home is where you stack the dirty dishes

There are several things that I swore would never happen. I will never, ever, marry a man who doesn’t like to cook. I will never open a store. I will never have to take medication every day. I will never let the bathroom get that messy again. I will never eat anything I’m allergic to again. I will never live so close to my parents that I can get from their home to mine in less than two minutes.

Of course, I promised the universe this before I met and married the love of my life, before I opened a store, before I started to take high blood pressure medicine, before that pizza looked so good. And, before, in a moment of pure brain explosion, I moved to the same street block as my parents.

So here I am, living in an apartment two steps away from the home of my parents. We share similar addresses and a set of parking spaces. When I talk to my mother on the phone, I can almost hear her in that weird telephone stereo sound: the real voice in the right ear, the telephone voice in the left. Or, I can simply be reached by a little clever yelling out of my mother’s bedroom window.

Every day, the word “independence” continues to be redefined in my life.

Once upon a time, there was an apartment in the center of an up-and-coming neighborhood. This apartment had two bedrooms, a washer and dryer in the unit, a bit of a view, and enough room that cats could get a good gallop around during their crazed time of the day. In this apartment, there lived a man, a woman, and two cats. They lived there happily, although rent was a little expensive for them. But they loved their apartment, and were happy to go home at night.

There was an evil force that threatened in their neighborhood, though. Mean, nasty, condomonsters and townhouseterrors lurked behind every tree and quaint hedge. Overnight, yellow notices of Proposed Land Use Action would appear, and seemingly the next day, historic homes and buildings would be demolished, to be replaced by particleboard palaces. Mixed use buildings with retail and condos began to breed in the neighborhood, only to be thwarted by the Townhouseterror Virus. Townhouses and Condos fought for the small neighborhood, leaving the corpses of small apartment buildings, houses, and even older condos to litter their battleground.

One day, the man and the woman came home to find a very special letter from their landlord. Their lovely small apartment building was going to be sold, and so they must move out. The landlord wrote that he wanted to fix things up so that he could make more money when he sold the building. In reality, the man and woman knew that the Townhouseterror Virus had infected their landlord, too. Possibly he wasn’t even aware that he was infected, but nonetheless he was, and there was no cure known in all the land.

And so, the man, woman, and two cats went on a quest for a new apartment to live. They were not overly picky, but they did have a few requirements in a home. They searched high and low, near and far, singing this song:

The Apartment Song
Sung to the tune of "The Perfect Nanny" from Mary Poppins

Wanted: an apartment for two wonderful people

If you own some nice apartments
We would like to be your tenants
We're clean and sweet, don't smoke
won't let things get broke

We have two cats but they're very good
both old and sleepy with a quiet mood
One will sit when you tell him to
The other purrs, and cuddles you

If you'll let us sign a lease
We will take good care of your building
We won't be late on rent or have loud parties
Call you and complain, cause you fees

We know we don't have great credit
But we always pay our rent
Now our landlord is selling our building
Putting up townhouses, isn't he mean?

We've had some bad luck in business
Closing our store caused a credit mess
But we have a brand new good business
It's doing well, and we expect greatness
Please rent to us
and you will see
we won't be a fuss
we'll be trustworthy
many thanks
sincerely,

Kerrie, Scott and cats

No matter where they looked, they could not find a suitable home.

The deadline grew near. Workers began to arrive at their apartment to make loud noises on the roof and to play horrible music on their radios. The workers persisted in making repairs to the building, even though it seemed sure that if the building was sold, it would be torn down for the sake of the Townhouseterrors or Condomonsters. The man, woman and cats became worried. Where would they live? Where would they go? And, most importantly of all, how would they be able to afford the deposits, first and last month’s rent, and moving expenses? Or even the application fees that every landlord now seems to be requiring?

OK, there’s a little more to the story. My husband, Scott, and I also own a business together. As part of our business, we had a store for 6 1/2 years, which we closed at the end of last year. Financial issues, an expiring lease, and the economy in general had all contributed to the decision to close the store and restructure the business. But, as a result, our credit was not great. On paper it looked like our business had maybe failed, even though it had really only changed and was, we hoped, becoming revitalized by our new offerings, structure and business decisions. This didn’t look very impressive on paper, though, especially when we were trying to convince landlords to let us move into their buildings. While working for ourselves had been paying for our lives for quite some time, self employment to the prospective landlord looked a little like not working at all.

I imagined their thoughts: “No regular income? Sounds like a couple of slackers to me. Plus, cats? No way. Forget it. What am I, stupid?” Meanwhile, they’d smile, nod, and take our $50 application/credit check fee.

Yes, the apartment search just wasn’t working out. We needed more time to figure things out. We needed more time to save up deposit money. We needed more time to make the business look more successful again. Plus, we needed to put some more time between the apartment search and the business changing.

And, so, we lowered our standards in our apartment search, and ended up, at least temporarily, in an apartment two minutes away from my parents.

The difficulties in this situation have already started to become clear, but that's a post for another day.