My next adventure is a new apartment, condo or town home. I want to pay less in rent. My landlord wants to raise the rent. Seems we are at an impasse: I have an under inflated sense of the value of my rental home and she has an over inflated sense of its value. She, of course, is wrong so I am moving.
I’m moving not just because of money. No, that’s a lie. It’s all about money. I need to be more mature and become a grown up about finance. Damn you, Norwegian. How dare you die and make me responsible for my own life. Did you really not realize the depth of my ineptitude?
Now I must consider things like retirement, groceries, sheath dresses and the fact that if I am to again travel on another continent, it will be on my own dime. I no longer want to be house poor and eventually I will have to buy an iPhone. The 21st century keeps calling. I can only place it on hold for so long. No matter how many times I tell onlookers I have a flip phone by choice, they still give me a pitiable look as if I am one step from a cup and a cardboard box.
Besides I need to travel light in case Mogul Man calls and I’m needed on an immediate book tour, autograph signing, or red carpet appearance. It will be better to have a small place here so I can also visit my Tuscan Villa, my Georgetown row house and my Parisian pied-a-terre.
When The Norwegian died, my friends and I joked that I am living my life backwards. I got married so young that I went from college to his uber cool bachelor pad and then to a house which we filled with children and responsibility. I took care of the children and gave him the responsibility. The thought being, I never lived the life of a young woman making it on her own. Here’s a secret. I’m over it. It’s been two years and I am positively not interested. I want my old life back. Frankly I’m tiring of my brave face and my strength. I want to jump up and down like a baby wailing about how much life sucks. There–it’s out.
The next person to tell me they are amazed at my strength and resolve will get a punch in the face. I am neither strong nor resolved. I’m pissed off and I’ve just about had it. I don’t like working for someone else who sets my hours, my production and what my office looks like, especially when their taste is questionable at best. I don’t care for being told the definition of office hours and I hate the idea that I am tethered to someone’s company in exchange for health insurance. If this is being a big girl, I’m not all that interested.
My dream life is so very simple. I write all day for all matter of medium–my creativity knows no bounds. My adoring fans love every word eliciting onto the page. I get paid millions of dollars for my wit. I lose weight simply by thinking it so and I go to lunch with my besties whenever I feel like it. And I can eat pasta, not salad, bitches. In the middle of the day, without getting sleepy. And bread. With butter.
As every aspect of life is stretched tight, I figure downsizing is the answer. I will have more expendable cash. Makes sense yes? Have you looked at apartments lately? Where am I supposed to put all my stuff? The truth is I’m not a twenty-something with little more than I can carry in a backpack. Not that I ever carried a backpack. Please. Even in my twenties I had some pride. I need apartments all over the world just to hold my collection of crap. Not to mention–anyone with semi grown children knows–you need a garage to store all the shit they can’t yet part with, which includes every scrap of paper from second grade and their graduation caps. This is why old people never move–they are the storage unit for three generations. It may also be why they cover their furniture in plastic. They are so house poor they can’t afford a new couch.
Looking for an apartment is eye opening. There are cruddy ones to be had. You know the second you walk in you won’t be living here but there you are with the leasing agent and she is busy yammering on about the updated kitchen in which a mouse could not make a grilled cheese and the vaulted ceilings, vaulted meaning inhabitants never raise their arms above their heads. Pfft. Where am I supposed to dance?
And there are smells. What is it people do in apartments to create that odor? The kitchen is far too small for cooking up thirty-nine pounds of cabbage and various animals from the sea so that can’t be it. Is the bathroom cabinet so very small there is no room for deodorant storage? Is the dribble of the shower so very thin you are unable to cleanse your entire body? Did someone die here? And do you really expect me to believe a human size couch will fit in this living room?
There are lovely ones to be sure. Just yesterday, my eyes took in quite a beauty. It is in the trendy part of town, right next to the mall. Glass from floor to ceiling, beautiful plantings hang from each balcony, magnificent views, men in tailored suits and women wearing stunning footwear; it screams perfection. Granite countertops, concierge services, the mall. I can’t afford the monthly concierge fee, which is in addition to the rent, which is the same as the mortgage on the mansion we had to short sell. Trendy is out. Smelly old lady apartment is out. What is a girl to do?
It’s not as if pride swallowing is beneath me. I’ve been choking on Karma’s sweet dishes for the past two years. I just figured by now it might start to taste more like M & M’s and less like salad.
Go figure.
The Duchess Diaries 