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!

Day Seventy: Reality is Setting In

I stumbled into my house this morning in pajama pants and a little bit of sleep under my belt, and took to separating my clean clothes from my dirty ones from the night before. Almost immediately, my phone buzzed energetically. Much to my dismay, it was the realtor I've been dealing with about my apartment. While he is a very, very nice man, and quite efficient, he bothers me incessantly. I'm convinced he thinks I am running around in circles with absolutely no sense of time-management or responsibility. Although he almost always gives me good news, he calls more more times than not to bug me to do something that is going as quickly as possible, or something I haven't forgotten about that he is convinced I have.

"Hi Kristen!," he said. He went on, asking me (two weekend days after I picked it up) if my lawyer has had the opportunity to look over the copy of the lease we gave him, and when we could set up a time to sign. My lawyer, who also happens to be my uncle, had gotten the lease in his hands not two hours before my realtor called me. I was not pleased.

I told him patiently that he was reviewing the lease, and that when he got back to me, we could set up a time immediately to sign the lease. "Well the owner goes away for the weekends," he said warily. "We need to get it to him by the middle of the week, I would think, so he can sign it by the fifteenth." I was slightly annoyed. He could have gotten the lease to me a little sooner, or at least warned me that it was an extremely pressing issue, before calling me and bugging me for a day this week. But regardless of the phone conversation, the shock hit me after I got off the phone: I'm going to have a new place to live the middle of this week.

Although I knew it was coming up, it snuck up on me incredibly quickly. I would sign the lease this week, and move in next week. NEXT WEEK. Next week, half my belongings will be in another place, and this time next week, I will be living in a completely different place. It's a very weird concept. I am very ready, but psychologically, it's going to be extremely weird. I will not be living in the place that I have called home for the past twenty-four years of my life. I will have a new home. I'll use a different shower, cook in a different kitchen, and sleep in a different bed.

This is going to take some adjustment.

Day Thirty-Seven: Do You Believe That Things are "Meant to Be"?

In the mighty search for a place to live, I have been looking several times a day and calling numerous weird people in order to find something affordable in an area I like that isn't a dump. Since I'm making entry-level salary and refuse to live with others, I obviously can't afford much. So, the process has been proving difficult, and I still haven't looked at anything other than the one small, yet adorable place I've already seen.

But today, my mother found a place that warranted an email in the middle of the day telling me about it. It wasn't just a one-bedroom apartment, it was a two-bedroom cottage, with a washer and dryer. For the same price as the one-bedroom room in an old house with no washer and dryer I had seen. I immediately scrambled to see pictures of it online, and was convinced when I saw it had its own mailbox. So, naturally, I called the realtor immediately to schedule a showing, and I am awaiting her call back.

So while I would love to love this place, and love even more to love it and rent it, it may just be not meant to be. Maybe, it isn't "meant" to happen. While I am not necessarily a spiritual person and I am definitely not a religious one, I can't help but believing begrudgingly in the concept that if something is supposed to happen and work out, it will. I take my job as the perfect example of that. It took me a ridiculously long time to get hired after college, and I went on interview after interview and never got an offer. But finally, I was offered the job I have now, and I couldn't be happier. I can't imagine finding a better environment to work in or better people to work with. So clearly, to me, it was "meant to happen."

So, like I was with my job situation five months ago, I am antsy and on-edge about this cute little cottage. But as I've learned a pretty strong lesson with the employment situation, I now have a better sense of calm about this situation than I think I normally would have. If the realtor doesn't call me back, I will email her, and then if she doesn't get back to me, I will assume it wasn't meant to happen. I am also a strong believer that you need to go after what you want in life, but if doing all you can doesn't get you want you want, maybe it just wasn't meant to happen.

Whether this is or is not the case, I am trying to remain calm and un-stressed about this situation to keep what is left of my sanity and peace of mind. I am chronically stressed out and probably shortening my life, so the last thing I want to do is get worked up over something that really is not that important. Moving out is important, yes, but I do not have to move out by March. Getting a cottage is not important, it's just a really lucky opportunity. So I'll sit and wait, but I won't freak out. Here, cottage, cottage, cottage...

Day Twenty: Movin' On Up...

I have very recently embarked on a new leg of life -- I'm becoming a real renter. When I graduated college, I arrived home with a tightly packed sedan full of odds, ends, furniture bits, clothes, and shoes. I winced as I pondered the impossible physics that would be necessary to fit my massive accumulation of crap into a small, modest bedroom that was already amply furnished. So, I rented a storage unit. It was, and still is, my only experience with being a renter of any kind. I learned words like "pro-rate" and was given a tour of my where my tiny piece of real estate would be located. For the past year and a half, I've been dutifully paying $45.00 a month to house my random shit and keeping myself, my parents, and my "landlord" happy.

But now, I'm going to be actually renting real, honest property. I'll be paying a substantial amount of money to keep a roof over my head, heat in my person, and food in my stomach. It's a huge weight over my head and I'm frightened. What if I can't afford what I'm paying? So after about a week of deliberating with myself, my bank account, and other people, I've decided that now is as good a time as any. So today, I emailed my first landlord, asking to look at a place. I looked at an apartment once before, with three other girls in college, but we didn't have a clue what we were doing and it didn't feel nearly as serious as it should have been.

So luckily, all will go smoothly and easily, and I will schlep my crap from my trusty storage unit several towns over into a one-bedroom apartment that I can call my own. I'll save $45.00 a month, and a lot of money on gas, but I'll be spending $800 on something so much more important. And I'll have a new place to call home, which is a completely bizarre concept to me. I'm not sure I can fathom truly living somewhere that isn't home, and being able to call it home. But I guess it's something I'll get used to. In the meantime, I'll get some life experience in hunting down apartments, keep saving, and try my hardest to not freak out. And hopefully, I'll have a new place by the end of February. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.