The Daily Grind

Mood: Stressed
Song: Boulevard of Broken Dreams – Green Day
Units of Caffeine: 0.5

Wow – so it seems that a few seasons have past by without a sniff of a blog. Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder how I went through grad school: I took classes, worked full-time, got involved in theatre – (often tackling a few productions simultaneously), spent time with friends, and still had time for a home life. I barely have half of those things occurring in my life right now, and I feel like I have no time at all. What is it? As you get older someone mysteriously removes an hour or two from your day?

I’m beginning the think that the amount of stress one has in one’s life has something to do with this phenomenon. Although I love my job, it had presented stress and challenges that I have never before faced. And whereas I have been in some stressful situations while in grad school; there was always an end in sight, and these stressful times were equally balanced with times of calm. Oh yeah, I was always doing something, but not all of it was stressful. My current job in the theatre contains constant, daily stress – and it’s the worse stress of all: it’s completely unpredictable. There seems to be a plethora of fire to put out every day; and once you’ve put three fires out, five new ones appear from places you would least likely expect.

Somehow though, things continue to flow along: the theatre continues to operate. How this happens is simply beyond me. For you readers who are not familiar with theatre, there are times in which a production is in the last days of rehearsal and everything is going wrong. To everyone involved in the production, from the director to the actor to the light board operator, it looks like the production is going to be a train wreck; however, when the curtain goes up on opening night, everything works out fine. This doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens more often than you would think. I feel like I’m dealing with this kind of a scenario on a much larger scale. I am reminded of some dialogue from Shakespeare in Love, (which included an enormously underrated actor, Geoffrey Rush):

PHILIP HENSLOWE

Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

HUGH FENNYMAN

So what do we do?

PHILIP HENSLOWE

Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

HUGH FENNYMAN

How?

PHILIP HENSLOWE

I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

In addition to the daily work stress, K and I decided that 2008 was going to be the year we stepped back into the role of “homeowners”. So, this past Spring we began the process of looking for a house: we talked with a mortgage broker, figured out how much we could afford, got pre-approved for a loan, met with a Realtor, and headed out into the Emerald City looking for some new digs. I realize that there are people out there who absolutely love the mere idea of looking for a new place to live and thinking of the seemingly endless possibilities with home décor, landscaping, etc. K is one of these people. I, however, am not. The thought of spending a day driving around looking at houses is akin to sitting in a dentist’s chair for a day. I remember the search for our first house in Texas being a horrible experience for me. (If you ask K about it, she will have the exact opposite reaction.) And, in hindsight, Texas was easy. We probably spent only a week looking at houses before we put an offer on the house we bought. This was not the case in Seattle.

The search in Seattle was a lot tougher: there was a lot more to consider, there were a lot more properties, and the stakes were higher (i.e. the cost of real estate in Seattle is significantly more than in Texas.) In Texas, it felt like we could afford to get our cake and eat it, too: it was easy to find everything that we wanted in a house, and thus could afford to be picky with the properties we were looking at. In Seattle, we had to face certain questions, like:

• Should we get a larger place outside of the city, or should we get a smaller place in the city?
• Do we want a single-family house that would require some repair and/or renovation or do we want a town home or condo that would be turn-key but might have some homeowner’s fees?
• Should we sacrifice wanting a larger space if we find a small property in a great area?

With so many questions and so many properties, it took us a few months of looking before we found something that we felt comfortable putting an offer on. We found a nice town home with a LOT of light, a large kitchen, in a nice area and, although a little on the small side, it was damn near perfect. After a bit a price negotiating, we got the place, and we just closed today: this afternoon, we’ll have the keys.

So, now the house hunt is over, we have the great joy of moving. Oh, boy – can I tell you how much I just LOVE moving: NOT! The only joy I’m taking in it is the thought that I won’t have to do it again for a very long time. But, in the meantime, K and I are packing up boxes every night and every weekend for our move date on the 12^th

It’s funny: we took a vacation to Alaska just a tad over a month ago, but by the time all of this is over and we’re all moved in by the end of the month – I’m going to need another vacation, STAT!