Calm down everyone

For those of you who have been clamoring for a "life in Minneapolis" update, here goes...

The last week has been sad, stressful, annoying, difficult, sad, heartbreaking, scary, depressing, anxiety-ridden, sad, tiring, painful, and did I mention sad? But above all that, we've spent the last week being very, very thankful.

We miss our friends and my family like crazy. We desperately miss our house -- our big, beautiful house with all of our stuff in it. We miss the sense of familiarity that we worked so hard during the past three years to achieve. We would do almost anything to get back that sense of comfort we had knowing our way around town, knowing friends were just around the corner and family was just a couple hours down the road. So we didn't want to leave Charlotte. But we had no choice.

That being said, Minneapolis is awesome! It's a beautiful city, full of trees and lakes. The population in general seems to be very "outdoorsy" -- people jog around the lakes even in the rain, there are tons of parks, trails and bike paths everywhere. Each lake (and I'm not at all exaggerating when I say that there is water everywhere around this town) has canoe racks that you can rent from the city to store your canoe (cause apparently, lots of people have them), and there are lots of "parking spots" for sailboats -- I'm sure there is a proper term for that.

Right now we're living in a corporate rental in Uptown Minneapolis -- the equivalent of the East Village in New York. And I know what lots of you are thinking right now, and you are correct. Matt and Mary are not East Village kinda people. And thus, we are not really Uptown kinda people either. We're totally not that cool. So although this is not the neighborhood we would want to buy a house in, it's still very nice -- restaurants, coffee, grocery store, shops and a lake all within walking distance. But corporate apartment life with two toddlers and a dog is not that great -- and I'm sure the young single guys that live above us and below us will be as happy to see us leave as we will be.

And so we've rented a house in the neighborhood we would ultimately like to buy a house in. This past weekend we actually put an offer in on a house, but in between the time we got the preapproval letter from our lender and the time we had our offer accepted, the credit markets tightened that much more and we lost the house. Alas. We decided it was a blessing in disguise, because we really don't want to own one house in this market, let alone two. So without any idea at all of how long it will take to sell that house in Charlotte (since NO ONE right now seems to be able to sell a house in Charlotte), we're just going to settle in to our "cozy" rental. You folks familiar with the NY rental market will know what I mean when I say "cozy." For a little more perspective, this house has less square footage than our 1st Street apartment in the Slope. Ouch. But it's cute, and it has a fenced in backyard with a two car garage. Here's a picture of it from Zillow and the Craigslist posting. The neighborhood is actually very Park Slopey, but with houses instead of brownstones and apartments. The stores do a trick-or-treat night for the kids, and there's a fall festival in one of the parks this weekend. So the movers are going to bring up all of our stuff in about two weeks, and we'll put a fraction of our possession wherever they can fit in the house and vast majority of our possessions will go in its basement. We're open for company, but Matt says you'll have to sleep on the air mattress in the garage. That's the only floorspace we'll have available.

And so far, Matt's firm seems awesome. They have been incredibly welcoming and they have real work for him to do. And that's why we feel so thankful to be here. At least he has a job. Only one other person that we know of who got laid off with Matt has found work, and he had to move out of state, too. And even contract work is hard to come by in Charlotte, so lots of attorneys are scrambling. So even though this is not what we would have chosen to do with ourselves right now if it were up to us, and even though we never, in a million years, would have thought this is where we'd be three years ago when we were so excited to be moving to Charlotte, the bottom line is that we have an income, we have a place to call home, and everyone is healthy. The rest will come in time.

Now I have to go finish filling out my application to take the bar exam. Again. Mother f-er.