Dread.

After last week's house hunting debacle, it has now fallen on me to find us a place. And I'm just dreading it.

Mostly because whenever I call the housing office, they tell me to come in to the office. They don't want to help me on the phone. Instead, I need to do a face to face. And that would be fine except (a) I can't make an appointment with them and (b) it's 2.5 hours away. So because they are phone-phobic, I'd be driving 2.5 hours with an uncooperative Munchkin to go sit indefinitely in the Housing waiting room in the hopes that they could make an appointment for me to see some properties later that week.

Can you say, "ummm, no?"

So since I have refused to play the game their way, they are punishing me by making me play the call-back game. I call ahead with the exact properties I want to look at and they tell me, "Can you call back in one half hour?" So I do, and they say, "What is your name again?" I tell them and they say, "Oh, yes, you want to look at House X. Can you call back in one half hour?" And the whole charade plays out once more.

I'm just a total ball of stress. Our move date is in less than a week. It was only confirmed on Friday. I have no idea where we're going to live. I haven't even bothered to print out the pre-move checklist because I know that half the stuff is moot now anyway. I'm flying by the seat of my pants and just hoping that Henslowe is right and the natural condition of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster will all turn out well.

But the mystery here is how I will keep my sanity intact in the meantime.