If I had known this was going to be a series, I probably would have chosen a different title, but here we are. I want to do a recap of what has happened since this post. After Michael and I got back from Mongolia, Jenny and Dominik visited. We had a really good time, and it was over far too quickly. I love my Jenny Wren. I remember back when we left Georgia. It was the month before her 18th birthday. She had college planned in Georgia, all of her friends were there, etc., so she stayed. I drove away in the U-haul, and I felt like a part of my soul stayed behind, and I never got it back. I looked around at some of my friends who have kids leaving the home, and I wonder how they can appear so calm about the process. I think “appear” is the operative word here.
After Jenny and Dominik flew back to Georgia, we left for Utah. While we’d be gone in Utah, all of the carpet in our house got replaced in preparation for selling that house. We really didn’t want to have our pets on the new carpet, so that was another challenge we needed to figure out.
We had two cats and one dog. We had gotten our cats from the Humane Society a year or two ago. We chose them, then the Humane Society wouldn’t release them because of issues they were having, so we weren’t able to take them home for a couple months afterwards. By the time we got them home they were almost feral. The are very sweet, but we didn’t form a close bond because they spent a lot of time in the shadows. Millie was a different story. She has been with us for 13 years. She is a member of the family at this point. I don’t know how to distill what she means to us in a few sentences, so I’m not going to try. But, we love her. She is 14 (we got her when she was a year old), and she had a stroke with in the last year. She also has arthritis. Finding a place for her was something that was stressing us out as much as anything else. There aren’t a lot of people that would be willing to take care of her with the issues she had. I had been telling people about this conundrum, and my sister Cynthia volunteered to take care of her. It gives us so much comfort to know that someone who we love and trust and who loves dogs and who is in our family who is willing to take care of Millie in the time she has left. Through help from Taivan, Tom and Jamie (sister-in-law) we found homes for each of the cats. We are sad that we had to separate them, but we’re glad that they both went to good houses. We were able to give the cats new homes before we left for Utah/Idaho. We took Millie with us to Utah and she is living with Cynthia and her two other lovely dogs now. Acclimation has been slow, but we hope things will get better. She has been doing better the longer she’s there.
We went to Utah/Idaho partly to give Millie to Cynthia, partly to see my family again before we go to Mongolia, but mostly to meet our beautiful granddaughter Elora. We spent (not enough) wonderful time with Matthew, Mia and Elora. Like our visit with Jenny, the days went by way too quickly.
I’ve been stressing about how we’re going to get the house looking good enough to want to purchase. Someone needed to take pictures, and the house needed to be shown. We can barely clean the countertops while we’re living in the house (maybe a little hyperbole), so how will we get it in magazine condition for the sale? It felt like an insurmountable obstacle. While we were visiting Utah/Idaho, Jamie, Rebecca, and Rachel put a truly gargantuan amount of work into moving, furniture, clearing out our house, brining in decorations to make the house look nice. My mind is still completely blown every time I think about all they did. The day after the carpet was beautifully installed by Jeremy from Ron’s Carpet, our realtor had the home photographed. The house looked nicer than it has looked since before we moved in. Again, so, so, grateful to Jamie, Rebecca, and Rachel for the work they did in that house. Because of the work that they did, the house is now under contract. The contract is contingent upon the buyer being able to sell his other home, but our realtor, Lacey Pool, feels confident his home will move quickly.
Again, so many insurmountable obstacle have been removed from our path.
Now, I’m in Mongolia. Before I got here, I tried to get an Vrbo in the city center of Ulaanbaatar, but by the time I landed, I still hadn’t been told what the code to the door was, so I got a refund and slept on a nice bench in the airport.
The next day, I got an AirBnB close-ish to the Mongolian Immigration Agency. I went over to the Immigration office at around 5:30 am, and waited until they opened at 8:00 am. They then told me that I should apply for the residence card online, not in the office. So, then I went and waited until around 2:00 pm to move into the AirBnB.
It turns out, though, that the neighborhood that this apartment is in is exactly where I want to live. So. When Michael and I were in Mongolia last, we met Tanan. I wrote about her–she was the one who was wearing the Khurd t-shirt. She very kindly volunteered to give us (Jen and I separately) Mongolian lessons. Now, she is coming over tomorrow (Monday) to help translate so I can get an apartment, so I can use that address to put in the residence card application, so that I can hopefully get it before a huge national holiday begins next week (Naadam).
There are always insurmountable obstacles ahead. Master, the tempest is raging. How quickly I forget that he controls the seas.