Moving Right Along

In all honesty, I’ve been apartment hunting since February and it totally sucks.  No matter how hard you look you eventually have to throw out large portions of your checklist to find a suitable home.  If you can live up a few flights of stairs the world is your oyster, but if you need to live on the first floor and refuse to live in a garden apartment (been there, done that, got the t-shirt) then your options are more limited.  Add to that your desire for a puppy dog and your refusal to live like a college student in some unit where the mold is taking over the bathroom walls, the lights all have large strings hanging down where some work and some don’t, or simply the need to have a bedroom that fits your dresser, and you’ve got about 2-3 options in your price range.  But if we are moving twice in a one year period then there better be some kind of bright blinding stadium light at the end of this dark and swampy tunnel, right?

Now after one real estate attorney who really went to bat for us, and three tenant attorneys, one who also really fought for us, we were stuck.  We thought we had them after all this had to be payback for the 4 months of constant complaining, right?  Or this had to be illegal because we didn’t get that “expectation of quiet” we are supposed to get with our unit, right?  Or else someone somewhere has to know that this is just a load of crap.  I mean, if I don’t give my clients good customer service, if my clients are clearly not happy with their results, I bend over backward to try to make them happy again.  I don’t up my rates by 10% and then try and sneak an extra rate increase into something stupid like parking to reward my lack of professionalism, do I?  HELL NO!  I wouldn’t have a business if I ran it like that and I find it really hard to believe that Winnemac Properties has a viable business either.

Craig tried to argue his point, he really did, and I even let go of some units I was looking at, tried to stay off Zillow and Trulia for a few days, but I just couldn’t do it.  Then, when they snuck in extra rent into our parking, that was the straw baby, the cherry on top of this shit eating sundae they’ve been serving us since we got here.  So we aren’t going to have any energy to deal with what’s coming in June, I can’t even see that far right now.  All I know is that I haven’t been able to unclench my jaw since the first week of March when they smacked us from behind.  With our new lease from these scumlords in hand, about to sign and hope upon hope that Craig will find a job, that we’ll be in a better position next year, I took a lighter to that baby and screamed, “LET ME OUT.”  I found a new home for us, only 8 blocks west of where we are now, we got approval for the application, and the owner/landlord is the nicest guy.  He’s already invested in us, gave us a two-year lease, and will let us get a dog (it’s in the lease) even though he was originally showing it without pets.  Plus, it’s got in unit laundry, so no more bellyaching to these low-lifes everytime the one dryer with the broken coin slot ate $1.50 in quarters, having him stand in front of me and look me in the eye and tell me there’s nothing wrong with it while he hands me my stack of quarters (btw, 6 months later I find the handyman in the basement finally fixing the damn thing…not broken my…).

We move at the end of May which meant we had to ask to be let out of our lease one month early.  They said that over a month wasn’t enough time to fill the space so we’d need to be responsible for June.  I said, “you told our lawyer on April 13th we could be out by April 28th.  You told us on December 20th we could be out at any time because of the banging radiators (the back bedroom is still banging), and I don’t believe you are going to rent it at your version of fair market value so no, I will not be responsible for June, please send us our termination agreement.”  Mic Drop.  Sent.  So if you have any moving boxes tucked away in your basements, please send them our way.  And if you have bubble wrap you’ve been saving for a rainy day, please send it our way.  And if you have any desire to come and hang out with us, drink, eat pizza (or salad or whatever), we would love to have a packing party.  Not a moving party of course, we hire movers cause we are too old for that, but if you feel like wrapping up knick-knacks and picture frames and having some good company we are accepting helpers on May 12th until 5 pm, on May 26th and May 27th, I’m sure it’s exactly what you’d like to do to start your summer.  Just email me directly for deets.

And now onto the main event.  After three in-person consultations with three different surgeons, and two email consultations, we are having another consult with Aleck’s primary surgeons at the end of May.  We are certainly in a tough spot here.  Everyone agrees that his right hip needs to be operated on right now.  But some think it should be both hips.  And is it just the Verus we are doing or are we doing the San Diego and the Verus?  And if you know what I’m talking about you are either a lower body surgeon or a mom of a kid like Aleck.  Now the tibular torsion is also up for discussion, there is a disagreement there as well.  Personally, this is how I feel; if correcting his tibia will correct the way his knee kicks all the way into his other leg when he bends down then let’s do it, but if that won’t be corrected then let’s leave it alone.  There is a chance if we don’t correct the tibia his recovery time and rehabilitation time will be exponentially easier, and there is also a chance that correcting that turnout won’t make that much of a difference.  He’s getting steadier on his feet all the time.  While on a field trip today he even put his arms out to try and catch himself when he fell (FIRST TIME EVER), and ended up with a sore arm instead of a busted up face.  Surgery is still scheduled for June and I’m going to circle back with Shriner’s in Chicago too.  I like what their surgeon had to say, I want to clarify what recovery and rehab would look like there and find out if doing it there would even be an option.  This is definitely one of those moments in life when you want someone, anyone, with certain authority to step up and say, “this is what you have to do, it is the only correct answer, and I know that for a fact”, but as a parent you know that you wouldn’t trust anyone who had that much certainty about anything.  Our friends looked at us at dinner the other night and said, “Wow, that’s some major adulting, like on a whole other level.”  And it is.  And it’s true.  And we have everything at stake here with no right or wrong answers.  Just trying to do what’s going to be the best for Aleck and the least traumatic for all of us.  During times like these, I like to picture myself after the storm when things are “normal” again and I can breathe again, so, like, October?  But in October we are totally getting a puppy.