Day Seventy-Two: I Am Officially a Renter

After a tedious thirty minutes of initialling and signing and being explained that there was possibly lead paint under twenty-seven coats of non-lead-based paint and that I shouldn't lick the walls, I am a renter. I handed over two-thousand dollars and a smile, to receive a handshake and a pending phone call.

I'm moving out. And it feels pretty damn weird, but a good kind of weird.

The realtor man who works for the owner of the building, who happens to be an Asian dentist, is a very nice old man who used to be an engineer. But aside from conducting business and making phone calls, he is painstakingly slow. My father and I watched as he read over text, flipped pages, and re-read them again over the course of ten minutes. In between pages, he asked my patient and tired father what he did for a living, where he worked, how far his commute was, where he went to school, and how long he'd been in his career. With as much patience as he could muster, I'm sure, he answered his questions as I willed him to move just slightly faster. We weren't in a rush, but considering as we met him at ten-after six, I would have liked to eat before seven PM. All we had to do was sign five pages and hand over a check. It was not a process that should have taken over thirty minutes.

But nevertheless, he's a very nice man who does things efficiently, although a little slowly, and who allowed me the opportunity to rent my first apartment. So now I wait for my key, and then I can move in. It's been a long, and emotional process, but I've made it. I'm moving out!