Moving In & Moving On: Theresa Signs Yet Another Lease

Status: Quo Minus

Moving In & Moving On: Theresa Signs Yet Another Lease

by F. Theresa Gillard

BOSTON Massachusetts—(Weekly Hubris)—5/30/11—I am moving yet again. Heaven forbid I stay in a rental for more than a year. I’m beginning to believe that what my aunt says about me is true. She believes that I have a neurosis. Although she has yet to give my have-to-move-every-minute neurosis a name, she avoids me around this time of the year.

As you, my trusty reader, know my move last May move went relatively well. And, I should have known the other shoe was about fall. And, it did, as I was throwing my house shoes at mice. The mice are long gone, but it turns out that this is noisiest neighborhood I’ve ever had the displeasure of occupying.

Just ask my sister. Her bedroom is on the Mexican border (yeah we live in Massachusetts). Nights she gets blaring music from the Mexican restaurant and early mornings, and I mean way early, say 4:30 or so, she gets the landscaping company’s 50 or so vehicles and manly men revving up for the day.

After my mouse-capade last year, what could possibly go right?

My rental search included my sister this year. By the time she moved up from South Carolina last year, I was quite settled, having committed several justified mouse-ders.

So, a-rental-searching we go. After the third rental property, I’ve got Adrian figured out. Her response to all of them, upon entering the front door: “I really like this place. It’s great!”

By now, I’m thinking that this is going to be long search. Obviously, I will not be getting much help from Miss This-Place-Is-Great!

Yet, I trudge along, albeit seemingly alone.

Really, I could start this TLC show called Where Not to Move. Lord knows that I’ve just about lived everywhere and most were places not to live.

And, you’d think that by now, since I’m a rental professional—like I should receive an honorary doctorate—there would be no rental misstep possibilities. None.

Yet, here I sit in rental misstep number five. Yep, five since 2007. I admit that I am now also a professional packer. Just let me know and I’ll share my expert packing techniques. No problem.

Anyways, I’m sitting with happy-go-lucky Adrian at the lease-signing. Except, I’m the one that’s Miss Chatty. In the midst of my chattiness, I discover that our new downstairs rental neighbors have kids.

I ask our sibling landlords, Richard and Bob, what are the kids’ ages? I get a fairly swift age estimation: two kids, around 8 and 10 years old

K, I think. Not ideal, but doable. Especially, since we’ll be occupying the second and third floors of the two-family rental house.

Our new landlords are excellent (so far). I ask for and receive the keys earlier than our actual occupying date. Awesome! Richard and Bob rock (currently).

Adrian starts cleaning and I start moving a few items in. When, Whoa! Someone needs to tell me how the landlords could have mistaken a baby and a toddler for 8 and 10 years of age. For real?

These kids are still in car seats.

I am trying so hard to reconcile this and have it not end with me proclaiming, “I need to look for another place.”

Besides, it’s quite premature for these types of proclamations, since it usually takes at least two weeks post-move-in-date.

I’m not willing to admit the rapidity of this rental defeat. The one-year lease is signed and the keys delivered. Deal done. Spectacular, I think, as I actually hear the little ones running throughout the first floor. Wonderful.

Let me tell you. The main reason a renter chooses the upper rental floors is to avoid hearing your neighbors strolling around. One really should not be hearing the neighbors downstairs walking or running.

Yet, the Little People (maybe this is true and it would explain the landlords’ pre-tween explanation) evidently have no idea and apparently no care in the world as they continue their stampede.

You know, it’s at times like these that I want to just pack it in and head back home to Mom. I hear everyone’s doing it. And, my Mom’s so motherly she’d fly up, help me pack and drive the U-Haul southward.

I should surely know by now that as bad as I think it is, it is always so much worse. How much worse? You ask.

My answer: heaps worse. As in, Adrian finds out in neighborly passing conversation that they’re running an “unofficial daycare” down there.

OK, I give up. Mom?