When Adulting Is Not Enough

"Adulting" is a curious concept.

For those of you who don't speak millennial, "to adult" means to be successful at doing the things your parents took care of when you were a child. Such tasks include cooking, canning, arranging furniture, paying bills on time, and getting the oil changed on your car.

There's been a lot of adulting going on in my apartment this last week. We are all finally unpacked. I now have a beautifully arranged and organized bookshelf. Our shared living space has a pantry with shelves, a table and chairs (and a table runner!), a couch, and a nice stand for a television. We've been very proud of ourselves and our adulting, even branching out into such tasks as freezing fruit and baking patriotic-though-burnt pies.

But sometimes, our best efforts at adulting just aren't enough.

On Wednesday morning, I noticed an email from the office of my apartment building reminding residents that if they had not renewed their leases they needed to move out by 7/25 at noon.

Now, here's the thing. I'd bought my lease from a previous resident with only a couple of months left on the lease. Naively perhaps, I'd assumed that the office would contact me when it was time to renew this lease. So I found this email somewhat concerning and decided to stop by the office to find out what the process of renewing the lease was.

Well, upon entering the office I was informed that I'd already missed my chance and that after July 25th someone was already set up to move into my room.

The best I can figure out from contextual cues is that the window of time during which I could renew the lease ended just about the time that I actually moved into the apartment. No one in the office told me so at the time-- I'll let you decide whether that was due to absent-mindedness, lack of interest, or incompetence. And now, even if I wanted to move into another room at the same price, all of the four bedroom apartments are completely full starting in August.

Apparently, there is some possibility of my moving into one of the three-bedroom or studio apartments in the same building. However, those options are more expensive. And I can barely afford this apartment (read: I've been considering donating plasma to make ends meet until I get more clients, and you know how well that usually goes) as is. Not to mention, after dealing with a few messy pieces of red tape from this apartment complex I'm pretty certain I don't want to pay more money to keep receiving this high level of service.

So apparently I get to go apartment hunting. Again.

At least I had the thought to go to the office; this would have been a nasty surprise to receive on July 25th.

I broke the news to my roommates with ice cream. One of my roommates was sad on my behalf, noted with relief that her contract ends in May of next year, and offered to help in whatever way possible. The other roommate is furious, and only got angrier when she found out that she is almost certainly in the same boat as me.

As for me, I'm sort of bouncing between the extremes of angry-stressed-frustrated and optimistic-and-this-is-kind-of-hilarious. But I've got a few people to contact and about two weeks to find something, so hopefully this works out alright.