Hello and thank you all for being here! This newsletter is a few days late because I wanted to talk to our realtor before I posted the latest news. I have a really good realtor friend who helped me in my divorce and he came over today to help us list the house. He feels like the housing market in our area is still very strong and that the house could sell in a couple weeks. From then I think we have a 30-day wait while a contract is ironed out. In theory, we could be out of here by the end of August, which would be amazing.
Realtor Friend also set us up with another realtor friend in Chicago. He's very nice and sounds exactly like Philip Seymour Hoffman (which is both delightful and a little sad because he was such a lovely actor and I miss him). He's going to visit the house we found and liked on Zillow, and go through a "video tour" with us. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm imagining him holding up a phone or ipad while he walks us through the house. We really like the pictures on Zillow, so we hope this one works for us.
Why Chicago? Well, it's a very safely blue state unlike some of the other blue states we were looking at where locals kept warning us that it was swiftly turning purple or even red. The housing prices and cost of living there is comparable to what we're living on in Texas, unlike a lot of places in California or Oregon or Washington where we just could not afford. Illinois is moist and temperate and not a desert, which was something we were worried about what with all the impending climate change--Nevada and New Mexico and even Colorado all seem to be getting drier and drier. We'll be close-ish to Canada in case of emergency. It feels like a safe landing place for two queer people on the run.
What next? Well, we hope to be out of Texas as soon as humanly possible. Kissmate will then need to take a year off from school in order to establish state residency before he can attend at in-state prices. We'll spend that time getting our new living space in order and working on our resin work. (Thank you so much to everyone who has participated in our moving sales!) And then, I... don't know! We've been so tense and so focused on basic survival for so long that it seems strange and almost wrongly luxurious to plan things like "visit a library?" or "go to a beach?" Fun? In this economy? We shall see!!
Friends, I am tired and so so so so so sore from packing but I can't stop grinning like a kid in a candy store. We're moving and we're going to be safe. We're going to be safe. I am so happy. Thank you so much, all of you, for helping us to get out.
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July Newsletter (2022) |
