i hate house-hunting

jared was offered a summer job teaching at KU, in addition to his teaching job next school year. so i guess it’s official: we will be in lawrence for another year.

& that means that i guess we should start looking for a bigger place. i love our current house. it’s cheap, the location can’t possibly be beat, our landlady is super-responsive & nice, all of our stuff is already here…but it’s a tight squeeze for two adults & a baby. especially a baby that is swiftly becoming a toddler.

i just hate looking for new places to live. especially in lawrence. rentals in lawrence seem strangely over-priced to me, & there’s a lot of the town where i wouldn’t really want to live because i would just feel trapped in the house all day, being so far from anything worth walking to. this is probably the primary way that lawrence is different from boston: almost all of boston is reasonably walkable. even when i lived way the fuck out in east somerville, practically on a highway overpass, it was a pretty nice walk to union square (which is even more enticing/gentrified now than it was when i lived there). i would even walk from my east somerville apartment to harvard square sometimes. i’m not saying it was a short walk. but it was a pleasant enough walk. there were sidewalks. that’s more than i can say for a lot of areas in lawrence.

i spent ramona’s entire nap this afternoon trolling through apartment listings on craig’s list. i wound up with five places that seemed possible. let’s break them down:

one is owned by a management company that we have previously rented from. we had a very bad experience with them & would never rent from them again. so we crossed that one off the list.

i left messages for two others & am still waiting to hear back. one in particular is very enticing. the photos are just darling, the rent is fairly reasonable, & it’s close to a fun park & playground that ramona would love, as well as the jogging/biking trail jared uses a lot!

i’ve set up a showing to see a fourth place tomorrow afternoon. i asked if the house was owned by an individual or a company, as i prefer to rent from individuals. they’re less likely to be slumlords. the owner wrote back, “individual…all applicants are subject to background/credit checks though!” okay, lady. slow your roll. i’m not trying to con you into inadvertently renting to an ex-felon with terrible credit. i replied that i simply prefer renting from individuals, & that our current landlady is our next-door neighbor & it’s been fabulous, but we’re looking for something a bit more spacious now that our baby is older. she replied, “maybe this isn’t tne best place for you, as their are outdoor stairs.” ??? she agreed to set up a showing anyway though.

& we’re going to see the fifth contender this evening. it’s in an intentional co-housing community. i feel kind of hopeful about it. it’s a really nice location, & it could be a great place for ramona to live. there are a lot of other kids in the community, & they even have a co-operative kids’ room, a playground, & a treehouse! they’re having a potluck tonight so we’re going to swing by to meet people & make sure we’re down with the whole “co-housing” scene. it could be pretty cool!

but we can also afford to be picky because we don’t really NEED to move. it would just be nice to have a little more space. like, say, a separate bedroom for ramona.

i wish looking for houses/apartments didn’t make me feel so weird. i look at the photos online & have this whole weird emotional journey, wondering what our lives would be like that in that space. if i like what i see, i find myself thinking, “this will be the place where it’s a joy to stand at the sink & wash dishes, & every year i will make ramona a birthday cake with buttercream frosting, & i will never find myself sitting around at 2pm, still unshowered & wearing pajamas. in short, this will be the house where i finally get my shit together.” & other houses make me despair (usually if they have electric stoves or baseboards for electric heat; i don’t know why i find those two things so depressing, but i do). even though i know, i KNOW, that a person’s physical environment or surroundings don’t determine a person’s personality. i found a great listing for a gorgeous house recently (sadly somewhat out of our price range) & was like, “look at the built-ins! imagine what we could do with that cunning little cupboard!” but i started to get really overwhelmed by the yard it had. i was like, “if i lived here, i’d have to maybe be into hanging around outside.” i’m not wild about going outside. i really don’t like bugs, & i hate wearing sunscreen. i don’t even like birds, that’s what a monster i am. even squirrels are kind of overwhelming sometimes.

& of course, it always falls to me to look for new places to live. oh well.

now that we know we’re staying put for a year, maybe i should think about renewing my pool pass. it expired in february & i didn’t renew it because i was like, “i don’t want to shell out if we’re just leaving town in may.” i am mainly writing this with the hope that speaking the intention out loud (or writing it on my blog) will make it so. alternatively, if we end up in this co-housing place, i could start doing yoga in the mornings. (which is something i did right before i got pregnant with ramona.) because they have on-site morning yoga.