Room-inations

Roomie and I are approaching our one year anniversary (awww). We're coming up on the tippity tail end of our one-year lease at our Brentwood Chateau. This celebration of sorts leads us into a couple of predicaments: She is moving in with her boyfriend and must find a suitable place, and I am left with picking up the pieces of a broken heart and finding a new Roomie (Roomie Deux!) or moving myself. *shrug*

My friend once told me that finding housing in Los Angeles that is suitable to live in is horrible. Really. She said that the projects of Chicago offer nicer amenities than Los Angeles. I'm reminded of how proud Roomie and I were to find our place. It was a Saturday in June and I had flown in on a last minute flight from Arizona, optimistic, perhaps naive, figuring I could find a place in a day or so. My boyfriend at the time sort of shook his head at me, like a parent might do to a child who says, "I want to grow up and be a garbage man!" or like like a nurse does to an insane patient who thinks he has wings. Or like a boyfriend does to a blond chick from Arizona who thinks finding an apartment in LA is easy.

As Borat might say: Not so much!

But for Roomie and I it was easy, I mean it. She was a random roommate and she was normal. We met at a Coffee Bean in Brentwood early that Saturday morning (just to make sure the other wasn't a freak) and played with our coffee and tea and giggled nervously as cars swooshed by. Finally, we agreed to go find a place. I only had a couple of days and we had to move fast. We drove around the neighborhood in her SUV and I held her laptop in my lap so we could pick up free wi-fi and scope out Criaigslist ads as we were out and about. She gunned her car through disjointed intersections, crowded with angry cars and pedestrians and I held on and I marveled and I wondered. "You gotta keep moving," she had said, "It's the LA mentality." So we moved.

Some of the places we saw made me feel dirty. One had what looked like shit stains (shit! stains! Ew!) on the carpet. The landlord smelled like tequila and the tiles in the kitchen, on both counter and floor, were retro, chipped and broken. The shower was green with mold.

"Are you going to bring in a maid?" I had asked.

Other places, we didn't see. The landlords ditched us and failed to return our desperate calls.

Finally, we ended up on our street, at our gate. It was the last showing of the day and we walked with a air of defeat. We met with our odd landlord, who sort of twitched when we looked at her directly in the eyes and I noticed she had blue eyeliner on the edges of those twitchy eyes, sort of an artsy punk wannabe look. She wore short shorts that displayed her thunder thighs and she huffed around on thick cork platform heels. Roomie and I exchanged nervous glances.

I don't recall the details of the place. I don't remember what it looked like when we first saw it. All I know is that it was sans shit stains. And the landlord appeared sober. Sign me up!

And it's been an unbelievable year. We pride ourselves to this day on having found a place in just one day. We won.

And here we are again, a year later, summer is fast approaching.

Wherever I do go, it's gotta be month-to-month. I might have sudden urges to wander and explore beyond these hills...