hasty And Poorly written arizona Update

My husband got a job working for the beautiful city of Sedona, Arizona. So after living in Utah for 18 years, I packed up up my 6 month baby and started the process of moving down to AZ to be with my husband.

I'm very excited.

We found a little blue house with a porch and an apricot tree and decided to move over President's Day weekend.

This is how it's gone so far:

On the 11th I called the landlord (Chuck) to remind him that we wanted to move on the 15th and asked if that would work for him.
He said that would be fine. The previous tenants were still there, but he was hoping they would be out by the end of that day and then he'd clean the house and it would be ready for us by Friday.

Awesome.

So on Thursday we got the moving truck packed and prepared leave bright and early the next morning. That night Chuck called me,
"Hey, uhm...we have a unique situation. The tenants...they're still here. In the house."
"Say what?"
"Yeah. They keep telling me that they're leaving and that they want out, but they still haven't completely moved out. They are 90% out right now."
"Well we're ready to hit the road tomorrow morning. What are you saying we should do?"
"Well...come anyway, just leave a little later. I'll call you when they're out, you can hit the road, we'll clean the house while you're on the road and it'll be ready for you when you get here."
"Fantastic."

The next morning, Friday, he called me at 10:00 and gave us the go-ahead. So we piled into our cars and headed for Arizona.

At 11:00 he called me back.
"Hey, uhm...we have a unique situation. Right now, as we're speaking, PANT is surrounding the house."
(PANT = Prevention Against Narcotics Trafficking, in layman's terms: the local narcotics squad, in further layman's terms: picture a SWAT team and you can pretty much imagine how it went down)
"Say wha-?"
 "They have a .50 caliber weapon pointed at the front door and there are snipers posted on the rooftops across the street."
"....Say wha-?"
"There are also two armored vehicles and the street has been closed off on both ends."
"...."
"I know."

Apparently the previous tenant was bad news. He had broken into someone's home, some dispute over marijuana, at 3:00 am Friday morning and had been shot. He was in critical condition in a hospital in Flagstaff. It being a violent crime, the police investigated the incident, found his current address and initiated a drug raid on the house.
My house.
The day I was supposed to move in.

This is all completely true. I can't make things like this up. It made the front page news of the local newspaper, The Verde Independent.
Check it out here.

See the cute blue house they're breaking into in the picture?
Yeah.
That's supposed to be my house.

This caused all kinds of problems for our moving-in plans. Chuck didn't have legal right to get on the property to prepare it for us; the previous tenant wasn't moving his stuff out because he was lying in a hospital fighting for his life in another town; and I was on a long empty road to Arizona with all my belongings - no home to go back to and unsure of whether I had a home to go toward. Chuck, being the gracious and honest fellow that he is, offered to let us stay in his farmhouse property in Cornville (little town south of Sedona) until it could all get sorted out.

We arrived in Cornville late Friday night and have been here since then. A Termination of Lease form has been signed and witnessed, my husband and I have signed a new lease, and Monday morning we were able to unload our belongings into the main room of the house. Now we're waiting for the paint to dry and for the kitchen and bathroom floors to be redone (the bathroom floor turned out to be completely rotten, by the way - just one more inconvenience in our little saga). Hopefully we'll be in the house tomorrow morning/afternoon.

But I'm not holding my breath.

I'll try to keep you posted. I don't have constant access to the internet so the updates will be a bit scattered, but I'll update when I can. Thanks to everyone for your support!

winter Blues haikus

Empty neighborhood
Shovel on ice and cement
The loneliest sound

Too cold for a walk
Pale sunshine devoid of warmth
Stuck inside again

Sheets of windblown ice
Fluffy, wet, sticky snowflakes
Hazardous driving

Morning light at dawn
A handful of daylight hours
Sunset comes too soon

(I'm moving to Arizona, by the way. After this Friday, no more winter blues for me!)