The viewing

The last apartment I looked at was on Tuesday, right in Osborne Village. It wasn't a great looking apartment and by the time I'd reached the caretaker's door, I'd already decided to not put in an application for it. But the appointment had been made and I wasn't going to be rude, so I knocked on the caretaker's door despite my decision. The door opened and a pudgy, grumpy woman glared out at me.
"Hi, my name is Karen and I'm here to see the apartment."
She closed the door in my face. Not bothering to keep her voice down, she yelled out,
"The 6 o'clock is here!"
"Is it 6:00?"replied another voice.
"No! It's 5:30! God, can't these people show up at the right time?"
"Well, tell them they're just going to have to wait a couple minutes."
The woman opened the door and said,
"Wait five minutes," and shut it in my face, leaving no chance for me to respond.
The appointment had been for 5:30. I had written it down with all the other information I had gathered on that specific apartment. But there was no room to argue and so I waited.
Five minutes later, the door opened and the caretaker stepped into the hallway. Well, maybe not so much stepped as shuffled. A tiny old man, his head seemed rather small compared to the rest of his body. He had a squashed up face, as if it was made of plasticine and someone had just been in the midst of molding it into a different shape. His eyes seemed to pop out of his head, pupils pointing in different directions. And to top it all off, he wore a dirty, grey tracksuit top and bottom which seemed to blend in with his dirty grey hair and skin.
It was an odd sight to see and I just barely stifled a laugh of surprise as him came over to shake my hand. We climbed up the stairs, his spare 70-year old frame coping fairly well with the steep steps. Unfortunately, I had decided to walk behind him and as we climbed the three flights, his dirty, grey tracksuit pants had trouble staying at his waist. The sight of geriatric butt crack at the top of the second flight was enough to stop me in my tracks. Again, the laughter was stifled as I allowed the caretaker a 20 second head start on the next flight. All throughout the apartment, I avoided being behind him, stepping into rooms before he had a chance to shuffle through. He seemed blissfully unaware of this problem and took me back downstairs for an application form.

Forever Daisied,
Confused and
Seeing more than she bargained for,
Karen

Scene change

It was a unexpectedly cold, rainy Saturday in August when I stepped into the elevator with the heavyset man. The elevator creaked and croaked, pulling us upward and every time he spoke, I looked up expecting to see a heavy moustache hovering under his nose.  Alas, his face was clean shaven. We got out on the fifth floor, the hallway dimly lit and smelling faintly of curry and cat piss. Stopping in front of a door on the right, he knocked twice, turned his key in the lock and ushered me in.
My first time viewing an apartment was a low-key, yet unforgettable ten minutes. The moustache-free caretaker prowled by the front door, barking out selling features of the apartment in his thick Eastern European accent. The woman who lived there showed me the view, and pointed out the sad looking ceiling in the bathroom. I could imagine myself living there, but I couldn't stomach the idea of walking through the smell of that hallway everyday. Apartment #1 was a no-go.
What is it about searching for an apartment that suddenly turns your world upside down? Maybe it's the idea of spending the next month trying to contact caretakers who never return calls. Or maybe it's the thought of giving up all free hours to view apartments with grimy bathrooms, tiny kitchens and the tenants' belongings piled haphazardly all over the place. In the end, I'm certain it was the fear of finding the one I really wanted and not being able to get the lease. It put fire in my veins and filled me with nervous energy, energy that woke me up at two in the morning so I could check for updates on apartment websites.
Thankfully, after all that anxious searching, I have found an apartment and I move in a month. I now sit amidst boxes of stuff, realizing that I own too many books and too few dinner plates. The place I've found is just right: not too big and not too small. The caretaker was friendly, the hallways were clean, and the light shining in through the kitchen window made the whole room seem bigger.
I can't wait to move.

The perils of "just winging it"

"…and the only person I could find was this phone number."

I said those very words this morning in a voicemail for a receptionist at a large university. I really should've just hung up, written down what I wanted to say and then phoned again. But I believed the curse of voicemail screw-ups was long gone and so I spoke off the cuff. And that's where the above line came in.
Sigh.
The voicemail curse is alive and kicking me in the rear end.