Once we decided we were indeed moving to Houston, things moved quickly! One of our top priorities was finding a place to live in a city of 6 million people and finding a teaching position. I began submitting my resume online to districts across the Houston area. I gained a SINGLE phone interview from a couple months of work. I didn't get the job and I'm not quite sure why they even interviewed me because they were clear that they didn't hire new teachers with no experience. But something quite funny did happen in the interview.
They had given me an opportunity to ask questions about the campus. I asked about parental involvement and the principal began to speak about how heavily involved parents were and in fact, they had just sponsored a PTO carnival and she kept talking about the "booze" the parents were in charge of. Booze?! I couldn't be hearing correctly. She just kept saying it over and over! After asking her to repeat it again, I finally realized she was saying BOOTHS. Good grief- clearly, I did not speak "Texan" yet.
In May, we made our second trip to Houston to look for an apartment. We spent an entire day dropping off dozens of resumes. My heart was to teach in a high needs school. I spent most of my energy on Houston ISD and did not receive a single call from my resume.
Frustrated, I had almost given up hope when I stumbled upon a smaller city south of Houston. While dropping off a resume in the front office, the secretary asked what university I had attended in Kansas. When I told her KU, a lady behind her said she went to KSU. We got to chatting a little and when I finally got up the courage to ask if she'd let the principal know about me, she said, "Oh honey, I am the principal. Let's go have a chat."
She offered me a job on the spot, but it was upper elementary. Again, my heart was set on the lower grades. She started making some calls and got me in touch with the Director of Bilingual and ESL Education. This amazing woman dropped everything she was doing and took Ben and I on a campus tour of another school. It was on her good word that another principal ended up taking a chance on a girl from Kansas with no public school teaching experience and I'm forever thankful. I received more opportunities in this district than I could have ever dreamed and I had amazing colleagues.
Our move to Houston in July was eventful. You see, we had this dog... Neurotic is not strong enough of a word. On the day the U-Haul rolled out of the driveway, this dog (Maggie) knew something was awry and she was ticked. In fact, she held her nose in the air like the aloof princess she was and refused to eat or drink for almost the entire 13 hour trip.
Since we had a third story apartment and it was 110 degrees in July and Ben's dad's back was hurt, we hired professional movers. After they had moved in about 70% of our stuff, they looked like they were dying and asked to take a break. I knew they were going past our contracted time, so I offered to pay them more to finish the job. Well, they never came back from their break!! No amount of money was worth it to them, I guess! We ended up having to move in the rest ourselves. It. Was. Awful.
However, we moved into a brand new apartment. Light, clean carpets, huge windows, and a pool-side view. We had some new furniture and new bedding. We thought we were living large compared to our old place.
But remember-- we had a neurotic dog.
We hadn't been in our apartment very long when Ben's brother decided to come visit us. We ended up hanging out until after 11 pm one night. Now before moving to Texas, we never kept Maggie in a kennel. She just slept on the couch when we were gone. That night, we trucked up to our third story apartment, turned the key, flicked on the light, and... gasped.
The entire tile entryway was covered in blood. The second she heard the door, Maggie bounded to greet us, jumping all over my legs. Still perplexed, I looked down and saw my pants were suddenly covered in blood. As my eyes slowly panned across the apartment, I let out a half-shriek, half-sob, half-gasp.
It looked like a murder scene. Straight up C.S.I.
Maggie, the lovable but neurotic dog, had apparently jumped up on the door so many times that she had burst the pads of her paws open. Layer upon layer had been worn down and they were now completely raw and bloody. But, she didn't stop with the door. She had apparently proceeded to spend the next however many hours running a "track" across the light colored carpets of our brand new apartment. The track went through the kitchen, around the dining room table, jumped up onto our newer couch, back down again, into the bedroom, up onto our new duvet, down again and back around to the door. One perfect bloody pattern of utter destruction.
When I finally found a spot that wasn't blood-soaked to sit and commence sobbing, Maggie started attacking me with love as usual. When I finally came to the realization that this mess wasn't going to clean itself, Ben suggested I try to rent a carpet cleaner from the grocery store around the corner while he tended to Maggie's paws. Still half-sobbing, I got in the car. It was almost midnight. I think I called my mom and cried, but I can't remember. The next part I remember clearly.
The lights were still on at the grocery store and I ran up just in time to see the manager locking up the doors. He yelled, "Sorry, we just closed!"
"I just need to rent a carpet cleaner!" I yelled back, hoping he'd have some mercy on me. As his eyes scanned me up and down, I looked down to remember I was covered in blood. Yeah. So that probably didn't look very good in the middle of the night!
"It's my dog! She got hurt and destroyed my new apartment!" Sure. A likely story. Now I'm probably going to jail.
Well, this guy must have been crazy because I'm not sure I would have even believed me, and I certainly wouldn't have let me in, but he opened the doors and let me rent a giant carpet cleaner. We spent maybe 3 or 4 hours and went through 8 bottles of resolve and multiple runs of the carpet cleaner before we got to bed that night.
Amazingly, we got almost everything out of our couches and carpets. We later joked we would be amazing spokespeople for Resolve. Years later, we could still be spokespeople for Resolve! We wrote all our new neighbors apology letters the next morning as to why we were running heavy duty machines all night long. I'm sure it made us a lot of new friends.
That was the beginning of Maggie's trial "doggy psychotropic med" days, but even those didn't really do her any good. She was, after all, a lovable but thoroughly neurotic little dog.
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