Apartment Hunting: It Gets Better After the Millionth Time

Apartment hunting: it gets better after the millionth time. At least, that’s what I’m trying to trick myself into thinking. While it’s all fun and games being shown vast, luxurious spaces and imagining how your life can fit right in-where you’ll curl up with your favorite book, how you’ll wake up every Saturday morning for coffee and toast with a crossword at the kitchen island, the maroon velvet curtains you’ll put up in the second bedroom that will double as your office/writing space-the realization that you’ll have to move all of your already-acquired crap into yet another apartment suddenly makes your crummy two-bedroom, right above the neighbors you so lovingly call The Door Slammers, seem like a stay at the Waldorf Astoria. And if it were possible, you’d just as soon stay put, at least until you can save up the money to hire some burly men to do all the work for you.

But alas, we don’t get that luxury. Kansas City expects us to be settled down with full K.C. residency by the end of July and moving all of our crap is inevitable. Fortunately (for better or worse), because we haven’t even been in our current apartment for a year yet, there are still plenty of boxes that have yet to be unpacked. Although time isn’t completely to blame for our lack of unpacking- we simply don’t have the space to unpack everything. That’s just how much crap we’ve accumulated: books, comics, cds, old clothes that should have been dropped off at Goodwill years ago, etc. We’re not junky and we’re not necessarily hoarders. We just never realized how much crap we had until it was time to downsize at the start of the recession and we were forced to move out of our condo.

But back to the move. We've begun our search, which is, suffice it to say, going much better than searches in the past, as we now have the freedom to widen our prospects. There was a damn-near perfect apartment in the downtown area right across the street from the main branch of the public library. But it was without a balcony and balconies have become very important in saving my marriage, as Halbastram and I make it a point to take time out to sit and have a drink and a smoke on nice evenings and talk about whatever. Plus, every now and then the stupid cat likes to get outside and enjoy the “fresh” air, and I’m not even going to entertain the notion of leashing my lazy asshole of a cat, so that apartment is out.

Another apartment we looked at is in the middle of one of the more hip neighborhoods in K.C., with bars, restaurants, grocery stores and tattoo shops all within walking distance. After living in largely isolated places for the last five years, where I’d have to get into my car whenever I wanted a snack, this place is perfect. The only downside: because it is the “hip” part of town, there will be plenty of fresh-faced 20-somethings looking to have a good time, which works for me, except now that we’re on the road to fertility, I have to start thinking beyond my own selfish living arrangements. Not that you have to live in Boringland in order to start/raise a family, but a cramped apartment complex probably isn't the best choice, considering that we don’t even have space for our stuff, let alone another human being.

And a lazy asshole cat.

Then there’s one last apartment complex, which we’ll call Rip-Off City, that basically wants you to pay a king’s ransom in fees before you even make your first rent payment, all because it’s located near the university. And, as I've learned in five years living in two separate college towns, businesses love to rip students off any and every way they can, even if non-students get caught up in their fuckery as well- them’s the breaks. Despite the fact that it’s in a perfect location within walking distance of the art museum and the shopping district, they can bite my shiny metal ass.

As it is only February, we have a few months ahead of us before he have to make a commitment. And while it would be nice to have a cool apartment in the cool part of town across the street from the library or up the street from the hottest bar in town and a stone’s throw away from the museum, what I really want more than anything is a home that I can plant my roots in for a while, be it a house, condo or apartment. I’m looking for a final sense of stability and normalcy. And I know that I’ll find it somewhere in K.C. Eventually.

Hopefully by July, though. Because I got schedules.