I’ve been logging my weight loss progress for almost a month and a half now, and already, I’m seeing progress. My clothes fit looser. My profile in the mirror isn’t as upsetting. In some photos, my jawline is more defined. It’s all well and good and even easier than it was when I first started, but it’s a good thing I got my driver’s license photo taken today or I might have let all of that good news go to my head.

The thing about photos is that if you want to look okay in them, you have to look like a geek while taking them. Apparently it’s called “turtling,” which sounds like “turdling” to me and I can’t ever say it with a straight face, but whatever. You stick your neck up and then out and point your chin down a little bit. This is fine when someone’s taking a regular photo, but the no-nonsense lady at the DMV was not having anything about turtling. As a result, I am somehow looking slightly up into a camera that was way lower than my face and even in the black-and-white paper ID, I can see where my first chin ends and my second one begins. Also she made me swipe my hair off my eyebrow so if anyone was wondering just how much of my 23andMe results came back Irish, you can look no farther than the squashed potato face on my license to find out.

I mostly look drunk and/or tired, and when I said that to the DMV lady, she chuckled and said “You can always tell people you got it done on Cinco de Mayo.”

Um. Yes. This will work very well if I ever get pulled over, I can tell.

Outside of the photo disaster, I now have a Washington driver’s license and Washington plates for my car, AND we found a place to live for when our lease is up at the end of next month. It’s the place I looked at on Saturday. I mentioned that it’s an apartment – not a house or a duplex like we’d wanted even though we were aware these are the white whales of the Seattle rental market, apparently – but if we had a more ambitious (and slightly unscrupulous?) landlord, it’d be advertised as a townhouse and cost about $900 more per month. As it stands, it’s two floors and has the laundry room (a whole separate room with machines and shelves!) and extra storage we wanted, and it’s in one of the neighborhoods we like. The higher rent doesn’t even bother me all that much because it’s still less than what we’ve been paying for rent + laundry + a storage unit this whole time. I can even deal with the carpet everywhere. They’re not hardwood floors, but at least they’re not cat-puke-magnet beige.

Above all, we have a landlord who isn’t a property management company, and who seems competent and kind and like the kind of person I can see paying for long enough that I’ll want to set up this place like my actual home instead of a temporary waiting room where everyone and everything is just waiting around for it to be over. Of course, this means that part of our moving expenses will now include IKEA purchases (one couch, two chairs, two rugs, some lighting and a footstool so far) and I get to decide if this is worth ditching my plan for movers in favor of my friends, who will no doubt help but cannot possibly be expected to be happy about hauling multiple boxes of books up two flights of stairs. Plus, you know what, I’m aware that I’m betraying my working class roots and all that shit, but you guys? Movers are great. I mean, yes, your friends are great, too, and honestly, at no point during helping Dylan and Rachel move did I ever pause and think “god, I’m miserable right now.” It’s just that when you consider the cost, effort, and stress involved in renting a truck and loading it up and getting it from one place to another (sometimes making multiple trips because you always forget something and someone’s got to go back and clean), as far as I’m concerned, sometimes it’s worth a couple of hundred bucks extra to hire someone else to take care of things.

I am completely the kind of person who is willing to pay for convenience, or, as my father would describe it, my attitude is one of the problems in the world today. However, he wouldn’t so much move stuff as he would stand around and delegate to people who move stuff, which is basically the same as hiring movers but not actually paying them, either in actual money or beer that costs more than $5.50 for a 6-pack.

So I wouldn’t expect him to understand, nor would he be able to perform the complicated math involved for money spent vs. time before that money will have to be spent again. We like this place. We like the space, we like the location, we like the landlord and we love the laundry room. We’re not going to want to move again for probably several years, and when that day comes, hopefully we’ll be moving into our own house.

It’s not so much about money as it is about worth. Paying for movers so we can enjoy our new place sooner? Worth it. Higher rent for pretty much everything we wanted plus furniture that doesn’t look like it survived a frat party? Worth it. A shitty driver’s license photo for finally riding legal in Washington? Um. Maybe not entirely worth it, but at least it’ll make a good before picture.