Goodbye Little Blue House

The mailman really was my Santa Clause, as I surprisingly waxed prophetic in a recent blog post.

It all started in mid-December when my landlady sent me an e-mail to tell me that she and her daughter were going to move into the sweet, magical, healing little blue house that I have rented from her for the past 2 ½ years. I really felt divinely guided to the house when I first moved to Austin, and have believed I was meant to live there to write my Seeking Shama book. In November, as I neared the end of my third big rewrite, I had an unsettling feeling that I was going to be moving again. As often is the case with flashes of intuition that I’m not yet ready to face, the feeling lingered just below the surface, trying to bubble up as I kept desperately shoving it back down into the deep recesses of my consciousness in the hopes that I was just imagining things.

So when I received the e-mail from my landlady telling me I had to move out in six short weeks, I was at the same time both stunned and devastated as I was not surprised at all.

As I began my futile search for a new home in one of the most competitive rental markets in the country, I quickly realized that most rentals in my zip code are snatched up the day they are listed. I expressed frustration to JC the mailman one day when he stopped by to give Yoda his daily Milk Bone. JC promised to put out an all points bulletin to all the mail carriers in my neighborhood to help me find a new place to live. A week later he showed up with the mail, a Milk Bone and a small slip of paper with an address and phone number written on it.

“They are waiting for your call,” he said.

So I called, and then immediately drove ½ mile down the road to look at a duplex that was nearing the end of a remodel. The landlady met me in the driveway with a surprised look in her eyes: it turns out I helped rescue her dog who had escaped from its harness about six months ago. We went inside and I fell in love with the place, as well as with the sweeping view it has of the rolling hills. She immediately agreed to rent to me. I moved in on January 26.

What I initially feared would be a monumental nightmarish task, turned out to be a fun gathering of friends. My friends rallied together and helped me move, including my visiting parents and my close friend Chuck from LA, who flew himself out to help because, as he said, he’s helped me with my last two moves, so why should he stop now? Perhaps the best part of the day was that JC the mailman didn’t just find me a new place to live that is still on his delivery route, but he also took it one step further and showed up on moving day and helped me move too!

I stopped by the little blue house to do a final cleaning a few days after I moved. I noticed that JC had already put a Vacant sign on the mailbox. As sad as I was to move, I was shocked to walk into the empty house and be struck with the feeling that I had never lived there at all. I guess that means that it really was time for me to move on. I think that sometimes it is good to shake up the energy in our lives with a change of scenery – just like I’m doing now in my new home. Just as the little blue house worked its magic to help me write my book, I firmly believe my new house is helping stuck energy start to flow in other areas of my life.

I have so much gratitude to my friends for helping me move from the little blue house to my new hopefully equally magical and healing new house. And that includes JC the mailman. That’s because he’s no longer just the mailman. He’s my friend.

Tagged as: Austin, Change, Friends, Life changes, My Book, Texas