I said, "Well who am I to blow against the wind"

Apartment drama has entered the holding phase. Current landlady was supposed to talk to new landlord night before last and make the case for us and our cats; meanwhile I have been trying to gather info about whether he's bound by our lease, which runs to June, or if he can ask us to leave. From what I can tell, he is obliged to let us stay, since our cats are all legally in the apartment and we've been paying for them. (Addendum: I've just gotten off the phone with the Fair Housing people, and indeed, the new owner takes on the old leases, so new landlord can't raise the rent, change terms regarding pets, etc. His caveat: "That's not to say he won't try.") Old Landlady describes new landlord as "a nice guy," but who knows how much water that holds.

Meanwhile, we haven't received any official notice in writing, so the supposed 30 days to find a new place bit hasn't begun yet.

I have been managing to stifle my anxious brain, which is trying to get a chorus of fail going in my head. So far, all is calm and I am managing to roll my eyes and say things like, "We'll have to think about what we want to do."

Quick! Look over there!

In an attempt to distract myself from the apartment situation, I have been going over some of my old journals and scrapbooks from previous trips. (Obviously I am wallowing in Want To Be Elsewhere-itis.) I make no pretense to artistic talent, but I like sketching little things in my travel journals for my own happiness. Here's a sketch from the Tuileries in Paris:

Second in a series

Watercolor from Perugia, Italy trip journal, 1998

Perugia scrapbook page

Fall down six times, get up seven

Went to my first aikido class in something like...twenty years. I studied it for a bare handful of months my junior year of high school, when we were living in the Philippines, and since we got back I made a couple of stabs at getting back to a dojo but none of them ever worked out.

This place feels right. Formality, which calms me down, but it's not so stern that I worried about smiling or making a small joke. The sensai is an er doc, a big guy, with a calm, cheerful, instructive demeanor, which is just about right. I have a free month to make sure I click, but I can already tell that I like this place, and I like these people.

I haven't found out how much it'll cost per month once I start having to pay. I worry that it won't be feasible. But this really is calling out to me, and I want to find a way to do it if I can.