Apartment Life

Honestly, I sincerely like my apartment complex.

My upstairs neighbors? Mmmm. Not so much.

For one I don't know which of them it is, but one of them sits on the stairs and smokes. No. Not Cool. Your cigarette smoke drifts into my apartment. I do not smoke. I think it's nasty. It smells bad, and it causes all sorts of health issues too. I know you sit on the stairs and smoke because I have seen teh butts, and also I walk into my apartment and the smell of cigarette smoke is in my face immediately.  If you want to smoke, that's cool. All I ask is that you don't smoke around me, but if you are one of my friends that smokes I don't mind hanging with you while you smoke. I'll make sure to stay upwind though.

Second, the one directly above me? Not a damn clue what in the world they do. I would swear that they are always home, and they move about from living room to their patio, I can hear them open their patio door, constantly during the day. Also there was someone on their patio one day when I drove home on one of my evening shifts to take my dog potty. The guy was old enough to be my grandfather at least, and he asked me where so and so lived and addressed me as Princess.

Um no. I'm a queen & I got my shit handled OK.

Also really creepy.

Really, Really, Really creepy.

Uber creepy. To the nth degree of creepy.

Now, I can take a compliment, and I can also turn all ultra-feminist when someone, anyone is being a douche, but calling me Princess and you being old enough to be my grandpa? Yeah, that just freaks me out more than a little bit.

Anyway, away from the status of my creepy neighbor, I haven't seen that guy again though so that's a plus. I really like my apartment.

Just sometimes, it suddenly hits me when I'm digging through my purse trying to find my apartment keys and deciding whether or not to check my mail first, that, holy crap. This is my apartment. Yeah I know. I've already been in it for four months now, you'd think it would have sunk in by now, but sometimes the level of adult I exist at kind of spazzes me out.

I just suddenly realize that hey, I've been functioning pretty well as an adult on my own. No reliance on parents to pay for 90% of my stuff, and nobody telling my that I need to clean (I do pretty well on my own reminding myself that hey the carpet looks more like dog hair so you should probably vacuum, or that the dishes need to be put up from the dishwasher & it needs to be reloaded, or that I need to do some laundry) anything at all.

It's strange sometimes what you can do when you believe in yourself. Those first two months were a little crazy for me. I kept expecting to wake up and it all have been a dream. Just a fanciful dream, but I wake up in my apartment, and sometimes the relief I feel is a bit outrageous.

There are of course those times where I panic a little and am like "The hell am I supposed to be doing? What is so huge and amazing about being an adult? Like why was this the goal?" That goes along with those times where I didn't follow my planned budget so I'm eating ramen, and trying to stretch what money I have until the next payday.

I willingly admit that at one point I ran out of money shortly after payday because I went a little crazy and forgot about some other things that I still had to pay. I only had to eat ramen for a week though, and I don't actually always eat three meals. Usually at most I eat two, and sometimes just one.

Other times I am really happy because I can look around my apartment, and I'm just like "Look at me. Look at how well I am adulting. This isn't quite so hard as I thought it would be!"

Sometimes I feel a little crazy, and other times I feel extraordinarily sane. It differs with every day.

-Jacq