No more drama, please

Before all the drama began, we stopped to see Grandpa, whose roses are blooming . . .

. . . and said goodbye to Phil - we'll really miss you :(

Then came the drama.

First, we got Nick sent off to Maryland. He got to our place without any problems. Unfortunately, our things didn't get there for another week, so he had to buy some basics to get him by. It was pretty lonely for him.

The next catastrophe was that our place had some problems and Nick didn't know if it was somewhere we'd want to stay. The apartment itself was great. The down side was that although they list it as being a third-floor apartment, it's actually on the ground level. There are air conditioning units that are loud and ugly right outside our windows, and the view is of an ugly building, driveways, and super smelly dumpsters, plus cockroaches greeted him. If you recall, my one joy of moving out of the basement apartment was to finally have windows. What would we do with windows that we'd never want to open?
Nick called and suggested that we might want to try finding something else. So, in the middle of trying to paint my mom's living room, I was also searching online for apartments (no internet for Nick, who was sitting on the floor of a completely empty apartment). I found a few places to look at, then poor Nick had to traipse around looking at some places on his own. We found a townhouse only blocks from our current apartment, and Nick really liked it on his first visit.

By the next day, however, he couldn't remember why he'd liked it and wondered if we ought to just stay there. It was too hard of a decision to make on his own (plus he was lonely). In a last-minute decision, I booked a flight to go visit him and help him find another place to live (Nick met me at the airport with flowers). I left mom in a huge mess painting (sorry, mom), but I got there, we looked at some places, and finally settled on the townhouse. It is definitely the place for us.
After three airplane rides home, I am finally finishing up mom's room (pictures coming later) and tying up loose ends to drive out there later this week. Whew! Sadly, I had to leave Nick to coordinate the move from one apartment to another (sorry, Nick).

So, there is the drama of our lives. I hope to avoid it in the future.

Our old view:

Our new view:

Here's hoping that Nick can get everything moved over, I can finish painting and putting mom's house back together, and mom and I can drive out without any more bumps in the road.

I should also mention that Nick had his first day of work and is doing great. Typical new-job stuff.