choose your own adventure.

on thursday, musicboy and i went on what can only be compared to a frustrating yet ultimately awesome treasure hunt through collegetown to find our next home.

while i dearly love the little one bedroom that we have made into our home this past seven months, complete with the ancient oven (teachergirlmom got us a convection oven for christmas that sits on the counter because ancient oven seemed out to get me with its lack of consistent temperature level and its desire to always burn me.  i am in love with our convection oven.) and the little tiny brown ants that periodically pop up to look for water or something (they come out of the walls, i think, through old phone jacks or really wherever they want. i used to be completely skeezed out by this, but now i use the awesome power of poison and take joy in my triumph over nature.  thank you teachergirlmom for buying us ant poison also.). 

i shouldn't be lame.  this is an awesome place. it has incredible closet space (like INCREDIBLE. like as in three FULL closets for a relatively tiny one bedroom. unheard of.) and it is incredibly cheap.  the neighbors are nice, we've only had one night of a party next door that made us have to go to sleep with cspan to kill the bass, and it has a good vibe.

that's really how we chose it. the price was awesome and the location was fine, but it was when we saw it and visited it that we knew it was home. we both knew it. at the same time. it was an incredible moment. 

so when we knew that we were growing out of this place, i started scouring the internets for leads. i usually stay far away from established apartment complexes because, in my previous experience, they are insanely expensive for 1 and 2 bedrooms.  this little place we have now came through a realtor.  so that's the direction i went and i had a list of drive-bys.  the way this little process works is that you drive by the place first, to weed out the "ohmygoshiwillneverliveheres" and only bother the realtors with the ones you're actually interested in. 

so we had an appointment with one off of craigslist for 4.  musicboy got home at 345. we left shortly after, and hit EVERY red light, traffic jam, stopped school bus, and pedestrian gridlock in collegetown.  we were 15 minutes late, and no one was there when we got there. no worries, because it was in sketchland and i didn't like it.  bad vibe.

we proceed to drive by every other one. and none of them feel right. door slamming after door slamming. one or two weren't bad, but the prices weren't great either.  then, in the middle of all of this, we happen to drive by a traditional apartment building with a sign for large 2 brs for 595.

say whaaaat?

after our frustrating afternoon of drivebys, musicboy suggested that we circle back to that apartment building.  we drove in, and there it was.

that feeling.

we walked into the office, surprised that it was open.

they had one unit.
available exactly when we wanted it.
we got approved on our own.

one thing after another, it seemed like the right place at the right time.

it seems like home, even though we haven't seen the unit yet. we've seen pictures and we felt that feeling.  it feels like home.

but we still haven't heard about musicboy's admission yet.  even still, we feel like collegetown is where we need to be, where we should be. 

our next adventure will be amazing.  it will still be here, come what may about collegetown u's decision, and it will involve a little townhouse with a patch of grass and a spot for my planters.  it will happen in a home that has a washer and a dryer and a dishwasher, which were my criteria for feeling rich.  it will happen together, in a place we've come to love.

as uncertain as some things are, i've come to recognize the sure signs that we are home. 

i am so excited to make it so.  i see paint swatches and curtain making in my future.  it will be so lovely to have a separate office/music room for a while, where i can dump all of my teaching stuff and where i don't have to look at it all of the time.  it will be so nice to have a living room large enough to have the loveseat facing the tv. 

i'm very excited.  july can't come quick enough.   :)