I have been very busy finding creative ways to procrastinate doing all of the stuff that needs getting done in the next month until we leave. Why did I quit smoking? Smoking cigarettes is a great way to put off doing stuff...5 lovely minutes at a time. But I thought (or Betty thought, so I stopped being so lazy) that maybe I should put my perspective on these pages as well. This is supposed to be a coordinated effort, you know. I had to do some much-needed sprucing up around here, though, as you can see.

So, yes, the new move. While my angrier better half has been filling you in on all of the frustrations of this process, I have been the sane, calming voice of reason. Sure, homeowners and realtORS refuse to call us back about the places that have been listed for months now. Odd how their places sit vacant while they laze around collecting rent checks...oh wait. They would have to rent them to collect those checks. They hate money. That must be it.

But I will NOT be discouraged. I prefer to think that those places are not up to my standards anyway, and the right one will be waiting for us when we arrive. It will have huge closets, lots of natural light and be way under budget. Besides, we have a backup plan if we don't find something we love love love. It's a place we like like like but they could have done some stuff in a less annoying way and we would have no outdoor space.

Here are my questions, based more on lifestyle and aesthetic issues I've been having. Do people down south not enjoy bathroom privacy? Why do people build homes with 3 bedrooms and one bathroom? I'm really expected to share a bathroom with a man AND any guests we might have? Not a fan of that. Also, the closets, people. Seriously. My luggage, which was full of most of my summer wardrobe, was lost last year and still, I cannot be expected to fit my clothes and shoes into these teeny tiny closets, much less leave room for boy clothing. Maybe we will have to get a 3 bedroom and install shelves and rods in the 3rd, wall to wall, creating a serious walk-in closet. Kind of a brilliant idea, actually.

So the hunt will continue. I'm sure we'll find something fairly easily once we are actually there to see places. SOME people around here have a penchant for the drama. I'll keep it together.

posted by elizabeth

I'm blogging, bitches. It's for good reason. Things are about to change drastically. For those of you in the midwest...sorry, but you are about to be invaded, because after waiting and waiting and waiting and more waiting, we (I) have decided that since the move down south isn't going to be possible any time soon (thanks, shitty economy and lack of job transfer possibilities!), it's time to bite the bullet. So, later this month I will be moving out there. There. I wrote it. It's totally real now.

After the saddest MYTGOD post ever, I'm sure there were those of you who were all "ugh, what a heartless bitch." The fact is that deciding NOT to go then and there was very difficult. However, it would have been the result of a hot-headed and rash decision and likely would have resulted in the loss of one of my best friends. So, I got some stuff cleared up and feel a lot better about making the move in a few weeks. Not that I'm happy about moving there. It's cold...colder than it is here, and I realize that people who live in that general vicinity will claim that this is just snobbery, but the fact is that culture, cuisine and general life pace is just vastly different. When the closest large city requires a Kevlar® vest, people just tend to chill out in their subdivisions 40 minutes away from everything else. It's just foreign to me. So fine, I suck, but deal with it.

There is plenty I have to be happy about there. Most importantly is my man, who was audibly thrilled when I told him about my decision to move yesterday. He has already started laying the groundwork for finding us a sweet pad in a place that I will hate the least amount possible. That should be a fun project! It's possible he'll be regretting his insistence that I move there once he tries to find said pad. Now he's stuck with me.

I declare Shenanigans.

Yes, Shenanigans. I bet you weren't fully prepared for that, were you?

That's cool. I appreciate your naivety.

In fact, your naivety and unpreparedness are feelings I can get with. And I mean "get with" in the same way I've used it countless times while referring to sisters of friends, actresses, and the occasional fatty while drunk.

In other words, I'm going to admit that I'm completely unprepared and naive about this whole process. It's awkward. It's scary. And yet it's extremely exciting.

That being said, I'm not the hypocrite. She is. Like, totally. Way more than I am. let me explain.

So Elizabeth gives me her list. I already knew it for the most part, so I looked at places based on this criteria. I know she doesn't like the typical apartment complex thing. I'm cool with that.

So I look at old steel and cotton mills that have been turned into condos and apartments. I gather info on condo and townhome rentals. I pass by apartment complex after apartment complex. Until I get lost searching out a condo complex, and that's when I see a place that looks beautiful.

I pull in and make my way to the office. I steal a few cookies and wait to take the tour. Sure, it's an apartment complex, but it isn't typical. It's high end. It's in a really nice part of town. Lots of wide rows and new developments. Plenty of money around. The complex itself is designed like no other I've seen. I tour it and really like how it's set up when it comes to Captain Flexible's requirements.

Honestly, I looked at it solely from her point of view when it came to kitchen space and layout, closet and bathroom design, etc. I knew this wasn't perfect, but I figured it was a pretty solid option to consider in case things in the more hip communities somehow can't work out. Plus it had the benefit of location in a fancy part of town.

Now, before I left town Captain Flexible and I talked about a place she saw. A place that is admittedly in a less safe part of town, but is unbelievably cool. I saw pictures and it is. Her good friend who is in real estate in this town had told her that he believed that within a few years this area would be much better and that made it a solid investment.

She visited once, and exuded the desire to make that our place no matter what stood in our way. I spoke to my friend John, who has lived in town many years, as well as another friend K. Both told me that the area was not two years from becoming safe, and that it really wasn't a nice area to live. Living in a shit part of town is a definite veto from Uncle Bracelet.

So, keeping this in mind, I knew I owed it to her to visit the place and include it in our options, though I'll admit without reservation that I was already ranking it as a slim chance. In fact, I was probably audibly unexcited about it. From my point of view though, I wanted to make her happy by looking at her favorite place. I also know that nothing is ever concrete and you have to keep an open mind. So I knew I'd end up seeing the place during one of our future visits. Besides, we plan on renting right off the bat and these are for purchase.

I bring my materials I had gathered and show her some of the things. I pull out the folder of info from the apartment complex. She takes a look at the picture on the cover, which has a photo of part of the outside of one of the buildings, and she emphatically states, "No, this is ugly. I won't live there." And she tosses it aside.

(Or some such similar statement)

Even she'll admit it isn't ugly. But without huge windows on the outside of the building (and thinking of standard apartment complexes immediately) she wouldn't even consider it. And she wasn't willing to budge, which is the attitude which has helped me coin her Captain Flexible.

So she called me a hypocrite because I wanted her to at least check it out, while she felt I wasn't going to consider her favorite place.

Not true at all.

Double Fail.

(In your face, single Fail!)

She and I both have aspects of living which we are willing to put up with. One of my must haves is a nice area. I don't want to worry about break-ins if I don't have to. One of hers is aesthetics. I think both of us would agree about each other's opinions on living, at least for the most part.

However, I was willing to look at her place, despite mentally ranking it well behind other places, because it was important to her. She wasn't willing to even hear about my place, let alone view a floor plan or anything, yet she called ME a hypocrite!

SHENANIGANS!!!

She's lucky I sorta kinda maybe possibly really like her. Otherwise things could have gotten hairy, and I've already experienced the hairy lady thing and it wasn't cool at all.

Captain Flexible.

This, dear readers, is only the beginning. If I am to make this happen I will be risking much more than opinions on location and style. Yes, it is entirely possible that she would expect me to leave every single item of everything I own behind, maybe getting lucky enough to at least bring along 2 items of current clothing.

Coming soon? The battle of the Green Recliner and the Man Cave.

I'm going to begin this with the story of our first house hunting experience. "Our" in this case, is a very loose term, as I wasn't actually present. You see, my man gets a ton of vacation days a year, so we thought it would be wise if he used a few of them to fly down to the new city to check out some potential places to live. He was armed with a camera, a list of places I've found with the help of my sister, a friend, and various websites, and a few very specific things I'm looking for. Here's that list:

• closet space
  
• dog friendly
  
• nice bathrooms, nice, open kitchen
  
• in or around the artsy part of town
  
• big, lofty space would be preferable to boring boxy apartment
  
• windows, natural light and more windows: VERY important
  

Fairly simple, right? I spoke to him several times a day while he was there, hearing about how the places were. He liked some more than others, based on location or aesthetics. He found a bunch of apartments through realtors and signs as well, and he went to look at those. There were a few converted industrial loft buildings I was really excited about, he saw a couple of them, told me he liked them, and we started a short list of places we would check out when we go there together next month. All seemed to be going well.

Then he came to visit last weekend, with some literature in hand from the house hunt. I also got to see some photos he had taken. Some of the information was very exciting, though I had hoped to see more pictures. Then he pulled out a brochure that didn't seem like it fit into the rest. It was a big apartment complex, standard boxy apartment layout. Hmmm well, maybe it was in a great neighborhood, in the heart of where we'd agreed we would really like to live? Nope, not even close. Lovely neighborhood, sure, but stuck in the middle of a bunch of large, lovely homes, nowhere near where we were looking. But he liked it. He liked the wide, winding road of the neighborhood and look! Storage! For golf clubs and man cave stuff!

Let's review how it meets the list requirements:

• closet space
  
• dog friendly (marginally)
  
• nice bathrooms, nice, open kitchen
  in or around the artsy part of town
  big, lofty space would be preferable to boring boxy apartment
  windows, natural light and more windows: VERY important
  

FAIL

Needless to say, I wasn't impressed. I chucked the big, colorful pamphlet aside and he grumbled. This place, to me, was the Super Target of apartments. Sure, it may have stuff that is useful, and it may be clean and new and nice enough. But it's vanilla and boxy and there are 100 duplicates of it. I thought it was understood that we were looking for the urban boutique store of apartments. Funky and unique and quirky. There was a definite breakdown in communication. He was surprised by my "inflexibility", because I wouldn't even give it a chance, had no desire to even go see it. Did he just meet me?

To top it off, one of the places I really wanted to check out was a building I'd been to before. I didn't remember where it was (my sense of direction is awesome like that), but found out while he was there. He didn't have time to go see it, and wasn't terribly interested anyway, because a couple of people told him the neighborhood sucked. That was that. He didn't care about any other details.

I declare hypocrisy!

We will see how things go next month when we visit, but this could be more difficult than even I anticipated.