A New Kind of Exhausted

Today was a long day...in a totally newly exhausting way.  And for the record, if there are more ways to be exhausted than I have been in the last week, I'm good.  I can die without knowing what they are. 

I had plans for today.  Plans involving beautiful palaces and works of art...maybe some flowers and drinking in the sweet sunshine.  But for some reason, that wasn't supposed to happen. 

We were planning on checking out Schloss Belvedere today and John wanted to come with us; I don't blame him--it promises to be amazing.  But, first he had to do a few things at work--one of which was to check in with the housing service to see if we had finally gotten our list of apartments to look at.  Most people are able to get an appointment with the housing service within their first few days of work and the process of finding accommodations flows from there.  We were not so lucky.  The database for the service has been down for over a month.  They've had descriptions of apartments, but no pictures.  They've had a shortage in staff that is scheduled to last "indefinitely".  And John has been trying his best to get it together with these people to get the ball rolling.

Enter:  my morning.  The plan was to take it easy while John was at work for a few hours and then head out for some epic sightseeing.  The girls and I were playing quietly, conserving energy for our busy afternoon.  Then I got an email from John including a revised list from the housing service with three apartment options on it.

Three.

In all of Vienna.

And two of those, I knew I could live in, but I didn't really want to.

That's where it all started.  What followed was hours of searching the internet frantically for furnished apartments outside of the VIC housing service database, exchanging emails with John about what we needed to be doing and all the while trying to keep my kids content and mellow.

Normally I'm not one to stress out about things, but finding a semi-permanent residence that I will be content with for the next one to two years is kind of a high priority on my list and we've already spent a week waiting for a list of three apartments.  Oy.  It wasn't pretty.  Thankfully, the woman who is renting this temporary apartment to us stopped by to drop off some toys for the girls and as we got to chatting, she divulged that she has an obsession with real estate.  She continued to name off the top of her head at least four places she knew of that were available to rent within our criteria and oh, by the way, she has a friend selling a house full of furniture if we decide to get a place that's not furnished.  Thank you, God.  This woman is an angel.  God seems to have a way of making sure she's there to talk me off of cliffs lately.

By the time John got home, I was still stressing out, but he and I sat down, looked through our options and sent out several emails inquiring about apartment availability and setting up appointments to look at them.  Progress!

By that point it was late afternoon.  No Belvedere today. No biggie.  We got on with our lives, took a quick walk, made some dinner and just as we sat down to eat, the door bell rang.

This couldn't be good.  And it wasn't.  It was our downstairs neighbor, come to ring a peal over our heads for the noise we've been producing.  In a cavernous apartment...with the squeakiest floors I've EVER stepped on in my life...with two children recovering from jet lag...and did I mention the children?  I tapped into my wealth of experience placating people who love to complain in the hospitality industry and I'm pretty sure I brought him around to realizing he was overreacting, but as my mom said: may all his trouble be that small! 

I don't know why God brought that cantankerous man to our doorstep, but I'm sure it'll play a part in my life at some point...maybe in showing kindness to future upstairs neighbors.  Either way, I had previously declared that I wouldn't feel officially welcomed into this country until some old bitty stepped into my business and read me the riot act...I just didn't realize that bitty would come in the form of a middle aged man in a bedraggled grey suit.  Welcome to Austria!  I'm exhausted.