It all started last Friday.  We had some pretty good rain on Friday.  I was sitting in my living (I live on the bottom of a 2 story apartment building.  We have the whole bottom floor, there’s 2 smaller apartments above us).  I’m working on my homework, when all the sudden I hear a dripping noise.

The first thing I think is “You’ve got to be kidding me”, but sure enough, I look up and the roof is dripping onto our tv.  I call the landlady, she comes and takes a look at things.  She assesses the gutter needs to be cleaned out, and this is why the roof is leaking (I’m at a loss as to how this makes my roof leak, and not the upper story roof leak, but I’m not an expert).  It’s still storming, so she doesn’t want to get on the roof to clean it out that night.  I get it, it’s like 8 at night and storming, I wouldn’t want to do it either.  I think no big deal, it’s not a big drip, tomorrow will be fine.

She leaves, I go back to doing homework.  Within an hour, I hear a new drip noise.  It is now leaking so much that the drip has moved across our exposed beam, and is dripping in a nice line across our living room.  My husband comes out and helps me move all of the furniture so that nothing is being dripped on.  I look in the first bowl I put out, and it’s already ¼ full.  Now I’m thinking “there’s no way I’m going to bed with this roof leaking this much, we’ll wake up and need an ark.  Somehow, I don’t think the bed’s gonna make a good one”.  So I call the landlady and let her know that the leak is much worse, and now dripping across my whole living room.

I have been a tenant in apartments this woman has owned for about 8 years now.  I may not be the best tenant, but I’m a good tenant.  We’re quiet, there’s never an issue with our rent (the one time they apparently lost my check, I was the one to call them about it), we don’t destroy the building.  I would expect that to lead to at least a certain amount of understanding that when my ceiling is LEAKING, I shouldn’t have an issue getting it fixed.

Apparently, I have no clue what I’m talking about.  She fought me on fixing it that night.  I eventually got her to come out and do something about it, but it was a fight.  The next day, she had to call and tell me about something we had done that was ‘wrong’.  Our new upstairs neighbor doesn’t have a car.  After no one parking there for about 2 months, my husband started parking in the open spot in the car port.  Really?  My ceiling leaking warrants you having a discussion with me about my husband parking in the open spot?  Ok, fine.

Wake up Sunday morning.  Watch some tv, run some errands, come home, I really need to dye my hair.  However, there’s an ugly pile of dishes staring at me from the kitchen.  Ok, fine, I’ll do the freaking dishes.  Hey, the water’s not getting hot.  Maybe somebody took a really long hot shower.

I work on some more homework, and about an hour later, try the water again.  Still no hot water.  I call the landlady again, and apparently my apartment has its own hot water heater.  My husband is gone and did not shower that morning, so clearly, we didn’t use the hot water.  She says she’ll be there in an hour to look at it.  4 hours later I get a phone call saying it’s broken and it has to be replaced, but they can’t do it until the next day.

Really?  In one weekend my ceiling is leaking and you don’t want to fix it and now I have no hot water?

Hey guess what?  I’m moving.  I realized after all this, I’m paying too much money to live there.  I love the area I live in, but I now hate this apartment.  It has a backyard, which is great for my dog.  I think that’s about it.  Oh, wait, the livingroom is really big, which is nice.  The livingroom also has no windows, so we kind of feel like cave people.  We have 2 apartments above us, one has kids, the other is completely disrespectful and has people showing up at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday night to hang out on the porch above our bedroom window and talk.  Very loudly.

On Monday, I found an ad for a duplex in the city over from where we live.  It’s a little more than we’re paying, but I figure I’ll give it a shot.  I email the woman and hear back that day.  She had us come look at the place on Wednesday.  There’s a garage, a laundry room, a giant backyard, the whole thing has wood floors, and she’s clearly willing to put money into it and let us do what we want (she was asking what color we wanted it painted, what kind of sink we want in the bathroom, etc).

She pretty much wants to know right then if we want it so she can take the ad down.  We leave, talk about it, and decide yes.  I’m taking my dog over to meet her dogs this Saturday, and as long as everyone gets along, we’ll be moving in a month.

I’ve been a firm believer for a long time that if you make decisions that are healthy for you, you will receive healthy things in your life.  Every time I decide I’m going to improve my life, and truly work at it, it works out, and I end up in a better place.  Does that make it easy?  No.  Making changes and putting in the work is hard.  I’m super nervous about this move.  Is she going to be a nosy neighbor, is my dog gonna get along with her dogs, are we going to be able to afford the higher rent and everything else that we want to do?  I don’t know.  It freaks me out that I don’t know, but I can’t let that stop me.  I don’t want to stay in the apartment I’m in anymore, and I’m only going to know if this place is better by giving it my best shot.

Does that mean I’ll have to work?  Yes.  Sometimes, I’m not awesome at walking my dog.  In this new situation, that could lead to her being overly excited with the neighbors dogs, so I’ll need to be sure I walk her on a regular basis.  My husband and I have a lot of stuff.  We’re moving into a smaller space.  We need to get rid of a bunch of stuff.  Is this bad?  No.  It might be a little emotionally painful, but in the long run, I have to believe it will be better.

We weren’t sure about moving in to this new place at first, but I realized all of our issues were us railing against being better, more responsible adults.  There is nothing wrong with a situation pushing you to be a better, more responsible adult.

So, I’m scared we’ll fail – maybe we won’t do a good job at taking care of the yard, maybe the dogs nails will tear up the floor because we don’t cut them enough – but I can’t allow this fear to make me stagnant.  I can acknowledge it, tell myself it’s silly, still feel the fear, but move my feet forward anyway.  This is how I’ll get myself into a situation that I at least can enjoy if not love.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”  Thank you, Dune.