the yellow room.

Today I secured housing. I can say it calmly now, the emotional bit has already passed.

I first called about the place Tuesday morning, and exchanged several messages with the landlady, Lauri, before actually talking to her. The first time we spoke, I was standing in Mississippi Market with Toni. We left immediately and I completed the conversation whilst driving Toni to the bank. Lauri said I sounded like just the kind of person she wanted to rent the place. Last night I completed the application. She called this afternoon, while I was standing in Micro Center. I left immediately and continued the conversation while I sat in my car. I took down the info about where to mail the check, where to fax the bank summary and lease agreement. I walked back into the store and mindlessly browsed for a while. I felt a bit like vomiting. Eventually I went to the bank, withdrew the money, converted it into a cashier's check. I was feeling better by this point, but I was still freaking out a bit.

I'd thought that when I'd secured housing, I'd be jubilant! Immediately! Something concrete, to prove this is really happening! Instead I felt all the more uncertain, apprehensive, scared even. All along there's been a part of my mind doubting this would work out. This part has been sort of undercover, but always there, always with the same assumption: something would go terribly wrong, an insurmountable roadblock would materialize directly in front of me. I've been expecting it everywhere: at the bank, at the auto repair place, with the dive physical, and especially with trying to find housing. But things keep working out, and that part of me keeps getting trumped.

After the bank, I went to World Market for some good black licorice to calm my nerves. I found a FedEx, overnighted the check, and sat down to read the lease agreement. I don't know much about the place I'm moving into, but something I read in the lease brought a smile to my face:

Witnesseth: That for and in consideration of the payment of the rents and the performance of the covenants contained on the part of the lessee, said lessor does hereby demise and let unto the lessee, and lessee hires from lessor for use as a residence those premises described as The Yellow Room.