For the past few months, I’ve been considering moving when our lease is up. I originally thought that we’d never be able to move due to the costs of moving halfway across the country to a city where everything is more expensive. But then I spent some time in this house with its wonky layout, shitass plumbing, foul cheap apartment carpeting and NO FUCKING WASHER AND DRYER BECAUSE THE PROPERTY MANAGER IS A DIRTY FUCKING LIAR and thought “you know, I’d kind of like to get the fuck out of here.”

So in the back of my head, I’d been thinking that starting next month, I’d have to start looking on Craigslist again. Only this time it should be easier because I actually live in the same city. And I can see potential living spaces. Which seems like an unbelievable luxury.

Recently, though, I’ve taken a hard look at what moving costs – and not just the money, although that’s a major factor, but I’m talking about the money combined with effort, time, and all that bullshit about changing my address on every single thing that ties me to this place. While I know it would be possible, at this point, I don’t think moving is advisable, both for our finances and for my mental health. Because dudes, I cannot pack up the house and move again. I just can’t. Not now.

The actual house that we live in aside, I really like where we live. I love our neighborhood, the location in it is ideal (far enough that the Leary bros rarely stagger up this way, close enough to Wallingford, Phinney, and the Greens -Lake and -Wood), and we finally have decent neighbors who don’t leave passive-aggressive notes on cars or have children whom they allow to pee in the shared yard.

The shared yard that grows blackberries, by the way. And roses. And rhododendrons, morning glories, foxgloves, irises, poppies, snapdragons, sweet peas, holly, some giant hydrangea-like dinosaur bush, and a plum tree. Why anyone would want crap like a pool, concrete, or giant furniture in their yard when they could have something living is beyond my comprehension. It’s a semi-private shared yard, too, which I know sounds strange but we’re practically invisible from the street and that means a lot. I can sit in my yard and hang out with my neighbors and their dogs, and everything can be really nice so when you consider all of that, I suppose I can endure another year in this house. As long as I don’t look at the carpet.

One of our neighbors is this deadpan hipster girl with, depending on your predominant cultural reference, either a biblical or a 1970s Jewish Girl Friday kind of name. I go back and forth with this girl. Sometimes she can be really nice and interesting and she did recommend this terrific book I just finished, and yes, I concede that the more I talk to her, the better it gets (although this can be difficult considering that I’m highly antisocial lately and always tired, so the occasions in which I find myself conversing with neighbors for hours at a time are not frequent). Other times, she can be an odd stoner hipster who sits out there with a joint and a pot of tea, wrapped in strange scarves and it’s like I’m living next to Little Edie Beale.

Once, when the conversation between myself, Little Edie, and our other neighbor had been steered into a direction regarding our backgrounds, I asked her where she was from.

“All over,” was her answer.

“Cool, but, like, where most recently?

“Just everywhere.”

“I mean, where were you living immediately before moving to Seattle?”

Because I’m fine with not wanting to give someone your entire life story, and I wasn’t really looking for that kind of information, anyway. But when you do that blasé hand wave and tone of voice to insist upon not answering the fucking question, that tells me that you’re more interested in appearing pretentious and worldly than in having a fucking conversation.

I still don’t know where the fuck she moved from, although she did concede that she was born in Spain, moved to Mexico when she was four (meaning her parents moved to Mexico when she was four) and lived in the United States “for awhile, on and off, but also in some other places.” Then there was that hand wave again, and a head shake like I couldn’t possibly understand what it means to have a fucking passport. I then learned that her parents were missionaries and she only recently got out of this lifestyle, which could explain why she calls herself a “raging slut” and then follows this admission with an affected laugh and says “it’s so bad.”

Sigh. Lady, I’m fine with however you want to spin your background into somehow being a world traveler for the Lord and I don’t care at all what you do with your sex life, but I was raised Catholic and there are few potentials for freakiness greater than those of people who spent kindergarten through 12^th grade getting the shit kicked out of them by authority figures in the parochial school system. I’m not going to ask you what you think is “so bad,” but I wish you luck in learning the true definition.

Also, she’s vegetarian, gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, and can’t eat rice or greens, so I’m sorry that I doubt her claims to sluttiness, but that is just far too much rejection of joy to take her seriously.