Unsurprisingly, I let time get away from me again but now I actually have things to report! We have a place to live! And Misty has a daycare! And both of these things are very! Exciting! And cause me to use poor grammar and multiple exclamation points!

I had arranged for a realtor to help me search rentals once I arrived in San Francisco, but she was having difficulty for some reason having to do with her licensing in San Mateo. Or something equally boring, I’m not really sure. At any rate, since she had yet to find us anything to look at, I was beginning to freak about the timing so last weekend I took matters into my own hands. I made appointments to tour apartments in a few different parts of town, and while I found one that I really liked (and that accepted cats and large dogs), it was pretty far south of where we wanted to be, especially once you added in the fact that Misty’s daycare was at the very upper corner of San Francisco, right near the ocean (more on that in a minute). It would have taken me ages to get her there every morning before work, and since I STILL don’t know where Lex will go to school (and THAT IS ALL I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT), that was pretty much a no-go.

So I kept looking for rentals online and on Sunday afternoon met the owners’ real estate agent at what would turn out to be The Place. This house is pretty much my dream, y’all. I love it. LOVE IT.

Technically it is only a two-bedroom, but the formal dining room can be completely closed off and so we’ll use it for a third bedroom. That’s fairly commonplace around here from what I can tell, and the square footage isn’t much less than what we’re used to. There’s plenty of storage in the kitchen and while some of the colors/paint schemes aren’t exactly what I would have chosen myself, the natural light and location can’t be beat. On a clear day, you can see the top of the Golden Gate Bridge from the front sidewalk. There is a well-maintained playground literally across the street, and  a short walk downhill brings you to plenty of restaurants and shopping. Keep walking further and you’ll be smack in the middle of Golden Gate Park.

This isn’t the neighborhood we originally planned on – we were going for Outer Richmond, near the daycare we’d secured for Misty. I loved the house so much I didn’t care and was fully intending to make the arduous trip from Golden Gate Heights to her school every day. But as luck would have it, shortly we found out that the homeowners accepted our lease application – I discovered that the daycare located AT MY WORKPLACE had a single pre-k vacancy. The daycare is on the second floor, I work on the fourth. I went downstairs, toured the facility and signed her up on the spot.

So now we have a place to live, we have a wonderful, super-convenient place for Misty to stay during the day, and I think we do actually have a couple of elementary school options for Lex (fingers crossed, OMG because it is a big fat maybe, and I can’t do anything about it until I have proof of residency anyway and I SAID I didn’t want to talk about it, WHY ARE YOU PUSHING ME?). Really, everything is falling into place even better than I’d imagined. Now all we have to do is figure out the actual logistics of moving our stuff and find N a job (details, details), and we’ll be all set to go. I’m beyond ready to have the entire family out here with me, but we’re getting there. It won’t be long now.

I hope.