Wednesday, July 13, 2005

slump

I thought things were going to change when Alex finished school. I'll even go far as to say I thought that life would get so awesome that it would blow my mind. I had a picture in my head of our excellent life, you know, the one where we would move into the city (any city), start having lavish cocktail parties, wear overpriced shoes just to look fabulous and never have to dust again. But none of that stuff is happening. Instead, my life is changing in a weird way. I'm realizing that although things have shifted they've pretty much stayed the same. We still live in University housing, we still have to save money and Alex is still busy at night reading stuff about eyes. Dinners are not lavish and I haven't bought any new shoes. At least now we're able to go out for dinner in a restaurant and not give each other guilty glances when the bill hits the table, which is a welcome change, but I thought that life would somehow become carefree, like I would be running on the beach a lot... or something like that.

One thing that needs to change for me to feel like I'm finally moving forward is the housing situation, I'm so done with the University Village. We thought about buying a condo, but that requires some long term, hard core saving, so we decided that moving to another apartment might be the right thing to do. On Monday night we set out on our new housing journey and decided to look at two apartments which have cheaper rent than what we're still forking over to the University. Obviously, there was a reason why these apartments were so cheap. I ended up looking at the first apartment by myself because Alex's last patient was late. (oh, being married to an O.D. is sooo hard. bitch, moan, etc..) The apartment was in downtown Oakland, not a great part of downtown Oakland, but it wasn't too shabby. The building itself was kind of cute, it had a courtyard and the lofts there, which were already rented, looked nice. But the apartments for rent were awful. Awful is an understatement, I'm just going to cut to the chase here and tell you that they were shitholes. I knew it was destined for failure when the dude showing the apartment apologized for the loud music across the hall from the apartment I was viewing. The apology went a little something like this,
Allow me to say I'm sorry for the loud music. There's an unknown tenant in that apartment. I think there was a divorce or something and now there's some strange person in there. We're not sure what's going on. It's like a nightclub!
Here's a little tip for anyone showing an apartment: Don't admit to prospective renters that you have no clue, nor are you willing to research what goes on in the building for which you are claiming responsibility. It just doesn't sit right. Unless I want to live in a nightclub, then by all means, tell everyone to rock out even if you have no idea who the hell they are.

I looked at a one bedroom unit first, one with a "remodeled" bathroom. This meant that the shower stall had been cleaned, there was a new shower curtain and toilet paper was on the roll. Otherwise the bathroom was craptastic, complete with mildew in the corners and a sink which dripped. Slumlord then showed me what he called a "spacious two bedroom." It was about 800 square feet and had an even worse bathroom, which stunned me, because I didn't think that was possible. All the floors were covered with stained, brown carpet that smelled like a litterbox. The kitchen was so small that it had a Barbie stove and a mini fridge. The only heater was in the living room, it was about 40 years old and it took up half the space in there. No daylight came through any of the 4 windows, each was blocked by another wall from another building. It was the most depressing thing I had ever seen. I thanked Slumlord for his time and exited as I heard 50 Cent's In Da Club, which was actually Slumlord's phone ringing.

When I left the building I got a call from Alex, who had finally made it to a BART station close by. I said I would come and find him, but I don't really know my way around that neighborhood, so it took me roughly 30 minutes to find the corner where he was standing. Needless to say we were both quite cranky by the time Alex got in the car. But we forged onward to look at one more apartment. We drove over to Lake Merritt to look at a one bedroom apartment with hardwood floors and a walk-in closet. ooooh, aaaaahhhh. Unfortunately it was being shown by the same management company, and not surprisingly, no one was there to let us in when we arrived. We made some calls, left some voicemails, waited for 20 minutes and eventually gave up and drove back to the Village. That building actually looked pretty nice, so I was a little disappointed that we weren't able to see it, but I suppose it just wasn't meant to be, at least not this week. Maybe not this month. Maybe not this year. University housing really isn't that bad. After looking at what hovels I could live in, I was pleased to return to our spacious, free utilities and DSL, two bedroom habitat.

Maybe the kind of change I need is something more like getting a new kitten. Good thing I'm getting one on Saturday.
Now I will observe a moment of silence, because my little kitty went through his orchidectomy today. He never even had a chance to live it up. Poor little guy. At least he'll have a big, non-moldy apartment to call home.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I want to where fabulous shoes to lavish cocktail parties. Can we plan some?

Dee said...

I was actually hoping your next move would be a little closer toward me!