As I write this, I am avoiding the dishes in the sink and the clothes all over our bedroom floor. I thought I would write a little update on our mountain life situation. It has certainly been a wild ride!


Four days before our big move, we got a call from our Tehachapi renter saying that the apartment we had decided on was filled with mold, and we would have to find someplace else while it was being renovated. Um, ok. Thanks for the heads up! Needless to say, all of Thursday afternoon and evening was filled with online research and phone calls to apartment complexes begging for shelter. I made an appointment with one apartment manager for the next day, and my mom and sister kindly offered to come along and help me check it out. Joe was not able to come, as he had his big senior project presentation in the morning and a final in the afternoon.


Thank God I had my mom and sister. They are way more bold and experienced than I am, so they basically asked all the money questions and voiced their opinions. The apartment manager was willing to work with us so that we could move in the following Monday, granted that our credit report checked out and that I could provide them proof of Joe's income. Long story short, I picked up a printed declaration of employment from Joe's Tehachapi employer and turned it in. Because the manager's supervisor was not in that day, we would have to wait till Monday morning to hear the final word.

Monday morning. The morning that we are supposed to be on the road hauling our whole lives with us to our new town. It was definitely a discouraging time. Why would God provide a place for Joe to work but not a place for us to live? We just had to pray and be patient. That weekend was sheer stress. Both our families were in SLO to see Joe graduate, and we did the rest of the packing and loading into the moving truck. My parents were packing/moving superstars!


Monday morning rolled around, and we had decided just to go, even though there was no guarantee all our stuff would have a home. We had to get to Tehachapi anyway, and Monday was the only day we had extra hands to help move (my parents). On the way there, the apartment manager called Joe and said that the printed proof of income was not enough, because he hadn't started working yet. So we would have to pay the security deposit, first month's rent and last month's rent. Okay, we understand. Unfortunately, we don't have immediate access to $2,100 in a town with no Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or a credit union. Thanks to my parents, we were able to scrape together enough money to satisfy the manager for a while, and we go the okay to move in.


We got all our furniture and boxes into the apartment, and then bid adieu to my wonderful mom and dad.


Well, no electricity. No gas either, which means no hot water and a stove that we couldn't use. Joe made some calls to the appropriate companies, and we spent the first night in a hotel with Burger King and a bottle of wine.


After twenty-four hours we got electricity, but it wouldn't be for another week that we would get the gas turned on. I tried taking ONE cold shower, but it probably sounded like I was hyperventilating with all the ruckus I made. After that I swore off bathing. Aside from not being able to cook without a microwave or bathe, that week really wasn't that bad. We slept in, went to a Dodger game with Dad, and got to know the town a little.


For now we are living in this apartment month-to-month, and hopefully by the end of July we will be in a more permanent apartment.


All I can say is, God did put a roof over our heads, and He knows what He's doing!