Please forgive my lack of capitalization in the following, when I wrote it I was feeling very lazy. This is actually kind of boring, I think, but will give you a glimpse into a day of my life. Oh, if you read my entry a ways back about living in a 2 bedroom - we're moving! As of June 1st we'll be the proud renters of a 3 bedroom townhome back in the suburb we love the mostest, super close to our babysitter, which is a big deal. Kori, our 10 year old daughter, will get her own room. She's very excited about this.For another entry: my conflicting feelings about wanting more & "better", while believing that these things really aren't necessary and are sometimes harmful to our characters.today i took a personal day so i could go sign the lease for the townhouse. vincent's school/work schedules would make it impossible for me to get to the realtor's office after work (impossible to get there by public transit) so i needed to be available for the window of time he (and more importantly, the car) was home.
i slept in a bit, got up and braided kori's hair (2 french braids ending in small puffs, her request). laid around a bit, then got showered and dressed (rian too), then we hopped on the bus.
this bus goes by the local community college so it's always full of people on their way to class, i had rian sit down next to this young hipster chick. she was talking to her friend about some bar they wanted to go to . . . she also mentioned something about how all her friends were potheads. then she looked at rian, like "oh crap i'm talking about pot in front of a little kid, oops!" and it was funny, when she got off at the college, i said to rian, "are you going to say bye?" but instead of waving and saying "goodbye!" like he usually does, he got this angry look on his face and pointed his finger at her and wagged it!! she and i both cracked up. then she got off the bus and caught up to her friends and acted out what rian did to her.
Does your city plant tulips in the Spring the way Chicago does? These are next to the bus stop.we got off the bus at my bank, went inside so i could get a cashier's check for the rent/deposit on the townhouse (the owner required a cashier's check for the first payment). thankfully it was dead in the bank so it wasn't a big deal that rian played around, and all the tellers were young women who thought he was so cute. they had a little kid table and chairs set up and gave him suckers and pictures to color. thank goodness because the chick working with me was new, i think, and messed some stuff up so she had to do it all over again. i wasn't in a rush so it was no biggie.
we walked across the street to eat lunch at potbelly, where rian saw the guitar guy setting up. if you're not familiar with potbelly sandwich shops, they often hire musicians to play guitar quietly during the lunch/dinner rush. at the potbelly by my office they have the musician up on this loft above some of the booths. today's guy was just set up near the soda fountain. rian is familiar with guitars since vincent has several basses, a couple guitars, we play guitar hero and are always rocking out on air guitar. :) so he stood there and watched the guy hook up his amp. then rian and i sat down right across from the musician and i just had this huge grin on my face because the first song he played was "peaceful easy feeling" by the eagles. y'all know i love me some eagles. then he went into "what i got" by sublime, which transitioned into a tiny bit of "tub-thumping" by chumbawumba (it actually sounded really good) and then i forget what else. this guy was probably in his mid 30s, possibly early 40s, so it was fun to hear him singing those range of songs. and it was funny to listen to him get creative with the cussing portions of "what i got."
Hello, Ashley's favorite tennis shoes. That she wore yesterday which is why the photo is somewhat relevant to this entry.then rian and i walked to the library (the bank, potbelly & library are all in the des plaines "downtown district"). i hoped to find the 4th season of weeds, which vincent and i are working on right now, but it is STILL CHECKED OUT. grrr. we're getting it on netflix, i'm just impatient. it's due back in 2 days. i hope they can't renew it and turn it in on time. oh, we also went to the children's floor and played on the toddler-size desk/computers where they have easy games w/numbers, letters, animals, shapes, etc - all from sesame street, dora, bob the builder, etc. i also looked for the books "wench" and "the help" but both were STILL CHECKED OUT. what's up des plaines? you just don't want me to have any fun?
rian was getting very cranky so we walked over to the bus stop, sat down, i held him and made him "lay down" and he was asleep in no time. does everyone else love the "baby is asleep on me" feeling like i do? got the bus home, he was still cranky, time to lay down some more. vincent came home, i left to get some groceries and sign the lease. it was a good thing i decided to "just make sure" i knew where the realtor's office was first, because i couldn't find it! i thought her office was on rand road in mt. prospect, but it was on rand road in arlington heights! see, we have these major roads that go straight through suburb after suburb, and each suburb has its own little E/W/N/S boundaries. so if you see an address that says 123 e. rand road, you have to know what suburb it's in because every suburb that rand road runs through probably has a 123 e. rand road. after driving around forever and determining that my realtor did NOT have her office set up in the bathroom of a taco bell, i stopped, looked up her email (where she gave me the address but not the town), clicked on her website link, and found the town. looked it up, found it easily, got there in time to make sure i didn't look like a scrub, went in to sign the lease.
i love this realtor lady. she was hired by the townhouse owner to list it as a rental and to do all the showings, but she admittedly worked harder for vincent and i than she did for the owner. she liked us so much, apparently, that she put our application on the top of the stack. there were other applicants who were willing to sign a may 1st lease and to pay both may and june rent up front, plus deposit. we said we'd do may 1st if needed but would prefer june 1st. we were never asked to provide june's rent up front, apparently that was something the other applicants offered. the realtor got the owner to move our lease date to may 15 and to only ask for the 1/2 may rent + deposit. it's funny, we only met with the lady for like 20 minutes AND we were late because i got lost, yet she still liked us so much that she pushed for us. and it worked!
she was funny - she has this very strong east coast accent . . . and she would say things she shouldn't have (like how something in the lease was stupid and she was just going to cross it out) and look around and ask, "is anyone taping me? do you see any cameras?" she asked about where i worked and asked about the location. she was oohing and ahhing over my downtown riverside location and said, "look at the shit i have to look at!" motioning to the window, which looks out on a strip mall parking lot. it was funny because she was very put together and professional, yet so funny and every once in a while she'd cuss. and she made all these assumptions about us, knowing NOTHING about us. according to her: we would never pay rent late, we aren't dirty, we are nice people who will get along with all of our neighbors, and we will decorate the place beautifully.