Sticks and Stars

As I believe I’ve mentioned, I am looking to move soon, preferably by the end of the month. I’m hoping to find a place that’s more convenient to my boys’ daycare and school and to the school I want for my four year old next year. Not to mention a place that offers a bit more than my current dive.

Initially I had this idea that I would only look at places priced the same as what I pay now. I figured that paying the same would actually be a savings to my budget since I would no longer have to drive so far every day, and since I’d be moving to a theoretically less desirable neighborhood (one farther away from city life), I could probably find something comparable or better than what I currently rent.

Very quickly I learned that thinking I was going to pay even remotely close to what I pay now was entirely unreasonable. Apparently rents have increased in the past year, and by no small amount. It is possible to pay what I currently pay for my apartment, but only if I’m willing to move into an even divier place in an inconvenient location with no amenities and then be the very first to call after it’s advertised and offer to give the landlord a blow job on top of it.

So after thinking about it a while, I decided to up the amount I’m willing to pay. Technically I can’t afford to pay more, but next fall my four year old will start school and then my expenses will drop significantly, at which point I really will be able to afford to pay more. I can stretch myself until then. Plus, I want to find a place where we can stay a while, not just a place to endure for another year, and if paying more means that we get that, then that’s okay with me. So I chose a new amount that seemed reasonable and not too painful and started my search again, but even with this new higher amount, every place I called had been rented within about four seconds of it being posted on craigslist…although I was definitely seeing more amenities and fewer blow job requirements.

I started feeling somewhat anxious about finding a place. My current apartment doesn’t offer a month-to-month option and I did not want to be stuck here for another year. In order to avoid that I have to give notice by the 11th and as you might imagine, December is not really a hopping month for the rental market.

On Friday I was feeling particularly anxious about the whole situation so on a whim I decided to see what other options might open themselves to me if I were to raise my price just a little bit more. Mostly, the options were still the same, but there was one place that was just $25 more than the price I had been committed to. I emailed the contact but had no hope that I would hear, not only because it had been posted two whole days prior (and two days is more than the usual four seconds such units are available before being rented), but the place sounded entirely too good to be true, especially for the price.

Imagine my surprise when this very morning I get a call from a guy asking me if I want to see it. He warns me that it’s ugly, that the yard is the size of a postage stamp and that there’s no dishwasher or garbage disposal (such a salesman!) but I agree to come and see it anyway, mostly because I’m already on the phone with him and I can’t see any good way to get out of it, but also partially because I don’t want to take chance and miss something good. I’d rather see it and agree wholeheartedly that it sucked than always wonder if I should have gone.

So I woke my one year old from the nap he had settled into just minutes before, we all raced to get dressed, and we arrived at the place ten minutes late and in the midst of the beginnings of a snow storm.

I have no idea what I was expecting, but it was sure as hell not what I found. Behind a somewhat dilapidated six foot cedar fence rested a 1950’s style single-story brick duplex. From the outside it looked like nothing special (although I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “ugly”) but inside it was huge, with hardwood floors (really old ones that had been newly resurfaced), a fireplace, tons of windows, a big kitchen with new countertops and a breakfast nook, a laundry room with washer and dryer, a garage, tons of storage and a fenced backyard at least three or four times as big as our current patio.

The guy who was renting it was immediately charmed by my boys (particularly because his grandkids who are half white and half Vietnamese apparently look just like them) and was very happy to hear about my good credit and good job history and good rental history. I filled out an application on the spot and although I was technically third in line, he told me that as far as he was concerned, I was first. No one, he said, had been so obviously excited about the place, and he and his wife had lived there for 15 years and he’d like to see another family be happy there too.

No, it doesn’t have a dishwasher (which hurts me a little to think about), but it has charm and character and everything single other thing I hadn’t even dared to dream of having. Hardwood floors! A washer and dryer! And oh my god a yard! A yard where my boys can run and run and run while I sit in the sun, reading a book, never worrying for a second that they’re now lying dead in the middle of our busy street. And in fact, the tree-filled little neighborhood isn’t busy at all, the street is a small dead end off of another dead end off of another dead end, yet it will cut my morning commute to my one year old’s daycare from 30 minutes to about 7.

I am so happy. I find out for sure on Monday but I feel like the perfect place fell into my lap.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.