Goodbye Woodbridge...

This week began with the promise of being ordinary.

We finally got together with our friends, Kim and Tyler, and their adorable daughter, Liv, who called me grandma (who is apparently also tall with short, reddish hair).  We all had a lovely picnic in a park we hadn't been to next to the coolest looking public pool in the state of Indiana, if not the entire country.

Liv being "stuck!" Read about it in the Madsen's blog here!

 

The house was clean.  I was being productive.  We saw "The Dark Night Rises" again AND Erica and I got seats to see the 1929 silent film "Phantom of the Opera" accompanied by a live organ (a-mazing!).

And then Thursday brought a terrible surprise.  It went something like this:

-knock at the door-
-I didn't answer in time so the person started to UNLOCK IT, so I was a bit peeved-
"Who is it?!"
"Maintenance!"
"How can I help you?"
"Um... you were suppose to be moved out yesterday.  We're here to clean!"

Needless to say Ben and I dressed immediately and went down to the leasing office to tell them what was what.

Here's what happened:  Lease renewal at Woodbridge begins in January.  Why so early?  Because Bloomington, being a college town, has a really high turnover and new students start looking for housing as soon as they even think they might be accepted.  To be completely honest, we kept putting it off partially because we kept talking about finding a better/cheaper/two-bedroom place.  And in the past, an automatic lease renewal was the norm so we didn't think about it (obviously).

So totally our fault and we learned a very valuable lesson: Don't live in a college town (just kidding, kind of).

However, here's the sketchy part (if giving our apartment away without us knowing and then making us move out in one day isn't sketchy enough): we received no notice.  We got two reminder notices early in the year but we have heard nothing since April.  A friend who just moved out of Woodbridge got a move out notice with a cleaning check list.  We received none of that.  They said they called.  There were no received or missed calls from Woodbridge; no messages.

So when they gave us really over priced options for us to move into (because it is obviously easier for us to move than for someone with all their stuff already in a truck to switch the utilities over), we said, No! We're going elsewhere.  We totally showed them.

So we began the hunt, found a couple apartment options and started packing.  We hadn't gotten very far when our amazing friends arrived at 3pm.  Together, we got everything packed and out before 6pm.

It was shocking.

And not just how quickly it got done, but how quickly and eagerly people were to help us.  Jeff drove his truck down from Indianapolis, Katie came over when she was done cleaning from her own move, Nicole and Jaron were also in Indy for some business and drove down after to help (not to mention they've only known us for all of five minutes), and there were a couple people I didn't even know! and were answering the call for help we sent out to members of our church.  Some friends had just gone out of town but called as soon as they saw our facebook update and offered for us to stay at their houses!  We feel incredibly blessed.

So for now, we're staying with various friends and storing our stuff in the garage of an until-now-mere-church-aquaintance until Monday, when we'll move into our new apartment, next door to our previous apartment complex, which is great because the best bus line runs along that street.  And it has two bedrooms, so we can turn one into an office so I can sometimes work at home!!!  We are sad, though, to be leaving our sad little garden area (minus the mint, we took that with us)

Goodbye, sad little garden.  Especially the cabbages, they were so cute!