A shell on my back

Boyfriend and I are yet again looking for an apartment.  This our third apartment hunt in three years which is some sort of sick record.  We've had such good luck with the last two (well, except for the fact that we haven't been able to make them permanent) that we are having a hard time settling for anything less than really, really awesome.

The hard truth about not settling, especially when it comes to real estate, is that it requires an absurd amount of effort.  Real Estate, particularly rental real estate is about 98% crap.  And every so often you find a gemstone in the mounds of pooh but it takes so much effort.

And where does this effort come from?  Well, like any good virus or parasite, it sucks up effort and energy from wherever it can find it.  Work projects that should be started already have been pushed aside.  Our apartment looks like a very nice winter-themed tornado came through - leaving Christmas presents, coats, boots and other stuff littered everywhere.

 We do not even have the capacity to make food right now.  We are living off of leftover spinach dip and Christmas stocking candy.  Boyfriend has started taking a can of soup for lunch.  A Can of Soup.  Literally.  Today for lunch I had the class and sophistication to cut three or four pieces of Sommer Sausage and Cheddar cheese off their respective logs and bricks and throw them into a baggie with some stale pumpernickle.

Also there is a piece of pie, wrapped in tinfoil - I don't know a ton about you know, physics - but I am pretty sure that the density of pie cannot withstand my backpack.  It will probably be a pile of goo by the time I get around to eating it.  But I didn't think of that as I packed it, because my brain is going a hundred miles a minute about apartments and appointments and rental applications all the time.

Even this blog has felt the effects of the apartment parasite.  I started this blog at around 10 last night, with full intention of finishing it and posting it before the clock struck 12.  But no - it very much lost the battle with the other open tab on my browser - the craigslist apartments page.

Anyway - with any luck the hunt will be over soon.  Which does not make the insanity stop.  If anything - apartment hunting is a treat compared to packing, painting, cleaning and moving.  But here we go - one more time.