I don’t have many rules when it comes to maintaining this site, but I do try to adhere to two primary goals: (1) post on a regular basis, and (2) don’t get overly personal, if it can be avoided. Rule 1 is mostly in place so that I can keep a consistent audience, even if it’s just a few people, but it’s also just so that I keep my chops (such as they are) from getting rusty. And Rule 2 is there because, among other things, getting personal can mean getting lazy. There’s a difference between keeping a personal voice and going over the deep end; that’s what personal blogs are for, and this is not one of them.
I bring this up because I’m going to be violating both of these rules over the next few months; I’m probably not going to be posting all that much, and whatever I do post is probably going to be personal. It can’t be avoided. My personal life was already going to be overwhelmed by the impending arrival of a newborn child; but now I have the added (and unforeseen) stress of trying to find a new place to live before the baby arrives, as the owner of our apartment has decided to sell. (Without telling us, I might add; we found out by accident.)
We found this out on Saturday morning. The baby’s due date is early April; it is now the second half of January. The owner of our apartment has not yet found a buyer, but we’re obviously not being kept in the loop on how that’s all shaking out, and so we have to take matters into our own hands. We would rather move before the baby’s born, so there’s not much time to work with. We’ve spent the last 48 hours scouring Craigslist, calling brokers, following leads; we’ve already begun purging our clothes, books and DVDs in preparation for packing for an unscheduled move to an as yet unknown destination.
The beauty of New York City is that there are a thousand real estate agents ready and waiting to help us; the soul-crushing tragedy is that the Venn Diagram representing the type of place we want at the price we can afford yields a wafer-thin slice from which to choose, as well as a thousand other people looking at the same apartment.
This is all to say that posting here is going to be light. You have to understand that any time I spend playing games is time I’m not spending actively trying to secure a new place to live, which makes me feel guilty; and all the stuff that I’d be playing if I weren’t going through this madness – like the stuff I bought during the Steam holiday sale – is all violent and stressful and not necessarily the kind of stuff that takes my mind off the stressful things I’m going through.
Frankly, the only thing I’ve been playing is the newly-released Temple Run 2 on my iPhone, because that’s about the extent of what my nervous system can handle. And even that sucks, as my poor old iPhone 4 has a hard time running it without stuttering; I’d bet that at least 90% of my deaths are because the phone seized up and didn’t register my finger swipe.
Anyway. You get the idea.
I will keep this blog updated as much as I can, but, well, the situation is what it is. Hopefully we’ll find a place sooner rather than later, and we can get set up and unpacked and organized, and THEN have a baby, and then go through the normal, expected stress of being new parents. That’s a stress that I’ll gladly welcome. For now, though, it’s going to be a bit of a bumpy ride.
Thanks for bearing with me.
Shouts From The Couch 
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