In Which We Move Four Times In One Year

So, we have returned home for about a minute before we vacate permanently and take up residence in Franklin. It's a bittersweet kind of thing. This is the first place we have ever owned as a family. We brought Too home from the hospital to this house, and when we purchased this house, we fully anticipated living here for a while. "A while" for us is a fairly relative term, as you will soon come to see, because today I'm going to share a little bit of our moving history. Our extensive moving history... It is my personal suggestion that you bathe, potty, grab a snack, and clear the rest of your day prior to reading further.

The keys to our first home. Which were used for a whole five months.

I graduated college a semester early. Over-achieve much? I don't want to brag, but yes. Yes I do. I also graduated completely broke, thanks, in part, to that semester I spent living in Austria. That damned conversion rate killed me. So, although I was in possession of a massive brain, my bank account was full of massive zeros, namely those that come after the decimal point. So, I did what any other self-respecting person does when there is no money: I moved in with family. From December to the end of January 2007, I lived with my dad's brother and his wife in a small suburb about 20 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh. Every day I commuted to what was probably one of the most miserable jobs I have ever had, all the while saving what I could so I could get into a place of my own. 

At the end of January I found what I thought was an amazing apartment in the South Hills. It looked clean and respectable. It was affordable for Pittsburgh standards and seemingly well-kept. I signed the lease and moved my sassy pants right in, feeling pretty good about the fact that I had made an educated, grown-up decision. Sadly, my massive brain had really let me down in this particular instance. I knew something was wrong here when about a month or two after moving in, word circled that someone had been stabbed a few buildings down from mine. Over a sour drug deal. Good call, massive brain. Good call. 

Things only got worse that summer when a group of Mexicans started squatting in the apartment adjacent from mine. It was fairly obvious that they never really got comfortable with the place, considering the only possessions they had on hand were a cot, bowl, fork, and massive jug of corn oil, all of which you could see from my back window... But it got really amazing the day that a hooker came by to drop off some of her own particular brand of goods, namely a business jacket laden with cocaine. Sissy strutted, or rather, stumbled in wearing the jacket and left wearing little more than her birthday suit. Obvious much? (Note to self: Next time I make a drop in a public spot, A. Wear more clothes, and B. Do not vocalize  specifics of the deal within earshot of other neighbors. And perhaps C. Don't leave pimp waiting in idling car. Check.) 

After a year of spying on the squatters and living mostly with my then-boyfriend and soon-to-be husband, Tim, we decided to make a brilliant joint decision to move into a larger apartment in the same complex at the end of my lease in January 2008. Enter massive brain fail number 462. This place was okay for the first year. I was away from the shady Mexicans and had a nice(r) view of the courtyard out our front window (a.k.a. a front-row seat to our surrounding bat-shit crazy neighbors). We actually resigned the lease in January of 2009. I was about three months pregnant at this point, and everything was relatively kosher. But it took one very public incident to make me want to get the hell out of this apartment. 

I'll just go ahead and say it. I'm not afraid to call the cops on obnoxious neighbors. It's all about being considerate of the other people you live around, and when you go too far, you can bet your ass I'm going to let you know it. Okay. Not me personally, but Officer Joe from precinct 8 will. I'll be stealthily watching from my discreetly ajar living room windows... One afternoon, one of our neighbors from a few doors over was b-l-a-r-i-n-g her music. It was some sweet,sweet Justin Timberlake, so I didn't mind at first, but eventually it got uber-rappy and obnoxious and it needed to stop. So I called my buddies at the local Baldwin/Whitehall police department, who I'm sure by this time knew my name and number by heart. What was originally a typical noise complaint soon became a not-so-typical racial tirade in which said female neighbor was soon dragged from her apartment screaming racial slurs, namely that she was only being arrested because she was black, and begging her live-in female lover to call her mom to come and bail her out... Um, my bad? (Note to self #2: Next time I blare music for entire neighborhood to hear, do not, I repeat, DO NOT couple this with any type of nefarious or otherwise illegal activities. Check.) 

Needless to say, shortly after this very public arrest, I went to the management office to see if there was any possibility of our getting out of our lease. Their response? Hells to the no. Okay, then. But they did agree to move us into another unit on the "quiet" side of the complex. Super. 

March saw us moving into our second apartment of the year. It was on the second floor, meaning my fat pregnant butt had to drag up two flights of steps, but if it meant less noise and more peace, I was willing to accept this. False. This apartment was, by far, the absolute worst place we could have ever lived. Ever.

Problem 1: We lived above a chain-smoking Ukrainian. Sadly, our complex did not separate the smokers from the non-smokers. This meant that every evening at about 5:30 p.m., our apartment developed the foggy haze of cigarette smoke.  Thank you, Mr. Ukrainian. Me and my fetus thank you.

Problem 2: On warm days, a smell emanated from the bowels of this wretched building that was so foul it sent Satan shrieking back to hell. The pipe work literally smelled like Nelly, the family goat, had gotten lost, barfed and then taken a crap in the plumbing pipes, and promptly died where she stood immediately after. The smell was despicable. It singed my nose hairs and drove me into the back bedroom, a.k.a. the only place it couldn't reach. We were told on a number of occasions that it couldn't be fixed and that the source of this foul odor couldn't be detected. They will find the remains of a decomposing goat in the recesses of that building when it is mercifully torn down one day. Mark my words. 

Problem 3: There was a little boy who lived in the building across from ours whose mother and grandmother were, shall we say, less than attentive when it came to making sure he was being carefully watched. They basically let him loose every afternoon, at which point he would do one of two things: bang hangers together for literally hours on end outside my window or run around the courtyard yelping. Now, the poor little boy wasn't well (and I mean that in all seriousness), but that didn't excuse the lack of attentiveness on the side of his mother and grandmother, both of whom would sit on the porch watching the charade with a beer in each hand. These are the people who also let this poor child, who was easily nine or ten years old, run around outside, in public with nothing on but a diaper. Parenting fail.

This apartment was an absolute disaster. So much so that after four months of this nonsense, we begged our complex to let us leave. They eventually caved, to the tune of a $750 restitution fee. Well played, Leland Point. Well played    

Tomorrow's post: In which I go into labor on moving day, and we move to Lexington a month later and then proceed to move three more times in one year. And then another few times after that. 

J.