“Party” puts it mildly; it was what sounded and looked like an entire apartment building blasting music with all of the tenants hanging around. A DJ was coming on periodically to scream things into the mic like, “Yeah, yeah!” or “What?!” or what sounded like “Abab a yaba goma bla!” to which the revelers would answer, “Wooo!” and I would answer, “Fuuuuuuck yoooooooou!”

I called 311 a handful of times, and so did Rob; we even walked around the block past the party to make sure we had the exact address to tell to the cops (we were leered at by the scary people outside). It wasn’t just “loud”, my windows were vibrating. And it was that horrible hip-hop/reggae fusion shit, too, of all the stupid things to play!

I fell asleep when it finally ended, just as the sun was coming up. When I got out of bed at noon, the months-long debate of “should we or shouldn’t we” was over, completely, 100%, and the apartment hunting started.

I’m way overdue for a humbling processes; depite being on the lower end of rental properties, I know that I have SO MUCH MORE than the vast majority of the world’s population and that if they beamed images of me wrinkling my nose and saying “Ewwww… I have to go to a laundromat?” to a third-world housewife washing her rags in a river, she’d be just as disgusted at me as I am watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey having $120,000 worth of furniture delivered. But I’m still wrinkling my nose, and resigning myself to having to go to one, probably, unless we find a miracle property.

Also, Rob and I tend not to see eye to eye on what makes a good apartment, meaning there’s a lot of, “What the HELL is wrong with you, that apartment is perfect!” on both our parts (ok, mostly me.) (Ok, all me.)

To further complicate things, having the trio means needing a backyard which reduces the number of apartments we can start to consider way down, and then and having people go, “You have HOW MANY dogs? Yeah, no.” reduces that number even further.

Here we go again.