holy hobo! aaaaand a new home!

We've moved. It's done. All but the unpacking, which is going to be a major process and basically means it's not done. But our stuff, that's actually in and around the new house. And I slept in my own bed in my own room last night, so that's progress.

Yesterday morning before we signed the lease, we somehow already had a set of keys so we went into the house to check things out. Aubrey and I creep into the basement and are greeted by several HUGE hobo spiders. Now, I am not what you would call a squeamish person, but I busted my ass right out of there. Lickety motherfucking split. Fast, screaming and waving my hands. I burst up the stairs and out of the backdoor and I'm dramatically heavy breathing, laughing hysterically, and screaming in HORROR at the same time. This combination is not me in what most would recognize as my best state. In that moment am in utter shock that we are literally ABOUT to move into this poisonous-spider infested house.


Anyway, I swing the door open and run out or the building like a lunatic and nearly collide with a very wealthy-looking little man. Okay, he wasn't really that little, and he was wearing a baseball cap, but he was staring at me with an air about him, looking very quizzical and a little alarmed. An introduction just seemed kind of moot in that moment, so I instead exclaimed to him at the top of my lungs, still wringing my hands "We just saw a REALLY large hobo spider!!!!!!" Like, as an explanation for how fucking ridiculous I was acting. I'm not even scared by spiders, but these creatures are not spiders, they're like rodent-scorpions who attack.

Whatever.  By the way, I'm putting a picture of one of these monsters at the end of this, so let's just move past my feeble attempts at explaining them, because you'll see for yourself and you'll be equally or perhaps exponentially more horrified than if I just describe it to you.

Anyway, I greet mystery guy with the fact that we just saw an enormous spider, and basically forget the fact that we're not even really supposed to be in the house AT ALL since we haven't signed a lease yet, and my Aubrey may or may not have (totally did) sort of kind of squatted there the night before. Aubrey suddenly emerges from the belly of the house and the guy just looks back and and forth between us and says "Um. Hi, I am the owner of the house. And every house in MIssoula has hobos, so that's just to be expected." And then he looks at my expectantly, like it's my turn to introduce myself and then APOLOGIZE for being freaked out by pest infestations.

To which I'm like, oh shit, we shouldn't even be here and Aubrey's boyfriend totally clogged the toilet yesterday. Because we have boundary issues and were homeless and basically squatted in this man's HOME illegally.

So I play it off real cool. And I'm like "Yeah, we're moving in today. We're just about to go sign the lease actually. They just let us throw some of our things in the garage early and we had the key so we thought we'd take a teeny little looksee."


In the meantime, there is an air mattress set up in the living room and someone has CLEARLY been staying there.

And the guy is like, "Well, I didn't realize they have already rented the place. I really shouldn't even be here if you guys are moved in. I am not supposed to be here when there are tennants here, I am just going to call the property management company."

PANIC SWEAT. On my part.

Because shit. If he tells them we're just gallivanting around inside, squatting ove rnight, and clogging toilets, they're totally not going to lease us this place. AND WE NEED TO RENT THIS PLACE. WE ARE DESPERATE AND HOMELESS AT THIS POINT OK.

So I'm quickly like, "NO NO NO,  head on in there, guy. We're not moved in yet, except our stuff in the garage, go on in and check things out. We totally fell in the love with the house from the first time we saw it by the way, you did a great job on the remodel. Go ahead and check things out inside, I think we're copacetic. We were just headed on our way over there anyway to sign the lease, so no big deal, just COME ON IN."

At this point he opens the door to the garage and see that we haven't "Moved a couple of our things into the garage." In fact, ALL of all three of our shit is in the garage. The garage is loaded to the gills. So that's interesting. Then we all just stand there awkwardly for the moment.


Did I mention that I didn't sleep the night before? I didn't sleep the night before. Not one wink. I tossed and turned for about four hours and then I gave up. So I've been awake for 36 hours and I'm the kind of delirious that's a teeter-totter between laughing hysterically and weeping uncontrollably and my best-laid plans are about to crumble under me. I'm shaking out of exhaustion and look a goddamn wreck and I'm barely holding it together and finally, blessedly, this dude just decides he's going to go check things out and not call the property company. We really played our way super cool out of that one.

So Aubrey and I go and sit in her car in the alley and wait for him to come out of the house. And she's freaking out and I'm thinking we averted disaster, when suddenly she reminds me about the air mattress et al in the living room, which I had COMPLETELY forgotten about. So we're both freaking out kind of, but kind of playing it cool too, because we don't want to be visibally guilty/panicking when bro-dude comes out of HIS house, which we are trying to make OUR house. So we sit there for fucking ever (like four minutes, maybe less) and he comes out and approaches our car and he's like. "SOMEONE POOPED IN THE BASEMENT BATHROOM AND IT'S CLOGGED AND IT'S NASTY."

And this is the moment when the teeter-totter headed straight to hysterical laughter for me. THANKFULLY, Aubrey, bless her angelic and cool-minded soul,  just nods all nonchalantly and is like "Oh, okay. Yeah, that IS gross. We'll be sure to let the property management company know when we get over there. We're on our way there now." Never once betraying the fact that HER OWN boyfriend was the one who clogged the toilet. While squatting. Illegally. In the house this man owns.

But then we all went over the lease and pretty much signed away our souls. First, though, Aubrey and I drove our happy asses right on over to the hardware store and basically bought every form of extermination product known to man. There are so many chemicals pulsing through the basement of our house, anything living down there has likely grown extra limbs, IF it isn't yet dead. We bombed, trapped, and sprinkled a multitude of different spider-killing items. Needless to say, sighting have grown sparse since we took matters into our own hands. VICTORY IS OURS.

Then we  moved all our shit into the house and ate pizza and drank beer and just generally began to feel a whole lot better about life. It was the dark before the dawn. DAWN IS COME.

All hail the new house. Come on over if you find yourself in Missoula.