My Dream Apartment

When I walk in, the first thing I see is the bookcase. Not very full yet, because most of my books are still in storage at my parents' house. It took me two hours to build, mostly because I built it incorrectly the first time and had to take it apart.

There are three candles on the bookcase: vanilla, linen, and sandalwood. (The linen one smells like dryer sheets. ^__^)

Next to the bookcase is the papasan, which is by a window -- one of three set against the studio's back wall, all large, all westward-facing. The apartment's built on the edge of an overhang, so the windows have no bars; any potential threats would have to climb up a 100-foot cliff to get in.

To the left of all of this is the walk-in closet which also serves as a passageway to the bathroom. I love this area. I can shower and tumble right out into my clothes. Everything is arranged by color and all the hangers are facing the same way.

The bathroom is done in green and ivy and it smells like expensive soap. (One of the nice side effects of using Lush products is that it makes the entire bathroom -- especially the towels -- smell really good.)

On the right side of the apartment is the "dining nook," which is about 5'x6', big enough for a four-top if everyone is cozy. Windows on both walls, and the view is fantastic; all treetops and sky.

Through the dining nook is the kitchen, which is quite big enough to satisfy my standards. Gas range, four burners. Eight cupboards. A hook for the apron I made in seventh grade Home Economics.

The rest of the space is waiting for the bed, which should be arriving next weekend.

Oh, and the best part (aside from the view, the kitchen, the walk-in closet, and the papasan)? Parquet floors.

One of these days I'll buy a digital camera and show you all some pictures, but it's probably better if you all use your imaginations because then you can project your own dream apartment onto these details, and everyone will like what they see. ^__^

Blue Buys A Bed

Today I bought a bed.

From Ikea, natch, and I was lucky in that the bed I liked the best was also the one that was the least expensive, so I didn't even have to argue with myself about whether to get this one or that one... Dalselv all the way.

I bought a mattress, too; the whole kit, and it should arrive in under two weeks.

It's so weird that I've bought a bed. Not that it was a particularly large purchase; thanks to Ikea pricing, I was able to get myself set up for $399 (shipping included). But I've never bought a bed before.

Nor have I ever had a -- dare I use the phrase -- "big-girl bed" before. With one exception (the Year of the Walmart Futon), I've slept on the same iron-frame twin bed since I was nine years old. (Yes, it traveled around with me from apartment to apartment.) Even when I was looking at the Ikea beds I thought to myself "well, I could order another twin, they're cheaper and I'm used to sleeping on one..." but then I thought "no, this is ridiculous, I'm a full-grown adult" and ordered a full-size bed.

Not a queen, though. That felt like too much bed. And certainly not a king; there's only one reason a woman in a studio apartment would invest in a king-size bed, and it's NSFW.

Yay bed!

The Hundred Dresses Project

The Hundred Dresses, for those of you who don't remember your children's literature, is a short "chapter book" by Eleanor Estes about a small American town and the new student who swears she has a hundred dresses, even though she only wears the same faded dress to school. At the end of the book she moves away (Katherine Paterson would have killed her off), and the other students discover that she has 100 drawings of dresses, all hanging up in rows in her former bedroom.

I don't think that I will ever own one hundred dresses; not at the same time, anyway. Still, I can't help referring to my "work clothes accumulation" endeavor as the hundred dresses project.

Why dresses? A few reasons. I've always liked dresses, ever since I was two years old and told my mother that I was going to wear only dresses, every day, for the rest of my life. (I actually managed to wear dresses, nearly exclusively, for most of my toddler/early childhood years. My parents had to trick me into wearing pants by doing things like asking my kindergarten teacher to tell me I was required to wear jeans to school.)

"Wear-to-work" dresses are also far less expensive than putting together work outfits involving slacks/skirts and blouses. If a dress costs the same as a skirt, it's idiotic (in my still-budget-obsessed mind) to buy both the skirt and the blouse when one can get just the dress and have the entire outfit done with.

Oh, and I can never find dress pants that fit me properly. Always too big in the waist, too snug in the hips, and too long in the legs.

Thus, dresses. ^__^

I don't have a hundred. Not even close. Right now I have fourteen. Nearly all of them are from Ann Taylor Loft, which has become my favorite go-to clothing store. (It is a testament to my provincial and/or shopping-deprived former lifestyle that, when I first went into ATL and they wrapped the clothes up in tissue paper before putting them in a fancy bag, it just about blew my mind. They never did that at Target.)

Four of these pretty dresses were bought this afternoon, and now I will show you pictures, because everyone likes pictures!


My favorite of the lot. So cute!

This one actually looks much better on me than it does on the model. Sometimes it helps to have actual curves.

Ditto for this one. I would happily model for ATL for free, if they would ever ask. (Since their clothes are designed for petite women, it would be nice if they actually had a photograph of a petite model in their stores. I volunteer myself.)

And there's the blue one. I always look good in blue. ^__^

No, I don't think I will ever have a hundred dresses. But it might be fun to cap out at 25. What's a little surprising to think about is that I'm more than halfway there. Forget 100 -- I've never even had fourteen dresses in my closet at any one time.

I love dressing for work. ^__^ And I can hardly wait to have all my dresses hung in my closet, organized by color, in my almost-there apartment.

Papasan

When I started fantasizing about how I would want to furnish my dream apartment (and trust me, I've had a long time to fantasize about it at this point), I spent considerable time dreaming about my very own papasan chair.

Not one of those plastic "circle chairs" from Target, but a genuine, rattan, Pier 1 papasan.

Now, those things aren't cheap, and I (unfortunately) still am cheap. But fate has thrown me into a lot of different places as I've bounced around from bed to bed, waiting for this apartment eviction business to end, and at my last temporary sleeping place I made a new friend who also, coincidentally, happened to be selling a genuine, gently-used, super-price-reduced Pier 1 papasan on Craigslist.

I'm sitting in it now. I smuggled it into my hotel room through the back door. (I suppose there isn't any law against bringing one's own furniture into a hotel, but it still felt a little like I shouldn't advertise it.)

So now I don't yet exactly have an apartment, but I do have my first piece of real furniture. Not bad.

Why Haven't I Posted?

Crazy week, but really great too.

Met new friends, watched the DNC and swooned over both Obama and the surprisingly delicious Beau Biden, helped put together a giant project at work...

Am still not yet in the apartment. The eviction process has started. Currently I am in a hotel on the apartment management company's dime (which will in turn be charged to the evicted party, though who knows if they'll ever pay) and will remain there until move-in day.

But it's peaceful here, the internet is free, and I have fun plans for the holiday weekend. ^__^

I Am Not Supposed To Be Here

Tonight was supposed to be the end of the first week in my new apartment.

Then it was supposed to be my first night in my new apartment.

And -- although I had a lovely evening otherwise -- I've come back "home" to this basement sublet in Arlington and am in more than a bit of a funk about it.

I am not supposed to be here.

I know I'll get my apartment in the end (and the landlord has said he'll put me somewhere Monday night if this person isn't out of my apartment by then), but I don't want to spend another weekend in suburban Arlington, 1.5 miles from the metro, 2 miles from the grocery store, and hours away from anything but rows and rows of houses.

I want my apartment!

Sigh.

I Guess Someone Else Likes My Dream Apartment Too

I was supposed to move into my dream apartment on August 15.

On August 13, my landlord told me that the apartment wasn't yet ready for me and that I would be able to move in one week later, on August 22.

Naive as I was, I assumed the delay had something to do with the apartment getting cleaned up and re-painted, which the landlord had said would happen before I moved in.

Today I got another call.

Apparently I won't be able to move in on the 22nd either, because (wait for it...) the previous tenant has not yet moved out.

The landlord said that there was a delay on the apartment the current tenant was planning to move into, so she was squatting in my apartment until her apartment came through.

Which in turn means I've got to squat in my unfinished basement sublet.

My rent, which was already prorated for August, will be reduced for the time I'm losing, but it's still a highly undesirable situation.

Considering my past history of "having to pay out my savings when a roommate skipped town without paying rent," it's also disturbingly ironic that, even when I'm moving into a studio, I'm still getting screwed over by the person sharing my space.

Grrr.

(And no, the landlord is not obligated to put me up into a hotel or anything like that. Unfortunately.)

The House of Seven Roommates

"Seven roommates!"

"You like roommates."

"Yes, but seven!!"

In the 24 hours before I saw my first and second dream apartments, I went to an open house for a "bedroom with attached sunroom" in a "classy Victorian" with seven roommates.

The price was considerably lower than my established 30%, and I like both savings and sunrooms. I figured I could deal with seven roommates if I had to. (Plus, I could always retreat to the sunroom!)

I was five minutes early and there was already a line to see the room. Mostly made up of students and interns.

The house was very classy from the outside only. Inside it was quite literally trashed, trashed as only a house with a rotating cast of low-paid students and interns can be.

Oh, and it was crawling with bedrooms. Every room was a bedroom. One of the potential "sunroom hopefuls" must have been an architecture student, because she kept poking her head into every bedroom and saying "that was originally the pantry" or "that was the formal dining room; see how it's attached to the parlor by a pocket door?"

Now the pantry was stuffed with an air mattress and covered with posters of half-naked girls and cars.

The floors were warped and the stairs were crooked and the attached sunroom was a dank, grubby little space which must rarely ever see any actual sun. You had to sign up to use the bathroom.

At the end of the tour, it was clear that most of the young hopefuls still desperately wanted that living space. I, on the other hand, turned and fled.

I'm not a student anymore. Thank goodness.

My Dream Apartment... Is Mine!

Those of you following my Twitter may have noticed that a few days ago I tweeted that I had seen "my dream apartment."

On the day I saw it, the landlord told me that he had given another potential renter 24 hours to decide whether or not she wanted it, and if she said no, then I was next in line.

She said yes.

When the landlord called to tell me that, he mentioned that he had another apartment available... but it was slightly larger than the unit I had seen, so it was slightly larger in price.

I politely declined, telling him that the price increase tipped the apartment above the "30% of post-tax income" budget I had set for myself. (He was mildly amused that I had done the math.) I said that I really liked his building, and if he ever had another unit open that was the same price as the "dream apartment" I had seen, I would love to hear from him.

In less than 24 hours he called back to let me know that he had a unit available: "It's a little bit bigger than the one you saw the other day, but it's the same price!"

I tactfully refrained from asking if he had simply lowered the price on the apartment he had mentioned before. ^__^

So I went and saw it, filled out the application form, and should sign the lease by the end of the week.

What is my lovely dream apartment like?

Studio, of course (I'm not making that much money yet!)
Hardwood floors
Loads of windows
Two closets
Full kitchen plus dishwasher
Washer/dryer in the apartment
All utilities included
A great view of one of DC's quirkier landmarks (naming it would irrevocably give away my location, so I won't)
Close enough for me to walk to work
No extra charge for my cat

AND

It's on the same block as my sister's apartment! Which we both agreed is a little cool, and a little weird.

Pictures will come when I move in (on the 15th!!!). I would have taken some today, except the previous tenant was in the "messy" stage of moving out and there were half-filled boxes everywhere.

But YAY! I have an apartment, and it's everything I could want an apartment to be.

Now I'm going to go play fantasy decorator...

The Thrill Of The (Apartment) Hunt

Now that I have the job I've always wanted, it's time for me to find an apartment.

The search has not been as easy as I had hoped.

My sister has a nice, if postage-stamp-sized, studio in a great neighborhood at a great price.

So when I started my apartment hunt, I started looking for apartments in that same price range. (Even though my sister has told me that her magical apartment is the only one of its kind in the city and I should expect to pay at least 1.5 times as much for something equivalent, I still had hope.)

This has proven difficult. I have gone to places where, when I told my office mates that I was visiting such-and-such neighborhood, they immediately said "don't go there." (To their credit, I didn't actually go all the way; while I was walking from the metro to the apartment I realized that this was not a good area of town and turned around.)

I went to one apartment advertised as a two-bedroom which was in actuality a studio with a curtain down the middle (and the young woman managing the no doubt illegal sublease told me she reserved the right to ask me to leave at any time), and another apartment which not only had bars on the windows, but was also covered in what appeared to be a giant iron cage.

Then there was the studio which, actually, was not bad; but it was located in the part of DC which one apartment reviewer described as "where concrete goes to die." I spent some time wandering the neighborhood and found zero restaurants, zero coffee shops, and zero stores; just a few aimless cars, block after block of Section 8 housing, and a lot of bored teenagers leaning up against walls.

My studio "tour guide" was a young woman who had to be barely out of high school herself; when I told her I wasn't interested because there was "nothing to do here," she looked shocked and said "But there's the mall! I mean, it's closed now for renovations, but it will be open again next year!"

Then she paused, and blinked her glittery eyelashes, and said "Don't you like to go to the mall?"

The truth is that if I came all this way and ended up living in a place where the biggest draw was a mall, I would have to consider this entire experiment a failure.

And then I ended up chatting on the phone with another potential landlord, a sweet old lady who gave me some very good advice.

"Honey," she said, "you're telling me you've got a job? And you make $XX,XXX a year? Go and get yourself a better apartment. Everyone I've had who's lived in my apartments has moved out the minute they got a job like yours."

I was trying, from the start of this apartment hunt, to spend less money on rent than the requisite 30% of my income; the more money I saved, the more I could save, after all. I would take on multiple roommates or dilapidated studios or less-desirable neighborhoods.

But the whole time I got the feeling that I was behaving idiotically. Yes, saving money is important. But my search reminded me of my adventures in "penny-pinching across Delhi," where my willingness to save costs landed me in an insect-infested hotel room, pitted me against an overly lascivious hotelier, and then there was that unfortunate choice of the overnight Sleeper II train to Amritsar...

There's something else this time, too. There's the need to be where my peers are. The majority of my workmates live in the Adams Morgan/Dupont/U Street triangle, and that's where I want to live, too. I've already been "the one who has to go home early because it takes over 90 minutes to get back to her sublet in Arlington at this time of night," and I certainly don't want to be "the one who has to go home early because she's got to take the metro to a skeevy neighborhood."

So I did the research, and it turns out that a low-end-but-decent place in a decent neighborhood costs... believe it or not... exactly 30% of my income.

I have no doubt that market forces aligned to make this happen. Like the potential landlord told me, as soon as young people get jobs they want a "decent" standard of living. Thus the market adjusts to make sure that "decent" is exactly the amount that these young people can afford to pay.

Long story short, tomorrow I'm seeing a potential roommate about sharing a nice two-bedroom off of Dupont Circle. Wish me luck.

Apartment Pls?

Now that I've got the job thing settled down, the next step is finding a permanent apartment for me (and my kitty).

It's a bit easier than the job search because, unlike my "not knowing the names of all the possible careers available to someone with my experience," I know exactly what I'm looking for in an apartment. (More specifically, I know exactly where I'm looking for. Am much more flexible on the "what.")

Unfortunately, it's back to a bit of that "but what if they don't LIKE me???" business.

Fortunately, I am overwhelmingly likeable. ^__^

Just Moved! (Not quite as exciting as "Just Married," but more true.)

I've just moved into a sublet where I'll be staying for the rest of the summer.

Posting will resume once I get settled in. ^__^

(Shouldn't be too long.)

A Tale of Two Sublets

I'm getting a sublet to pass the time between now and when I get a "real" apartment (after I get the real job and start making some real money).

I met with two different sublessors last week. Both on the same day, in fact. Interestingly, I was originally scheduled to meet with them in the opposite order of when I actually met them -- which, as it turns out, was fortunate.

It was fortunate because Sublessor 1, originally scheduled to be Sublessor 2, was absolutely perfect. I had, it seems, finally found my smart people. It's a house full of law students and policy wonks and theorists, and we clicked so well that one of them said "even if you don't sublet here, do you want to come to our parties?"

It's nice to feel like I fit somewhere.

Immediately after meeting Sublessor 1, I set off to meet Sublessor 2. Originally, of course, scheduled to be the first sublet on my list.

Thank goodness it wasn't.

Had I not already technically decided to sublet with the smart team, I would have been horribly disillusioned by what I saw at that second sublet. To start, the people I was scheduled to meet gave me the wrong metro stop, and then, after I arrived, told me they were totally sorry but could I backtrack a few stops, 'cause it turns out that's where they actually were?

When I arrived and saw the people I was to meet, I almost walked away. I knew there was no way I would be subletting from them. Still, in the interest of "not wanting to be rude," I went with them on a tour of their place; a tour that ended up involving a half-hour ride by bus (something not mentioned in the ad -- I suppose "close to the metro" is a relative term) and, worse, a nearly 45-minute wait for the bus after the tour was over.

To sum up the visit: there were pictures and other objects strategically placed throughout the apartment to hide the places where people had punched through the walls during way-cool exciting parties. In other words, this was an apartment where a person (or multiple people) had punched through a wall more than once.

Thank goodness I had already found the first sublet, or I might have felt compelled to take this one just because OMG I MIGHT NEVER FIND ANOTHER SUBLET WHO WANTS ME... etc. etc. etc.

But, luckily, I found the smart people.

I knew they were out there somewhere. ^__^

Can My One-Room Apartment Have Its One Room Be A Kitchen?

I'm in my sister's apartment in DC, applying for jobs.

She's got a studio, which is actually a pretty nice place; hardwood floors, etc.

Except for the kitchen.

The primary problem with my sister's kitchen is that the refrigerator blocks access to the cupboards and countertops. Seriously. The kitchen has a single wall of cupboards above/below a counter, but someone had the good sense to put the refrigerator right in front of them.

The secondary problem with my sister's kitchen is that it's too small for anything but the refrigerator. The sink is tiny (and has only a single drain), making dishwashing torturous and time-consuming. Not to mention that every dish has to be hand-dried immediately after washing (see "no counter space, above," otherwise I'd be out buying a wooden drying rack immediately).

I've cooked every night I've been here; Madhur Jaffrey's "cheese vali gobi" the first night, yellow bell pepper pizza the second, and tonight, inspired by House ep. 2:15 --

HOUSE: What's that smell?

WILSON: Stuffed bell pepper.

HOUSE: What are they stuffed with, vomit?

I made stuffed tomatoes with farfalle, peas, ginger, pesto, fresh garlic, and parmesan.

So clearly I'm surviving.

But it's made me decide that the most important factor in my future apartment or group house will definitely be the kitchen. I don't care about a crappy showerhead or a window that looks out over a back alley. Give me countertops, and places for storage, and a sink with two halves so that I can wash and rinse. Give me a kitchen large enough that I can actually prep in the kitchen, instead of using a table in my sister's bedroom.

Before that, of course, give me a job. ^__^ But once that's in place... well, we will see what kind of kitchen I can find.

Fly Me To The Moon....

Today is another travel day, and with any luck I should be safely tucked away in my sister's apartment by midnight.

I don't have room for everything in my suitcase, so I am packing three books: my yoga manual (I've been told I should be ashamed to say it's the Richard Hittleman one), The Newcomer's Guide To Washington, DC, and one other.

If you can guess what the third book I'm taking to DC is, I'll tell you. ^__^

(Hint: is fiction.)

Not Without My Fiestaware

I've begun the packing process for my upcoming move to DC.

My sister, when she moved, bragged that she did it on only two suitcases. I'll see how close I can get.

It looks like I'll be flying out, which means that I'll be taking clothes and a laptop; my parents will ship a few boxes to me later on.

So I've been sorting through my belongings, getting rid of the junk, etc.

Some of the sorting has been easy, and kind of fun. I took four giant bags of worn-out clothing to the Goodwill. I went through my jewelry box and got rid of all the earrings and necklaces I'd been dragging around since junior high. I sold off seven years' worth of textbooks. My roommate is gladly taking over my Indian spice collection, my pots and pans, and a whole stack of CDs.

Some of the things, however, that I'll have to leave behind strike me as financially unfortunate, simply because I'm going to have to go out and buy them all again once I get settled in an apartment. Things like my iron and my tool kit, which would be idiotic to ship but which are relatively necessary to my day-to-day existence.

The one real concern is how I'm going to get my (small) Fiestaware collection across the country. I'll leave behind all other kitchen paraphernalia -- the flatware, the pots and pans, the drinking glasses and mugs, even the beloved slow cooker -- but I don't want to give away my Fiestaware. Nor do I want it to break during the shipping process.

Suggestions? I've kept all of the original packaging, including the "shock absorbing" filler material, so maybe re-wrapping it all will be enough to keep it safe as it travels.

And if anyone lives within a 30-mile radius, and wants a decent tool kit... email me. ^__^