We recently received our lease renewal notice in the mail, and it came complete with a ludicrous increase in rent including an absurdly high utility fee that I would probably understand if we were a family of seven who ran a series of lawn sprinklers all day long. As it stands, we are not a family of seven and I’ve never even owned a lawn sprinkler, and because we still don’t have the washer and dryer promised to us originally, I e-mailed my suggestions for the rent increase to the property manager today. Basically, I understand the concept and will pay a minimal increase, but it will include the same utility fee I’ve been paying for the past year and will in no way approach what the office has proposed.

While I suppose I can afford to move right now, I really don’t feel like doing it. And by “it,” I mean the whole thing. The searching, the applying, the paying, the packing, the changing the addresses, the everything that just seizes up my stomach and gives me heartburn before I even start. I searched a few places this week to a) see what’s out there just in case and b) compare the rent increase with the area average (and comparatively, like hell I’m paying that shit). Searching for rentals in Seattle is especially depressing for someone who has searched for rentals in the Midwest. There’s really no comparison. Our old place in St. Louis was a house with a basement (where the fucking washer and dryer lived), a garage, and a large, shady, privacy-fenced backyard. It was in a lovely neighborhood with a friendly cop for a neighbor. It cost less than $1,000 a month, and if I wanted that in Seattle, I would have to kill myself and transcend to some idyllic afterlife where that was considered a remote possibility by some property-focused deity.

Here, the cost of living hovers somewhere near “un-fucking-believable” and you get shockingly little for your money. I’ve said before that I love the location of our place, but I’m dissatisfied enough with everything else that it makes me legitimately bummed to consider it and the dearth of alternatives.

I talked to Louis last night about how upsetting it can be as a native Midwesterner when you look for places to live pretty much anywhere else, ever. Regarding the first part of that sentence: I TALKED TO LOUIS LAST NIGHT. Hahahahaha! Louis is in town from L.A. and I got to hang out with him, and he was lovely and we drunk Facetimed Adrian and Angelica and then Louis said something about pee holes and legitimately shocked one of my foulest friends. Oh man. I love Louis so much.

He’s in town until early this week, which means he got at least one day of nice weather and right now he gets to experience what happens when it thunders in Seattle, because everyone is about to lose their minds and I’m just glad I got everything on my “stuff to do outside of the house” list done already. And if it rains, I’ll have a nice warm braised thing to eat tonight with another terrible horror movie on Netflix, and I will make myself enjoy it even more than usual because I’ll remind myself just how much it costs to do so.