I haven’t written in a week because we’ve been looking for a house. Not to buy, sadly, but to rent. Buying is our next step. For now we just have to get out of this tiny ass apartment.

We sort of got roped into this place. We went there to meet with our current landlord after checking out the open apartment. We live in a house, a nice old one, in a great neighborhood, but it is just so little. And our neighbor smokes cigarettes like the rest of us breathe air, so the whole place stinks. We share heating ducts. And the air conditioners are shitty wall units. I could go on. But this is about how we got roped into this place.

As soon as we arrived to talk more about the apartment we’d seen he whipped out two ten-page leases and before I knew it we were signing up. I have to admit I fell in love with the charm of this place. And we had been looking for a while to no avail. So when this guy was willing to hand over the small but adorable apartment I jumped at the chance. The boyfriend wasn’t so ready, I learned later.

And the landlord here is fine. He stays out of our business and doesn’t meddle, and that is my top priority after a nightmare of a landlord who in no uncertain terms called me a slut. That bitch was crazy. Anyway, it’s not him, it’s this house. The hot water heater can not accomodate this entire place. He’s over-rented this house for what it can do and how many people can comfortably park here. It fucking sucks.

But check it out, y’all. We found a house. And it’s so great. Really great.

• It’s in East Nashville where shit is still affordable. But I’m only a 15 minute drive to work tops.
• It’s three one mile from Shelby Bottoms Park.
• It is two bedrooms with a den and a dining room and little kitchen. With hardwood floors. And the walls are already painted colors I would choose for myself. And there are hookups for a washer and motherfucking dryer. I will have to try hard not to make love to the washer and dryer once I get them, it will have been that long.
• There. Is. A. Bathtub. Ladies, I know you are going to feel me on this. I haven’t had a bath in 15 months. Only showers. No luxurious soaks. No shaving sitting down. None of that. I’m going to spend half a day stewing in that bathtub right out the gate.
• There is an attic to put all the heaps and piles of the boyfriend’s things. I’m nomadic and keep very little. Only the most important things. The boyfriend not so much. Now he has a whole empty house on top to keep all his cords and stuff.
• We can turn the music up as loud as we want.
• The new landlord says there is always an ice cream truck that runs up our quiet street. Like, every day. I see nothing wrong with that.
• Our new neighbor to the left of us likes NASCAR. I can’t decide if that is worse or better than my current neighbor’s adoration for The Queens of Comedy. But I don’t give a shit, because I won’t be able to hear the NASCAR like I can currently hear Mo’Nique’s loud-ass mouth screeching from across the hall. No more Mo’Nique.
• I actually have money now to buy some nice things for my home. Like a new couch maybe. Or materials to build a dog house.
• Cause hey, we’re getting a dog! There is a fenced in back yard. That was one of our requirements. And the allowance of pets. We pulled up to the red brick house to check it out and saw three dogs barking behind a fence in the back yard. We knew we’d found our new home. The new landlord is even waiving the extra $25 a month pet fee, just to be nice. He said we seem like good people. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He is doing that despite my telling him we are getting a puppy.
• We are getting a puppy! Not a dog, but a puppy. I’ve never owned a dog of my own before. I have always been a cat person, and I still am. I love kitties. But over the years I have grown so allergic to them. Even the cat I once lived with now brings me to tears within minutes of entering my mother’s house. I thought I didn’t like dogs, but the boyfriend assured me I just didn’t know dogs. So we’re giving it a shot. The boyfriend insists we have to have a dog before we have a baby. That was all I needed to hear.
• We can’t decide if we should get a puppy from the pound or this 4 month old puppy the boyfriend’s friend found under his house. He found a momma dog with a litter of beautiful puppies, none of whom look alike. He is trying to get them adopted without resorting to taking them to the shelter. And there is one the boyfriend and I both like (we’ve only seen a picture) named Gidget. She looks like she might have a little lab in her, but she is the runt. I want a small dog and the boyfriend wants to trick me into as big a dog as possible.
• I’m going to stop with the ordered list now.

I’m torn between Gidget and a pound puppy. I’d like to take home a dog a lot younger than 4 months. However, tiny puppies are more likely to be adopted, so perhaps I should suck it up and take an older dog less likely to get picked.

Any of you dog people out there have any suggestions on which might be better? I know very little about dogs. I want a medium-sized dog that doesn’t shed too much and isn’t a freak. You know the kind, the extra hyper dogs that bounce around and bark too much. Fuck all that. I would like a chilled out dog, not a Jack Russell Terror.

But yeah, we found a house! To live in comfortably. To bathe in and launder in and play loud music and stuff. And to raise a dog in. We move in ten days.