, to emergency surgery for me, to an $8000 tax bill, to a tornado...in less than one year!! Here's an update on life for us right now...

We (Zach, Barkley, Bastet and I) are currently living at the Residence Inn in Roseville, MN. We moved there from Bethel on June 15. The dorm we had been staying in at Bethel was needed for a conference so we had to move on. We went around and around with our insurance and were, for a bit, going to move into a furnished corporate apartment but (LONG story) that all fell through at the last minute so we are at the Res Inn for the duration. We did get to move from a studio room to a 1-bedroom yesterday, which thus far has been helpful.

It is definitely challenging to say the least. We have a fridge, a microwave, dishwasher, sink and 2 small burners (i.e. no oven) - so coming up with food is tricky. We met with our insurance agent and they are going to be paying us for the extra food costs we're currently incurring not really being able to cook much for ourselves. Our goal is to try to cook more...but it's not easy to do in a tiny hotel room.

We did manage to find a new car to replace ours, which was totaled. Zach found a 2000 Ford Explorer that fit our limited budget and had reasonable miles on it, so we got it.

Our house up here is still a mess. Our landlord's insurance company is still being horrific and we're still waiting for them to agree to a reasonable scope of repairs. She has been AMAZING...getting to know her better and becoming friends has been a great bright spot in the midst of the mess.

In today's news, we just got an email from our renters in Missouri that they will not be renewing their lease next year (we had only signed a 1-year with them with a verbal agreement for 3-years, which I didn't remember). They are moving out because he took a job in Nebraska. So now we need to find new renters for our house ASAP! So if anyone knows of someone looking for a place to live, we have a very, very nice 3-bedroom, 2-bath house in Boonville available August 1!

And so I return to the question of the day...am I appropriately stubborn or just plain stupid?

Update - Wednesday

It's hard to believe its only Wednesday...seems like its been SO MUCH longer since our world got flipped upside down. Things have continued to develop since the tornado hit our house. In my first post I said that our house was ok, well...not so much. Our amazing beyond words landlord, Lindsay, got a contractor and her insurance adjuster into the house (although not at the same time...hopefully that happened today). The contractor found water spots in the ceiling where the roof is leaking, meaning that the roof is damaged. He also found cracks in the ceiling, both hairline and places where its actually pulling apart, all from the torquing of the house in the wind as the tornado went by. All of that means there is more structural damage than we thought and that its now a whole new ballgame.

Initially we had just been waiting for the power to come back up to go home, which has still not happened and likely won't be til sometime next week. But with this new information we now are out of our house for several weeks. According to the contractor, once the power is finally restored to the house he'll need 2 weeks to fix the damage. In the meantime, we have to move EVERYTHING we own out of the house and store it until the house is fixed. Our insurance is going to pay for it, but we're still not sure how its all going to work. If we're going to have to pack it all up or if they will, etc. We are also praying that the damage they found is it. The contractor went through in the relative dark and won't be able to get a good look until, you guessed it, the power is back up.

In addition to the new house info, we also have new car info. Our car, which did have a garage on it now has a tree on it too. Excel (the power company) came through and started cutting trees out of our alley and managed to drop a giant tree on it. So our car that was also (from what we could tell) ok is now not ok. At the very least the back window is smashed in and its supposed to rain again soon. We, of course, can't get close to it safely to tarp it and actually haven't seen it since the tree crunched it. Our insurance adjuster is supposed to come look at it tomorrow and we're all assuming that it will be totaled. Which means we'll have to be on the hunt for a cheap car to replace the old one.

We're currently staying in an apartment at Bethel next to the Sem. We moved here Monday night and can stay here until June 15. After that, assuming we can't go home yet, our insurance will move us into a furnished apartment.

So that's the latest...more as it develops

Yesterday

I'm honestly not even sure where to start with this one. I realize its been a very long time since I wrote on here, yet again...and there's lots of other stuff I'd rather tell everyone about, but this is what I've got. A tornado hit our house yesterday.

We are all ok...Barkley was at "daycare", Zach and I were actually out (I'll tell that whole story in a bit), and when we got home we found Bastet asleep on a pillow. Our house is mostly ok, broken windows and doors and and a good bit of mess. Our garage, on the other hand, is gone. It collapsed on top of Zach's car. The car, however, appears to have survived with only a few dents and scratches, but we'll know more when we can actually get to it. Our neighborhood is a disaster zone. The mayor of Minneapolis has declared a state of emergency in our area of the city. Last night they enacted a curfew of 9pm and only residents were allowed in or out, not that that is a very easy task at this point. North Minneapolis is a very old neighborhood, most of the houses were built in the early 1900s, so the trees on the roads were HUGE, and now they're gone; fallen on top of houses or across the road. You can barely walk five feet without a tree blocking your way, and driving is out of the question. There is no power in our neighborhood and we're not sure when it will be back. We have heard that they are "hoping" to have it restored to "most" of the area by tonight...but that seems almost impossible. They are going to have to pull miles of line and cut down hundreds of trees to get it through...so we'll see.

So here's how our day went yesterday:
We got up and had a pretty normal morning...ate some breakfast, talked about the plan for the day. Barkley had been going nuts for a couple of days, bored and hyper. It has been raining and he hasn't gotten to go out a play much, so we decided to take him and drop him off at daycare for a few hours while we go to the grocery store. We dropped him off and headed to Walmart, which is, more or less, on the other side of town. As we were driving, the weather started getting pretty nasty and then we got a call from our alarm company. The upstairs back door was open and they wanted to know if we wanted a cop sent. We were pretty certain that the wind had blown open the windows, which then blew open the door, so we said no. We decided we should probably head back home and close it, just to be safe. Little did we know what had actually happened!

As we were discussing the "turning around to go home" the weather took a turn for the worse. It started POURING rain and hailing. Zach couldn't see to drive so we pulled off the highway and found a parking lot to sit in until it passed. At this point I pulled up the weather on my phone and found a tornado warning. I opened it up and read maybe the scariest words I've ever read: a tornado has been reported at I-94 and Dowling. I-94 and Dowling is EXACTLY where our house is. Dowling is one block south of us and I-94 is about 5-6 blocks west...it had dropped, from what we could tell, on our house.

We both more or less freaked out. The rain had let up enough that we could drive again so we started heading home...which was a challenge in and of itself. I-94 has been closed down all weekend for bridge painting...so we now had to find a different way home. As we were driving, we started hearing tornado sirens. I pulled up the weather again and there was another tornado warning...heading right for us. Zach found a Target and we ran inside and were sent to the back of the store with everyone else. For what seemed like an hour (but was probably only 5-10 minutes) they held us at the back of the store. When we were finally given the "all clear" we took off for home.

As we got closer and closer to our neighborhood, things got worse. We started seeing trees down and debris. As we crossed the bridge into our neighborhood, shock set in. The coffee shop on the corner had taken major damage, the billboard on top of it was ripped off and there were bricks on the street. Windows were broken in all of the stores. We only made it a few hundred feet on the main road (Lyndale) before we were stopped by road blocks and police. We took a quick turn into a gas station to head down another road and encountered another cop roping off the road. We found out later that a woman had actually been in her car when the storm hit and had been killed. We asked the cop what was the best way to get to 37th and Dupont (our house). His response, "your guess is a good as mine". And now we were REALLY scared.

Zach took off, trying to find any back way in we good...but we were constantly blocked by huge downed trees, power lines and debris. Finally, about 5 blocks from the house, we gave up and abandoned our car and started running. We turned down our alley and panicked. It was a disaster...the garage 3 doors up from ours had actually been lifted up and dropped back down in the middle of the alley. We got to where we could see our house and it was terrifying. We could see the destroyed garage and the backyard was gone, lost under a mountain of trees. Zach went running, both of us yelling for Bastet. He ran across all the trees in the back and headed in the backdoor. I couldn't get through and fought my way around front, both of us still yelling for her.

Both the back porch door and front porch door were blown in and there was glass everywhere. The windows were broken and our giant tree out front was laying across the road. I made it to the front, yelling for Zach and Bastet. I could hear him yelling inside but couldn't tell what he was saying. He finally made it to the front door to let me in and told me she was fine. She was upstairs on her pillow asleep. I ran up and found her there, curled up in a little ball like nothing had happened!! At this point, I completely broke down...we both stood there and held her and cried.

We put Bastet in her crate and locked her in the bathroom and went to survey the damage and be sure all our neighbors were ok. Everyone on our street came through it fine physically but several houses didn't. One of our neighbors, Gary and Cindy, had a tree go through the back of their house...and they have no insurance. We are praying that FEMA will come through for them. Our other neighbors had varying levels of tree damage, some more, some less. Overall we know we were very lucky...everyone on the street came through uninjured.

Our landlord Lindsay arrived an hour or so later and we started trying to figure out "what next". There was obviously no power to the house and a gas leak next door. We decided to try to get the house where we could secure it (i.e. boarding things up and actually putting a 2x4 across the back door since it was the only option to keep it closed) as that seemed critical. A couple of people around had taken the opportunity to add drunk to stupid and make a dangerous situation...so we wanted to be sure the house could be closed up.

We called Barkley's daycare to see if he could stay the night and they were wonderful and gracious...even offering to figure out a way to feed him with his "chicken allergy" issues. We spent some time trying to decide what to do and determined we should try to find a hotel. We weren't sure how long power was going to be out for and I for one didn't feel safe there without power or any way for people to get to us if something else happened. We found a hotel that took pets and are now at the Red Roof Inn in Plymouth.

We aren't quite sure what's next. We have renter's insurance and are hoping it will cover the cost of having to stay in a hotel until we can get back in the house...but the claims center couldn't promise anything, of course. I'm scared, tired and completely overwhelmed. We are down to one car until we can get his out from under the garage and aren't sure how we're going to handle that. He works in South Minneapolis and I have class/work in North St. Paul. I have two weeks left of my quarter and Zach takes the LSAT in 2 weeks, which is adding even more stress to the situation.

So here I am...grateful to be alive, grateful that our house is still standing, but feeling lost and frightened...and that's all the words I have.

A New Year

I can't believe its been so long since I've written! I woke up today realizing that I have 'slacked off' in my blog-keeping and was determined (I'm not calling it a New Year's Resolution because, well...I stink at those) to do a better job keeping it up.

So here we are, months since the last entry, and physically in a much better place. We were finally able to get out of our last apartment and moved into a small house owned and managed by one of the most wonderful people we've met. She has proven to be the complete opposite of our first landlord in every way and we now finally have someplace that can feel more like home.

I use those words, "like home", intentionally, because no matter how much we want it to be, Minnesota is not home. I was raised in the city (St. Louis to be exact) but I am by no means a 'city girl'. Living in a city as large as Minneapolis is not who I am. I always thought I could be at home anywhere, city, country, suburbs, whatever, but that is far from the truth. I'm a 'country-girl' at heart. On our drive back to Minnesota from Missouri last week, my heart broke at the thought of returning to the city. I loved the openness of the country (even if that country was Iowa) and longed to be able to stay in a place where I could hear nothing but the wind pushing through the trees or look up and see stars, instead of streetlights.

That is not the only reason for my 'heartbreak' on the way home. The truth is, I'm lonely here. I have made friends at school and always have Zach, but just being near people who know the real me while we were in Missouri has made my heart lonely. I miss relationships where I can just 'be'. I miss living in a place and working with people where I can just 'be'. Where my personal brand of crazy is known and accepted. And I miss people who are 'like me'. Zach and I have learned while here that Minnesotans and Missourians are a very different breed. We have a 'southern' way of doing things. Who knows maybe it's Zach's Texas family and my love of all things tropical, either way, we stand out here like a sore thumb.

All of that said, there has been a lot of good coming out of our time here so far, especially for Zach. I am beyond words proud of my husband...he has stopped and spent months asking the question, who am I really. The answer he found fit perfectly. As I type this, Zach is upstairs studying for the next phase of his life, law school. He's preparing to take the LSAT in the coming months and apply to law schools on the East Coast, specifically Virginia. Our plan is to move there in the fall of 2012 (I should have completed my masters by then). I am excited and anxious, I know its where we belong.

That, I believe, is making life in Minnesota all the harder. I love being in class, but it seems the moment I step out the door I feel sad, anxious and (for lack of a better word) trapped. My heart already longs for Virginia, a place we've only been once but already feels like home. When we speak of home now, it's Virginia that is in our hearts and minds. Its strange, but also makes sense. I told many people when we were preparing to leave that I believed God would either bring us back to Missouri or would place in our hearts such a desire for someplace new it would be 'easy' to go...and that is exactly what has happened.

And so we wait, again. It's a year and a half before we can (or should) move. I still have to finish school here and Zach can't even start law school until the fall of 2012...so here we are, in Minnesota...far from home. My prayer, while we're here, is that we find some peace...and that is my hope for the New Year.

Please...help us

Terrified. That's about the only way to describe what I'm currently feeling. Our landlord has agreed to let us out of the lease assuming he can find someone to rent it. He has refused to let us out before that happens and doesn't believe he has done anything "wrong". He emailed us last night and is showing our place at 12pm today. I'm terrified. Al I want is OUT! We are praying desperately that whoever is coming to look at it will agree to rent it immediately and we'll be done and free.

But I'm scared and worried. I'm scared no one will want it, that we'll continue to be 'trapped' in an apartment with a horrendous landlord and dangerous neighborhood. I'm trying to trust that God is going to 'take care of it', but that's so hard to see right now. Why didn't God take care of it before? Why has this even happened? I keep asking God, crying out, 'We've done everything You asked! We gave up everything to move here! We left our home, our friends, our church, our LIVES to follow what we believe You've called us to and THIS is what happens!' I beg God to answer, to say something, but nothing seems to come. Not even 'trust me'. Where is He?!?

Classes start in a few days, and I feel more alone than I have in a long time. God, where have You gone? Please, we need Your help...

Apartment Rant

Many of you saw my last post on facebook regarding our current landlord 'situation'. Here's a quick rundown of what all has happened and what we're dealing with now.

When found this place on Craigslist after LOTS of unsuccessful searching. Zach talked to the guy who is now our landlord over the phone about the place and we decided to drive up and check it out as it was, by far, the best option we'd found. The house is an old top-bottom duplex which our landlord has "completely" gutted and renovated. When we came up to see it in June he was still in the process of finishing the renovations, but it looked decent (other than from the outside, which looks like a crack house) and he assured us the work would be DONE well before we needed to move up in August. We had seen pictures of his other properties online and they all looked really nice. We told him we weren't sure when we would move in, as it all depended on when Zach got a job, I definitely wouldn't be up until late August. As part of our conversations with him, we asked him for averages on bills, he assured us they would be VERY reasonable due to all the renovations. We decided to go for it and put in an application.

Fast forward to July when we emailed him to check up on things. He assured us it was "done" and ready for us to move in at any time. We asked if we could go ahead and move our stuff in July 31, since we had found renters for our house starting August 1. He said 'go for it'.

Fast forward again to July 31, we arrive in Minnesota to find our "done" apartment in virtually the same condition it was in when we saw it the first time. NONE of the doors were hung, there were no locks on the doors, no cabinet doors, and the place was, in general a TOTAL mess! This lead eventually to some emails back and forth between our landlord and Zach regarding the state of things. He claimed that he didn't think we were moving in until later and he was being "nice" letting us move our stuff in "early". Keep in mind, we're paying rent on this place starting August 1 and we moved our stuff in less than 24 hours early. We pushed back on his claim that is was "done" and felt we'd come to a resolution that there was some poor communication on both sides and we would try to do better.

Fast forward AGAIN to a week later when Zach was supposed to move up. We had let our landlord know the moment Zach got a job (late July) that he would DEFINITELY be living there by August 7. At this point we're now trying to be sure everything is ready for Zach to move up with the dog. We are informed earlier that week that the apartment (that we are paying rent on!) still doesn't have an occupancy permit. Our landlord is frantically trying to get it to pass inspection but it's not happening. Finally, the day before Zach is supposed to leave, we find out it hasn't passed and won't pass until at least Monday. As a result, Zach has to stay with friends and can't take the dog. Our landlord offers to pro-rate our rent for the days Zach can't stay there (but not for the rest of the month when we couldn't live there if we wanted to or not!). It finally passes on Monday, but is still a disaster area (still no doors on cabinets, etc and still a MESS!).

Zach comes back to Missouri to get me at the end of August after spending weeks pestering our landlord to get stuff DONE. He assures Zach that over the weekend we're gone he's going to get a bunch of stuff done. We arrive back (with the dog and cat in tow) to an apartment where NOTHING has changed since Zach left, he didn't do a thing.

Zach has continued to get after him about a variety of things. For every one thing he FINALLY fixes there are at least 5 more that need to be addressed. One problem we had was the horrid water pressure in the shower. It was literally a trickle. Zach told him about it and that we needed to fix it ASAP, our landlord went off on some whole thing about how the pipes were all new and that it should be fine...except it isn't!!! We talked about options and that it needed to be addressed NOW...it of course wasn't. I finally went to Home Depot and got a new $20 shower head that Zach put on to fix it. We told our landlord what we finally did and that if he wanted to reimburse us he could, if not we'll take it with us when we leave. He agreed to reimburse us.

After that conversation, Zach sends him an email with a reminder of the list of things that need to be fixed ASAP (btw, one of those is a window in the bathroom that won't close, and it's getting down in the 50s at night here). Also in that email he asks if we should deduct the days where Zach couldn't stay here and the showerhead from our rent or if he wants to give us cash. We get an email back stating that he didn't like how the showerhead thing was handled and that he didn't know there was a problem (which was a flat out lie). In addition, not being able to stay at the house for 2 days wasn't that big of an inconvenience to us and he really needed the money. This, of course, MASSIVELY hacked us off! Because of course it was a HUGE inconvenience and we were being really nice only expecting him to reimburse us for 2 days. We told him that, paid him the full rent and he gave us a check for the two days, we never got paid for the showerhead, so it will be going with us when we leave.

Fast forward to two days ago...we have continued to get after him to get stuff FIXED...NOW! We don't even have our own mailbox at this point! We get an email from him stating that there is a "dog waste problem" and that we need to only take Barks out in the backyard and clean up immediately and completely. He said our downstairs neighbor and "others" had complained. First off, we pick up after Barks DAILY, not necessarily every time (though we are now) but once a day without fail. Second, we fully believed our neighbors downstairs may have mentioned something (and we'll get to that in a minute) but NO ONE EVER walks by our house. We are out on walks twice a day and have NEVER seen anyone walk by. Thus, we fully believe the "other people" part is lie. Third, we can't take the dog down the back stairs to get to the backyard. For one thing they are WAY too steep, for another, they are COVERED with our landlord's crap! It's dangerous for us to walk down them!

In this email he also mentioned that he was going to 'finish' the stairwells this week and then he was "done" with the indoor renovations (keep in mind we still have a fairly long list of things that NEED to be fixed!) We emailed back and apologized for the poopy, but also mentioned we can't get down the stairs with all his stuff. We also reminded him of the giant list of things he still isn't done fixing.

Wednesday night, after this email exchange, we decided it would be a good idea to go down and take a 'peace offering' to our neighbors (cookies) and apologize for the poopy problem and to also encourage them to talk to us if there's an issue. We have had small conversations with them, but haven't really gotten to know them yet. We went down and got all our worst fears about our landlord completely confirmed.

Our downstairs neighbor is moving out November 1, and not by her choice. She moved into this place in March and has had VAST problems since she moved in with him fixing things including, but not limited to NONE of her windows opening all summer (and our places don't have A/C). She has a mouse problem caused by a gaping hole behind her fridge leading directly down into the dungeon of a basement. She had finally 'had it' this month and told our landlord that she will not be renewing her lease bc of all these problems. He asked to talk to her and, when they met, he said that he wanted to "end the relationship now instead of in March and that she should be out by November 1". This is a working woman who is living with and caring for her disabled mother, in addition to have 2-18 year old sons living with her! It was RIDICULOUS!!! She also informed us, as we talked about all the problems she's had, that our heating bills will be 2-3 times what we were quoted.

Zach spoke to our landlord again last night about all the stuff that needs to be finished and he assured us it'll be done "soon". He also got wind that we'd talked to our downstairs neighbor and he tried to get more info out of Zach what they said. He, of course, didn't tell them, which lead our landlord to lie and blame her "choice" to move all on her mother's disability (which their is some truth in as her mother can't get in or out of the clawfoot tub) but he mentioned nothing about basically kicking her out months early.

So there it is. We're in a year long lease, which doesn't end until August, stuck with a landlord who (in my opinion) lies and is completely useless. He has, in our opinion, gotten himself over his head financially and has no concept of how to be a landlord. I'm angry and heartbroken. Home is very important to me, having somewhere I feel is 'safe' and 'comfortable'.

I'm honestly not sure what to do...all I want is to leave this place and find a 'home' where I can be comfortable. I really just want him to kick us out too, so we can go find somewhere where we can be happy.

So that's the short (long) story of our current apartment woes...thus endeth my rant