The neighborhood scoop

Our neighbor in the intervening house (between where we currently live and where we would like to live) knows the family that moved out and came back, and today I finally had a chance to ask her what happened.

She says the place they were all lined up to move into turned out to be horrible in an unspecified way; so bad that they turned around and came back. I gather the utilities were cut off (which is unusual here - water & power are normally in the owner's name and any quarrel over the bill has to be resolved or [not infrequently] absorbed by the owner when the tenants move on...but either way nobody would stand for moving into the place if the utilities are suspended because the only way to get them back would be to pay someone else's, probably considerable, bill.) And some other even less-specific things happened, including something possibly even vaguely threatening, and they turned around and came back. Happily, the landlord (who also owns the intervening house, which is its reverse twin) is a nice guy and had no reason to object to having the house inhabited for a bit longer.

My neighbor says the family is still looking to move, and is on a waiting list for some other place, so hopefully something suitable will open up for them, which will open up their suitable house for us. She'll let me know when she hears anything, and next time it looks like things might be moving, I'll go to the owner (who has a jewelry shop between here and town) and offer to put down a deposit so he won't be tempted if anyone else shows up.

I told the girls the whole story when they came back to me after school yesterday. Of course they recognize that it's another step for Bob and me, and that may take a little getting used to when the time comes, but overall they're very much in favor of it. The prospect of their own rooms and 24/7 access to the cat haven't hurt at all, and there's been lots of talk about who will get which bed and which room and what shelves and such.

It already seems very real to me; I can picture us all in there so easily (and I've never even been in farther than the living room) that I won't be surprised if it does come together in the fairly near future - a few weeks or a month or two, hopefully.