THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

While I was in Las Vegas on a business trip last week, Hubbz was back “home” in Stuttgart working and communicating with the realtor representing our “Holy Grail” apartment. He made a lot of progress in a short time. He toured the apartment, as I mentioned in the previous post, and suddenly, the realtor was “hot” on the trail of getting things arranged. Woo Hoo!!

In the short time I was gone the following steps have been taken:

- Hubbz toured the apartment
- Realtor got permission from the landlord to represent the apartment
- Realtor started introducing the merits of renting to Americans to the landlord.
-Realtor sent us a questionnaire about our jobs, income, living situation, etc. for the landlord to review (which, of course, we filled out and returned in very short order).
-Realtor filled out an example of a lease from the Base Housing Office and sent it to the landlord to review.
-Realtor proposed a “meet and greet” between us in order to allow him to get to know us better and allow for both sides to ask questions about the lease.

The meeting was set for Saturday morning – and we were really excited. We should have known….  It was much ado about nothing, I am afraid. The landlord was unable to confirm the Saturday meeting, as he was in Paris this week. D’oh!! The realtor offered the option of setting something up for early next week. We’re going to wait and see if the owner is interested and try not to obsess over the process.

The missed meeting ended up becoming a blessing in the end. For one, my suitcase did not arrive back from Vegas when I did. Normally I shrug and roll with these bumps – they are a reality of travel. However, the thought of meeting this landlord…finally…without any of my nicer clothes or shoes and with NONE of my cosmetics available, was enough for me to feel that my lack of suitcase was going to result in us losing this silly little apartment that we’re coveting. I know it was irrational, but due to a mechanical problem that resulted in rerouting my entire flight and included a night in Chicago sans suitcase, I hadn’t slept or showered in more than 36 hours, so I cut myself a little slack in the pity-party department.

Hubbz was once again a hero. He let me ride home in pouty silence with the wind in my tired, dirty face. When we got back to the room, he pointed me in the direction of the shower and spent 20 minutes on the phone with each of the airlines that had touched my bags, trying to locate the suitcase and asking a few “what the heck!” questions of the airline. The bag arrived later that day (yay) and the meeting was cancelled anyways (boo) so it all worked out in the end.

Sidebar: Few of you may know that Hubbz will do pretty much anything other than call strangers. He’ll chat with his friends until the battery on the phone dies, but when it comes to ordering room service, cancelling the newspaper or calling to dispute a charge on the credit card, he’d pretty much rather chew his arm off than put the phone to his ear. (I tease him that this is the real reason he got married, and he very rarely denies it!). The fact that he willingly and without prompting started dialing for dollars to track down my suitcase indicated one of two possibilities to me: 1 – He could see that I was a woman on the edge of sanity and realized the need to intervene, lest I just dissolve in a puddle of tears and dirty clothes or 2 – the idea of me showing up at our Saturday morning meeting in a workout t-shirt, flip flops and pajama bottoms was more repugnant to him than dealing with whomever answered the phone at the airline. Whatever his motivation, he was my knight in shining armor. As I stepped out of the shower and heard him firmly insisting that the airline figure out where my suitcase was while he waited, I realized it was exactly what I needed to snap me out of my funk! Maybe someday I’ll deserve him…maybe...