I Accidentally Rented My House Out
... five days before my book launch. What best laid plans have failed you?
I have now officially entered Absolutely Annoying Author Era™, that magical (read: totally unbearable) time when authors cannot be around other humans without talking about their new books. I really am sorry. We can be…. a lot. But when you’ve spent years pouring your heart into something, and it’s finally, finally real, the excitement short-circuits your social filters. You just want everyone to celebrate with you and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, BUY YOUR DAMNED BOOK.
So — yes. Hi. My name is Melinda Wenner Moyer, and my new book, Hello, Cruel World!, comes out THIS TUESDAY. May 27. This means you have only five more days to join the hundreds of others who have already taken advantage of my pre-order promotion. Pre-order my book before this Monday at 11:59pm, forward your receipt to HelloCruelWorld@PRH.com, and get six free months of paid content to this newsletter. Yay!!!!
The wonderful
just crowned Hello, Cruel World! as her new Parenting Bible. We talked about the book in her podcast Under the Influence this week, and there was an abridged Q&A in her newsletter yesterday. So without further ado…. here are a bunch of purchase links. And remember that if you order from my indie, Split Rock Books, I can also sign and personalize your copy for free. And yes, you can also pre-order my book (and participate in the promotion) if you live in Canada, the U.K., or Australia.
A few months ago, I had the brilliant insane idea to put my house up on VRBO. It would be easy, I said. It would help me earn extra money, I said. My mortgage just unexpectedly rose by $800 a month1 (did not know this could happen?!) and since I now pay all my mortgage and house bills by myself, I was like, OK, yeah, more money sounds great, thanks.
So I took photos of my rooms. I created a nice little VRBO profile. I said the home was available on weekends when I was either already away, or could potentially go away. I figured I would get rental requests and then could consider them before saying yes or no.
Well.
Turns out I had my settings wrong. I had it set so that people could “Instant Book” my house if my calendar was open.
So…. someone booked my house for this weekend. Just a few days before my book launch. Starting on a Thursday at 3pm, no less. Why, you might ask, did I have my calendar set to “available” starting on a Thursday at 3pm? On a day when my kids had school? I honestly do not know. I would ask four-months-ago-me, but I can’t remember who she even is anymore.
So here we are. I have spent the past several days frenetically tidying my house. Let me tell you: Preparing a house for a rental is a whole different beast from preparing it for, say, company. I need to clean and empty my fridge. Make sure that bathroom drawers are mostly empty. Lock up personal documents and things I don’t want people seeing. Create a complete “house manual.” Find another place to stay for three nights. Pack, in addition to clean. Figure out how to get my kids to pack without exploding their entire wardrobe all over the house.
I hired house cleaners to actually clean my house tomorrow morning, thank god, but there’s just So. Much. Else.
Of course, I’m excited to have the opportunity to travel with my kids. And I’m grateful for the extra cash!!! We rented a cottage north of us with an pool. It’s going to be 55 and rainy the whole time (of course it is, it’s Memorial Day weekend), and the pool is unheated, but it will still be lovely, I’m sure. We can play games and bake and read. And stare longingly at the pool. I know, I should not complain. And yet… this weekend of all weekends? Ack.
Best laid plans. The universe’s favorite punchline. I know you’ve been there, so let’s turn this into a thread. What best laid plans have you set that didn’t quite turn out the way you expected? Please share in the comments! The more disastrous, the better.
For those of you wondering what’s up: my mortgage also includes an escrow, and my property taxes and property insurance just went up a lot, so here we are.
One of my kids has gotten sick before almost every major trip we've taken as a family and I now officially have travel PTSD. I'm a planner and my older son has autism, so this means we're pushing back/rescheduling detailed itineraries while we wait for a fever to break OR we're white knuckling the decision to just go until we get on a plane. I love to travel with my kids (they have no chill at home, so I'd rather be on the road seeing something new than bouncing off our walls at home) but it's happened so many times at this point that I'm starting to think twice before booking anything.
This whole school year has been best laid plans and the universe had other plans. I was just reflecting on how amazing the kids have done this year just growing and handling a lot of disruptions really well. The adults...well, we did our best.