Dream Propulsion Engineer

Oh, golly am I tired. And really hungry. I guess just eating Malt-o-Meal for lunch wasn't really the right idea. Go me.

I spent half an hour on the phone yesterday with the broker for this house rental in Copake Falls. It's a fantastic house, but I got a half-hour lecture on how big of a risk it is to rent to four youngsters, and how much do we make and what if we throw wild parties and what if Mya falls in love with Tyler, and then the landlord will have shotgun holes in the walls to deal with, and who does he go after if we can't pay the rent and they'd really prefer a couple (in a 3bd house...) or a family, and we're four people so we'll do much more laundry and use the dishwasher more than any other dynamic (oh, yeah, we'll definitely do more laundry than a couple with kids...), and that puts wear and tear on the appliances and on the well but he's a nice guy and he's been in real estate for 50 years, so he's not going to say "no," exactly, and I sound like a nice kid and I have a career and they've rented to people with no credit or anything before... they just had to put down a deposit of $10,000. So maybe a situation like that would work? Except that maybe we should pay a little bit more rent, since there's so many of us, and maybe we should be able to pay, like 9 months' rent as a deposit, and do we even have that kind of money?

Oh, but what's my last name? Oh, that's an interesting name. Mennonite? Are you Mennonite? Are your friends Mennonite? Oh, that's a shame, maybe the rent would be less if you were. Haha!

Uh. Yeah.

So, is he really a jerk, or will he come to his senses if he realizes that we're really actually boring homebodies who want someplace quiet and want to have a garden and don't actually have any friends to have wild parties with, anyway? And if we meet with him, will he actually realize this, or just see that we're young and try to take advantage of us? Because Brixton is absolutely right in her indignation at the prospect of having to live someplace shitty just because landlords don't think we're nice enough, when they don't even know us.

I don't want to have this conversation with everyone I call about an apartment. That's absurd. We're quiet, we come with references, our household income is about $90,000 a year, and, oh yeah, A LEASE IS A LEGALLY BINDING DOCUMENT. That's your recourse right there, poopy-head. Oh, and BTW, stop calling me "honey."

But I'm not going to fret about it. I'm going to go help Carolyn dye her hair tonight, then see Sean Rowe play in Saratoga. Tomorrow I will try to take my bike in to the shop, and either drive up to Lake Placid with Carolyn that night or on Sunday at, like, 5am to get there in time for her race.

the hedge abides.

Sputnik's got an appointment at the exhaust place in Schenectady on Wednesday. I've decided to go with the generic fix, because I'm not loaded. And because $1300 in parts is dumb, even if you are loaded. So I'll need new catalytic converters for sure, and I'll know soonish whether the current custom pipes can be reused. Then they do a bunch of welding and I will have my newly-frankensteined car back. Exciting!

Mary and Dan called me back last night after they got back from CA for my cousin's wedding. It's nice to talk to them, even if Dan's going to go canoeing without me and Mary thinks that my car is stupid.

Also had a good zombie-jesus weekend, complete with spring weather, dyed eggs, candy hidden in nests for us to find and the cats to bat under the sofa. We also have a List. The List. Now research will be done, jobs will be sought, and there will be much debating (*deadpans* yaaaay).

So even though it's just words on paper, I feel a lot better.

the hedge abides.

I'm still trying to puzzle all this out, and I'm worried about not knowing where I'll be in six months. Please don't attack me or try to persuade me one way or the other, because this whole thing is hard enough as it is.
( thoughts on moving )

Anywhere I go there is the danger that I won't keep moving forward, but everyone I am says that there's a danger that'll never happen anyway. Any place I want to live (Saranac Lake, Northampton, even the Twin Cities), doesn't have jobs for me, much less for Mya and Brixton and Tyler. The places where there are jobs for me are not places I want to live. What the hell is my future, and where is it?

the hedge abides.