doing my best impression of an adult.

I’m back! There’s stuff going on! Everything has been super nuts! Please enjoy thee unrelated photos of Vietnamese dogs!

So my December was BONKERS. I’ve basically done my best to avoid Serious Adult Commitments my whole life. Honestly, I’ve kind of avoided committing to anything that depended on future me being a functional human. (Can I come to your birthday party next month? Uh, I don’t know, maybe?) So one of the benefits of living that way is I don’t have any debt (yay!), but it turns out that in order to do a lot of normal grownup things, you have to actually, like, commit to things. Which is something I now do, apparently.

First, I bought my first car!

I hate cars. I hate driving. I didn’t get my license til I was 18 because I had to take remedial drivers ed classes because I hated it so much. I’ve managed to avoid owning a car until now because I lived in NYC during my 20’s so it was never an issue, and it’s technically possible to get by with public transit in Chicago if you don’t mind wasting half your life on the bus. After five years in Chicago, though, it turns out I do mind wasting half my life on the bus, and the stress of coordinating rental cars and furniture pickups and making sure I didn’t forget anything at Home Depot because a second trip would take 90 minutes at the absolute minimum… the stress was starting to get to me, in a life-ruining kind of way. So I made a really dumb decision and went to the shadiest Engelwood used car lot possible and totally got hosed on a rusty white Ford Escape, but whatever. I have a car now. I am one of those people who knows how much gas costs. It’s a nightmare, but holy shit it is SO LIBERATING. (Hot tip: I got insurance through USAA and it was literally a quarter of the price Geico quoted me for an equivalent policy. USAA is pretty boss.)

Then I got engaged!

I guess I kind of figured that one day I would wake up and have been married to James for a while, but nope, it turns out that in order to be married, you have to get married first. What a racket, right? I’m still sorting out my feelings on weddings (awesome in theory, but awesomer than an iMac Pro or this fucking insane Milo Baughman sofa/chicken cutlet my friend is selling? Kind of a close call but also kind of not even close, right?) and someone told me that you can be engaged for two years before people start looking at you sideways, so I guess we have some time to sort that out. But still! I’m engaged!

And on to the biggest news…

We’re buying an apartment! Probably!

I know you’re not supposed to talk about this stuff until it’s over and done with, but Oprah says you should put your dreams out into the world or something and everybody wants her to be President, so whatever. This whole process has honestly been so draining and confusing and invasive that part of me kind of doesn’t even care how it turns out as long as it’s over. (If it doesn’t work out, however, a much, much larger part of me will go full Hans-Christian-Andersen-Little-Mermaid and just dissolve into the sea out of sheer sadness.)

The apartment is perfect. It’s the only one we looked at. The previous occupants were the very first people to move into the building when it was completed in 1948. The walls are concrete and the floors are carpet over asbestos tile and none of the wiring is up to code. It’s my dream.

It’s also a co-op, hence the “probably.” It’s the good variety of co-op (as opposed to the super-rich, basically-a-cover-for-racism kind) and community ownership is something I really deeply believe in, but it means we have to go through an extremely comprehensive application process. (And when I say “extremely,” what I mean is “when I finished assembling our application, the PDF was five hundred pages long.”) We’ve done everything so far except the most terrifying part, the interview with the Board of Directors. That’s scheduled for next Tuesday, unless my heart literally stops from the anxiety before then. To soothe myself I’ve been endlessly designing and redesigning the space in Sketchup and drooling over this flooring and basically doing nothing to insulate myself from crushing disappointment.