A week in Durango . . .

I arrived last Wednesday and expected to spend one night in a motel and then rent the room that I was to look at on Thursday.  It didn't work out that way.  The woman with the house, Ellen, is in her forties, and her roommate, Jojo, is in her twenties.  Ellen was hoping for someone in their thirties, so Jojo wouldn't leave.  So, I was essentially too old.

Too old!  I thought age might affect me if I looked for work, but I had no idea it would affect my looking for a room to rent!  OMG!

So, I took a motel room for a week to give me time to look at other places.

I think I mentioned it before, but the house with the horses didn't want me because I wasn't working days.  It's just as well, though, cause I only wanted it because of the horses.  I looked at another house that was really big . . . but, no internet.  They never called back, and I wasn't disappointed.

Then I looked at a  really horrible place!  It was called a studio, but it was an  old, broken down motel that smelled like an old, broken down motel!  I saw another motel-type place that was close to the river and not too bad, but there seemed to be a lot of college students there and a lot of loud music!  This is a college town . . . Fort Lewis College.  

Then, I saw a place that was about ten miles out of town to the north.  It was spectacular.  The man who was renting the room was my age and married, but his wife lives in another town.  I asked him if he had checked with her, and he said he had to run it by her again.  After a couple days chasing after him to give me an answer, his last response was he was going to try to get her schedule to see if she could come down and meet me.  Weird situation, but beautiful house.  I won't email him again.

Then another house with two young women in it.  Pretty nice, close to some horse property, but they're "interviewing" and won't know till next week.  My guess is I'm too old again . . . they were in their early twenties.  Another house close to Bayfield . . . this was nice . . . a horse . . . a dog . . . a couple cats . . . a goat . . . a couple ducks . . . a hot tub, one of the women was an acupuncturist and the other was a yoga teacher and the third was a nurse becoming a doctor.  The first two were my age.  It was a great place and had it not been so far away . . . so close to Bayfield . . . I would have taken it.

In the middle of all this, the weather started out fantastic . . . well, actually too warm for this time of year . . . it's been real close to seventies since I arrived.  Suddenly, and without warning, I woke up to snow!  It was awesome!  Luckily, I had just bought a snow scraper for my car!  It was good to be back in the snow again.

Meanwhile, I had an ad on some online advertising site, and a woman emailed me about a room.  She and her sister and two dogs live in a small house in town.  It sounds promising.  They are supposed to contact me this weekend to meet and see the house and all.  This one feels really good . . . we'll see how it turns out.  The only hang up is that the room isn't available until December first.  I've written to my niece in Santa Fe to see if she'll let me stay a couple weeks in their campground.  The campground is closed, but I don't know if they actually "close it up" for the winter or not.  We'll see how this turns out.