The Great Apartment Hunting Adventure

Boyfriend and I went apartment hunting this past weekend. In case y'all don't know, I will be moving up to St. Louis August 1 because I'll be starting the MSW program at Washington University. So so so excited!

Forest Park

St. Louis is an awesome city. It has this cozy, homey feel, and yet it's still this huge place with skyscrapers and expensive parking and a zillion people (and a Macy's, thank god). The university is nestled on the Northwest side of Forest Park, which, imho, is 4,000 times more beautiful than Central Park could even wish to be. The neighborhood I decided I want to live in is called Demun, about a 15-minute walk south of WashU to the West of the park.

It. Is. Beautiful. Seriously. Tree-lined streets, quiet, adorable little coffee shop on the corner. I'm obsessed.

Demun

Now, because STL is a 10-hour drive from Auburn, boyfriend and I had to plan our trip and our apartment showings in advance. We had three showings scheduled: one on Saturday and two on Monday.

The first place we looked at was a condo high-rise with park views (if you rent a two-bedroom. Always read the fine print, guys). It had a big, clean laundry room and a bitchin' fitness facility in the basement, a doorman, and updated kitchens and bathrooms. It did not, however, have overhead lights. Which was very strange. It also had window AC, which is fine, but the bathroom was very far away from all of the AC units and thus I do not want to imagine how hot it would be in Summer. Actually, Winter is probably a bigger concern in MO. 

It was expensive though. Upwards of 1,000 a month for even the smallest unit on the lowest floor. Not great. But still an option when split between two people.

After we checked that place out, we made a pro and con list. You know me and my obsessive organization. Then, because it was only 11 a.m., we took a little tour around the city. We went to Soulard Market (not the best idea to visit a crowded outdoor market in 96 degree heat with 87% humidity, by the way), got ooey gooey butter cakes, hit up Ted Drewes for some frozen custard, and got mac n cheese in University City. Then we got sun death and went to bed at 8:30 and I forgot to call my dad on his birthday. I am the actual worst. 

And this is only one of the wings at the Soulard Market...

Ooey Gooey Butter Cake (yes, that's the real name)

Typical Ted Drewes line on a summer night

The showings on Monday proved much more interesting. We scheduled some showings with a realty company that my parents and I had checked out when we were in STL in April. They seemed really legit and had amazing apartments for reasonable prices. One of the apartments we wanted to view rented before we got to STL, but we still had one more to see.

So we arrived at 6219 Rosebury Ave at 8:45 for our 9:00 showing. Early to a fault, dude, always. The agent calls us at five till nine and says, hey, so the two-bedroom you wanted to see is actually rented. Which was super shitty news because we were, you know, sitting on the steps outside the building. But they said they could show us some more apartments, so we went up a block to meet them on Northwood Ave.

There, Mr. Hughes showed us a one-bedroom apartment that could fit, possibly—it would be tight, a midget and maybe one couch. We told Mr. Hughes that it didn't make sense to show us apartments that are half the square footage of what we told him we were looking for. He then told us that they only had one two-bedroom left and it was in another neighborhood. We figured, why not take a look?

Mr. Hughes offered to drive, which was super nice. Except that immediately upon entering his vehicle, we were high. His shiny, new, leather-seated cadillac REEKED of marijuana. 

Like, if you are a working professional and are going to offer to drive your clients to a destination, maybe don't hotbox your caddy, you know? 

He also wore loafers without socks. Just in case you were wondering bad this guy could really be. 

The he took us to an apartment that was so run down I could hardly believe it was standing. The kitchen was indescribably terrible. The floors creaked. The tile was cracked. It did have central air, so I guess that's nice.

It would have been nicer if they'd had it turned on for showings when it's nearly 100 degrees outside.

He then took us down to what boyfriend christened "the rape dungeon," wherein sat a few moldy washing machines, storage units that don't close properly, and the entrance to an underground parking garage. Now, the steps down to the garage were concrete and covered in water, and they ended in a large puddle that was deceptively deep. Boyfriend said, "That's dangerous. There should be a drain here." Mr. Hughes said, "Yeah.....I'll have to get someone to mop that up."

Here's the clincher. The apartment, with access to the rape dungeon and the slippery death stairs of doom, would run you $1,050 per month. Plus $50 per month to park in the garage. Plus $15 per month to use the security system that is already installed. Plus a $40 application fee. Plus a $20 cosigner fee. Plus a $30 fee for a background check. Plus gas, electric, and wifi.

Are. You. F*@#ing serious. 

Thanks for letting us ride dirty with you, dude, but no thanks.

So what DID we put down a deposit on?

An almost 1,000 square-foot two-bedroom convertible on Rosebury Ave for less than $900/month. It has no dishwasher, the oldest stove known to man, and a bedroom so tiny I might not be able to use the closet once my stuff is in there, but it's so charming and wonderful and the landlady is professional and super cool. She called and asked another tenant/friend if we could look through her apartment because they were doing work on ours and it was hard to walk through it. She reassured us that she would get another stove. She told us about the other tenants to reassure us that it was a quiet building. And if she was a raging pot head, at least she didn't smell like it. 

Our new place!!

Boyfriend and I in front of our new apt building

The panic attack charlie horse puke fiasco

The Paleo experiment has ended, and boyfriend looks fabulous. I look about the same. Ah, to be a woman. Here are some things I learned about myself whilst on this food journey:

1. If your digestive system is already a little bit funky, a high-fiber diet is not your friend. It just really is not. Them veggies and nuts will get ya.

2. No matter how well you eat and how much you exercise, you will still feel crappy if you don't sleep enough.

3. Eating things with sugar in them after detoxing your body from all that badness results in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Allow me to elaborate.

So yesterday was kind of a rough day at work. It was very busy and I was very sweaty and my feet felt like they were going to fall off. And I texted boyfriend and told him we should grab a drink after work. I also had eaten some very non-Paleo things that day. Then I got a vodka gimlet and a random dude bought me some fireball. Both sugary drinks.

Now, when you combine the sugary food and the sugary drinks, my blood sugar level spiked pretty hardcore. And when you have that much sugar after not having it in a while, it makes you pretty sick when it all comes crashing back down (I should also mention here that my blood sugar is pretty wacko anyway and I get hypoglycemic very easily).

So I woke up with this horrible combination of mild hangover, hypoglycemia, and I guess some weird kind of shock to my system from the sugar ingestion. And I think that is what it feels like to die.

Everything was more or less okay except for my stomach. When my blood sugar drops, I usually feel super nauseated, and I'm sure the alcohol didn't help. Here is where I tell you about a ridiculous phobia that I have. I do not know what it is called, so I call it vomi-phobia: the irrational fear of vomiting or being around vomit or just anything having to do with vomit.

And I felt verrrrry sick, so my phobia kicked in, which made me have a panic attack. Fabulous. So I watched some YouTube videos and sipped some water and overall tried to calm the hell down. This was all happening at about 6:30 this morning, by the way. 

I also attempted to eat some bread to settle my stomach, but only got about a quarter of the way through a piece.

After a while of watching videos, I started to feel hungry. Hooray! I thought, That usually means that the nausea is going away and that I should try and eat something again! Then I went to sit up to get out of bed and either I misread my tummy's signals or I don't remember the pre-vomit feeling anymore.

Regardless, it was happening. MY WORST FEAR. And as I was kneeling down on the little rug in front of my toilet like good ole Gustavo Fring and telling myself that it was going to be okay, I got a nice little surprise from my calves. It was a charlie horse. Oh happy day. So I'm simultaneously freaking out because of my dumb fear, dry heaving, and kicking around my right leg like a donkey, half-standing up, to take care of the stupid cramp.

It was basically just a really fun time.

It took me seven hours to finish that piece of bread. Seven. 

My calf is really sore.

And my throat feels like someone threw acid into it. I guess that's sort of kind of what happened. If by "someone" you mean "belly."

But my stomach has ceased to reject things, so that's nice. 

On Becoming a Cave Man

Boyfriend and I have made a huge step! We have decided to, for 30 days beginning Monday, follow a Paleo diet and train for a 5K.

Why are we doing something so drastic??

It is because we have both gained lots of weight and because we have been eating super shittily and therefore feel terrible. I've gained about 60 pounds over the past year and a half, and I'm not actually sure how much boyfriend has gained, but the point is that we both have a body fat percentage that is way too high.

I usually sit at about a size 8 when I'm at my healthiest and my fat percentage is normal, and right now I'm a size 12-14. Not cool. Also my boobs went up...three sizes? Four? Two band sizes and two–three cup sizes—whatever that equates to. I don't have money to buy a whole new wardrobe, so I've been living off of three pairs of pants that I bought, a few dresses, and two bras. I cannot keep up this high frequency of doing laundry.

I may not lose all 60 pounds, but that's okay because I mostly want to get my body fat percentage back to normal so I don't inherit all the terrible diseases that run in my family (thanks mom and dad!). As long as I'm sitting at a good fat:muscle ratio, I don't particularly care about the number on the scale. Hopefully my old pants will still fit though, because as I mentioned I ain't got monies for clothes, but we'll see when we get there.

So, after the thirty days are up, I will be about halfway to being able to run (jog, probably, slowly) a 5K, and I hope my energy levels will increase and I will feel better overall once I cut out all the processed crap that America has decided will be the bulk of its food sales.

We're going to start adding back in dairy and grains at that point, mostly because a life without cheese is no life at all. But we still want to make sure we keep the preservatives and random ingredients to a minimum.

Huge thanks to Matt and I's lovely friends from choir for helping me out with choosing how I will eat for these initial 30 days, and thanks to Matt as well for being willing to be my partner in crime! It's always easier with someone else to support you.

Anyone have recipe suggestions? I'm mostly struggling with what to eat for lunch. I think I have my grocery list all set to go shopping tomorrow, but I will definitely need some help in the coming weeks...it would be much appreciated!

And to anyone who wants to return to the cave man days with us, let's do it!

I'll miss you, cheese. Until we meet again on June 4th. I'm not counting the days or anything.

Nerd Frustrations

Hmmm....
Let me think....
So many options....
CHOOSE. JUST CHOOSE.

Princess Aur-whore-a

I recently procured a job as a Disney princess at birthday parties. This is the most exciting thing ever, because it combines my love of singing and acting with every girl's dream of dressing up like a princess.

Now, because I got dat hourglass shape with larger than average boobies, I must wear a corset or else the children ask why Princess Ariel has such big boobs (True story. Happened to the founder.). Strapless bras simply will not do; the boobies must be flattened so that I look like a youthful person who has developed normally.

So, here is a picture of the corset I ordered:

It is white and has only a slight pattern, meaning it won't show through anything. And the top is straight across and high enough that it will cover everything. It is perfect.

This, however, is the corset that came in the mail:

It even came with "underwear."

This is the phone call that ensued after I opened up the package:

Operator: Thank you for calling customer service. How may I assist you?
Me: Hi, yeah, I ordered the ivory strapless bridal corset recently from Amazon, but when I got the delivery, it was not what I ordered.
Operator: What did you receive?
Me: Um, well...it's black, and leather, and has a zipper and hooks....
Operator: What is the item number?
Me: *says whatever number was*
Operator: That is the number of the item you ordered.
Me: I don't know what to tell you, but this is not the ivory strapless bridal corset.

So they emailed me and asked for pictures of the product, and when I sent them pictures, they responded that the item I received is one that they don't even sell anymore and it was the stockroom's fault.

They're sending me the right corset, thankfully, but they told me I could keep this one as well because they can't do anything with it.

Isn't that nice? I could create my own Disney princess character (Princess Aur-whore-a, perhaps?) that has daddy issues and acts out by becoming a stripper and sings, "I'm a ho, I'm a ho, can't keep my legs shut anymore" to the tune of "Let it Go" whilst hanging upside down from a pole. I can don this pleather monstrosity as well as the pleather G-string—the inside is faux suede, by the way, because every vagina needs a warm, fuzzy hug—and dance for the children at their birthday parties. Their parents would love that. Welcome to the real world, little ones.

But instead my mother is going to take the corset to the costume shop at the theater she works at, because you never know what you'll need for a show. And I am going to use the underwear like a microfiber cloth and clean my tub with them. Or maybe I'll use them as floss. Or an eyepatch. Or half of a bikini top.

Or I'll probably just throw them away.

Liquids on floors: OOTD Log

It's about time that I had one of those days and wrote about it...after all, that's what this blog is named for.

Follow me, if you will, back to two Tuesdays ago, when I was working my last night before heading down to Florida for ACDA and family visits. It was approximately 8 p.m. and I was the only hostess on at this point.

Enter random girl. She came running up the stairs and I swear to god she sneezed. I will forever claim that the noise she made sounded like mucus being expelled. And so I said, "Bless you," and she sort of looked at me with her hand over her nose and mouth and I was like, Oh poor thing, she snotted everywhere and now she has to run to the bathroom to go blow her nose.

Incorrect.

AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER, one of my coworkers came up to me and told me that the lady at his table said there was a problem in the ladies' restroom. And I said, "Those damn toilets. They really have to fix them." Oh how I wish it were the toilets. I can handle a good plunge.

So I walked into the bathroom and saw a few paper towels on the ground with a little wet spot underneath. And I almost picked them up but then I thought, let me see what's going on in these stalls, because that doesn't seem like enough to warrant there being a "problem in the restroom."

What I saw in the first stall will haunt me for the rest of my life. The toilet was filled (FILLED) with vomit, and topped off with about half a roll of paper towels that were spilling out over the edges. Now, I have a vomit phobia, so I got out of there real fast, but not before noticing the lovely chunks that were spilling out from under the paper towel pile on the floor. SO glad I did not pick those up...

Apparently the girl was just sick; she wasn't drunk or strung out or whatever. And I sympathize. But come on. I know it would be SO embarrassing, but you have to tell someone about that before it, you know, marinates in a public restroom for an hour and a half. The worst part is that, as we all  know, paper towels don't flush, so the poor janitorial staff had to take all that shit out of the toilet. Stupid girl. I just feel like, a) we're all adults here, and we know the feeling of an impending barf, so go to the damn bathroom if you feel sick, b) we use toilet paper to wipe our mouths after. Toilet. Paper. And c) I repeat, TELL SOMEONE.

THEN. I got off work and came home like any other normal working night. It was raining, and when I came inside and went to the bathroom, I left footprints on the rug in front of my sink. I figured it was because my shoes were wet from outside.

Incorrect. Again.

About half an hour later, as my bladder is the size of my pinky fingernail, I had to pee again, and this time when I walked on my rug, it made a disturbing squish squish sound. And so I bent down to touch it and see what was going on and my whole floor was SOAKED. I mean, freakin' flooded. And then I noticed the drip coming from the corner of the cabinet under my sink. And I opened it up and the whole cabinet was drenched, including all my lady product boxes and my toilet paper.

Then I had to figure out a way to get my rug (which, by the way, weighed five pounds) across my apartment to the washer to put it on a spin cycle without ruining my floors and carpets in the process.

I should also mention that my sink had been leaking before this and had supposedly been fixed by maintenance already. It was not fixed. It was actually significantly worse. And even though they came to fix it while I was gone, when I got back yesterday there was still a little drip coming from underneath. Beautiful.

And now my washer is leaking also.

COME ON.

Part-time Hostess, part-time plumber

Last May, I applied for and obtained a job as a part-time hostess. My job description is pretty basic. I greet the customers, I seat the customers, I wish the customers good day when they leave. There are some side work things, like wiping down menus and taking out trash and keeping the bathrooms stocked.

But what hostesses don't tell you is that they also usually get stuck on toilet duty. That is, unclogging and generally cleaning up toilet-related messes.

At my place of employment, we have three toilets in the women's bathroom. Let's think of them as children. The first one is well-behaved and has never gotten into trouble in the time I have made its acquaintance. The second one is a little bit of a problem child. It has flushing issues in general, so if there's even a little bit of a backup, it gets really nervous and needs the warm suctioned embrace of a plunger to return it to its normal state. The third one, however, is literally the worst rebel toilet child in the history of plumbage. Nearly every time I work, it is either clogged or overflowing, and usually it's both.

This isn't always the toilet's fault though. It's half toilet issues, half user error. And although I have become pretty handy with a plunger, a squeegee, and a mop, I wanted to share this message with the world. Are you ready? Here it is:

YOU CAN FLUSH MORE THAN ONCE.

If there is ever a point during your bathroom visit where you think, "Wow, that sure is a lot of toilet paper that I've used," that is the time to employ your first flush. Or, if you have emitted a large amount of waste such that even without any toilet paper, the bowl is looking pretty packed, flush away my children. This is called a courtesy flush. You should use it frequently and without hesitation to save your poor hostess from plunging a toilet FOUR TIMES and overflowing it FOUR TIMES in one shift because you can't take the time to reach back and push the damn lever. 

Yes, I am pretty professional at squeegeeing a whole lot of water into a tiny little drain, and yes, I can usually unclog a toilet with one mere round of plunging, but just because I possess these talents does not mean I enjoy them. 

Flush. Just, flush.