Moving

Pacific NW Sunset with clouds and the corner of my porch and balcony.

My husband and I may be moving at the beginning of next month. I am so happy. I have wanted to leave here for about the past year. There are several reasons for this. And here they are:

1. This complex and area were fairly nice and somewhat cheap when I moved in here three years ago. It was a nice, family oriented neighborhood. We had block parties and watched each other's kids. Many of these people moved out, slowly. So slowly, I didn't even notice it. Suddenly, the cops were here about once a month. Including, once, even a paddy wagon/swat team like van. The street was told to stay in their houses and out of the windows. At 4 am. In the middle of the week. After shots were fired out into the street. We are pretty sure that meth dealers had moved in across the street.

2. People drive up and down the street at over 50 mph. They don't care that little kids and dogs play in the street. No matter what the family oriented people say or do, they still do it.

3. We have a neighbor across our courtyard who gets picked up by an ambulance every few days.

4. Our next door neighbor parks on the curb, and beats up his girlfriend on a regular basis, and the cops get called every time. And it's always early in the morning, like between 3-5 am. Since the last time, they have been pretty nasty to us.

5. The volume of the stereos! Across the street, our neighbors turn on the radio starting at about 6 pm and it echoes down the cul-de-sac. They have people over every night, and get drunker and drunker to the point that they are yelling at each other and cursing so loudly, that we can hear it above our TV in the house. Not to mention that our bedroom window faces their house. This usually doesn't stop until 11 pm on weekdays, and all hours on weekends. They have two boys that are not quite in their teens, yet. I have no idea how these kids sleep through that. Plus the dad over there likes to run his power washer 24-7.

6. Down the street a little way, are some people. I think they share the duplex. One house has about a three year old that we frequently see walking down the middle of the street yelling. By himself. And then dad comes out and yells at him to get back to the yard. The kids yells and yells until his little voice is screeching that he is coming back. Or that mom said it was ok. Why? Why would you let a small child do that? Would you not go down the street and grab the kid? I just don't get it. Next to them, is the Bass house. Starting at about noon each day and into the night, they play a stereo. I don't know if it is in the garage, house or car, and I can never actually hear the music, but the bass is so loud, it makes things move in my house. Why must bass ever be that loud? Why is that even necessary?

7. Our landlords. When I first moved in here, there was a fabulous, but fairly cheap, management company that ran this place. Rent was cheap, the office people were fabulous, and our maintenance guy was quick and thorough. And on time with notices. This last summer, management switched hands. While they painted, and paved our alley ways, they did it with horrid diarrhea and vomit browns, and the pavement was ground up within weeks, because they waited until the rainy season to start doing it (the week of our wedding). It is impossible to get help or find anything out without the management talking to you condescendingly. And even then, your chance of help is pretty slim. We were waiting to look for an apartment at the end of our last lease because we wanted to see what our rent was going to be. When they finally let us know, it was 2 weeks before our lease was due to change and they said we had to give 30 days notice before we could move out. This was at Christmas, so we decided to stay for 6 months. They raised our rent so much, we can't afford to live here. Our rent has already been latte twice this year.

8. Around January or February of this year, we started seeing things happen out the corner of our eyes – in our house. We slowly noticed we had mice. We complained to management. We were told to get a cat. We thought she was joking. We told her that my husband is deathly allergic, and she told us that we were out of luck then. We tried every method to get rid of them, and it took us three more months before poisoning finally took effect. This sucked quite bad, because everything had been touched in some way by the mice. I had to throw away so much food. Food that we could barely afford anyway (but had to buy because of my strict low carb diet). And they did nothing. It was really upsetting. I found out that most of the surrounding apartments had the same problem. Even the ones that weren't connected to us.

9. Our car got broken into. They stole our car stereo. We don't have a lot. But we commute to work almost an hour each way. The stereo isn't worth calling the insurance company about. Until we could save the money, which took us several months, we had to ride around with a shower radio in our car that only one station came in. I reported it to our management, just to let them know that other people's cars may get broken into and people should be aware. There is almost no lighting where our cars are (or really, anywhere in our complex). We complain all the time about it. Management just sighed and said she guesses that she should send out a memo to everyone telling them to keep their porch lights on at night. (Our patios/porches are nowhere near the cars). The memo never went out. I don't know if anyone else's car got broken into, but I was pretty pissed.

10. I have a young (early 20's) neighbor, who thinks I want to hear about her woes. And always wants something. She comes over to my house every single day. At least 5 times. It doesn't matter what I am doing or what kind of a mood I'm in, she just won't shut up. I have stopped answering the door and tend to hide when I take the dog outside or check the mail. She always wants Something, and covers it up by making small talk with me. And I don't trust her friends. They look nasty and they won't look me in the eye. I just have an overall bad feeling about them. I'm afraid if I tel her to go away, these friends of hers will rob my house or something. They are always around.

11. Dog poop. Yes, I have a dog. I CLEAN up after my dog. At least my dog poops where I can see it. I can not tell you how many times – mostly because of bad lighting – I have stepped in poop that was not cleaned up by the owners. Big poops. Usually on the SIDEWALK. My next door neighbor, has her dogs pee and poop on the patio next to mine. In the summer, let me tell you – it SMELLS awful.

12. The distance from work and our friends. We don't get visitors very often. No one wants to drive all the way to our house. We live 30 miles away from our closest friends. They are all pretty close to each other, close to where we work. Since gas just went up over $4.20 here, we can barely afford to get to work. We carpool, or did, until I was laid off. Even though I get excellent gas mileage, this will save a ton in gas.

13. And Last – this will be the first home that we pick out together. We just got married at the end of the September, and we currently live in an apartment that I picked out before we met.

Sorry for the vent. I was just thinking about all the reasons I wanted to move. I can't wait to get out of here. It'll be so much better for us. With the amount of money (and sanity) that we will save, we may eventually be able to buy a house.