This Apartment Life

 You know when you are in your twenties and you are moving every year and it is exciting and fun because three friends and a pick-up truck will move everything you own for a pizza and some beer?  You are generally moving in with someone or moving out on your own, or moving to a better place and the move is part of the excitement. You are showing the world that you are succeeding, you are conquering, and you have the square footage to prove it!

Can I just say that moving in your late forties and at fifty is absolutely none of these things? I had a wonderful, beautiful, peaceful apartment I would have stayed in for years had the owner of it not wanted it back to let her mother live there.  Good luck on those death stairs, old woman, I thought bitterly as I crept down the death stairs for the last time.  It had windows on windows and the light streamed in and two patios: one if I wanted to have weird conversations with passing neighbors and one if I did not.  It was insulated, it was convenient, it was pretty, and I had to leave it. It made me almost physically sick thinking of taking all of my belongings, putting them in boxes, and carting them across town for the third time in four years. Running low on energy, time, and the will to keep looking, I jumped at the next apartment rental that looked decent.  I moved and not any of it was exciting and none of it made me feel like I had a lot to show the world, even with the increased square footage. 

Said death stairs

If you haven’t lived in an apartment for awhile and maybe are waxing nostalgic about it, you remember nothing about apartments.  Apartments are loud.  They are filled with people you can hear sneeze through the walls but won’t look you in the eye in the parking lot.  Apartments are mailrooms and a gym that looks promising but also holds magazines from 2017.  Apartments are not knowing why the power keeps going off or why the water is so hot one day and cold the next.  It is hearing people come home and leave and yell and live their lives on top of yours.  It is someone wearing cement shoes living above you and you being the person with cement shoes to the people below you.  It is communal living without the community.

I am not a fan of this new place. They really saved on insulation when they built this place because they just didn’t use any. I can hear everything, everything, EVERYTHING.  My next-door neighbor has terrible sleep apnea.  I know because I hear him snore through our shared bedroom wall.  My cement shoe neighbor upstairs has taken on an exercise regime that has him run back and forth, back and forth, open the sliding glass door, slam the sliding glass door, drop something heavy and repeat. I hate him almost violently and I am not 100% sure what he looks like.  I believe him to be the guy who looks like he played a lot of rugby and lost but am not entirely sure.

We have had a lot of boiler issues here and the hot water is touch and go.  This weekend it is entirely gone. As in, I have no hot water until maybe Monday when the part they ordered comes in.  When I called the office to ensure I really would not have hot water until Monday, the stressed and bored woman there told me they were going to open up some empty apartments for people to shower in.  I laughed and laughed!!  I don’t speak to these people in the parking lot; no way am I showering after them.  I am supposed to queue up behind cement shoes and sleep-apnea guy?  No thank you.  When I told her that I pay way too much to live like I am camping, she passed along the email to her manager so I could let him know how this boiler issue is ruining my life. He will be getting a lengthy email from me complete with how he should not charge me for water this month.  I might include such lies that as a teacher, I can really only use hot water to its fullest on the weekend and now he has ruined that for me and that after a week of serving others, I came home to a cold and cold-faucet only apartment.  

As a woman of inadequate means, apartment life is going to mine for a long, long time.  I will try to focus on the perks of apartment life.  I will list the things I like about this apartment.Nah, not today.  Today, I feel like looking up curses to immobilize cement shoes (just temporarily; I am not a monster) and use zillow to see where my next move will take me.  I hope that they have a “hot water” option to minimize my search.