Where to begin?

So much to tell & so little time to tell it all. It used to be back in the day that I could start a blog post in the morning, work on it bit by bit throughout the day when the Doodles would nap or play by herself on the floor beside me. By the end of the day I'd usually have something half decent typed out & I could hit that good ol' Publish Post button & move on to catching up on all the other blogs out there. This was when my child would nap. And be happy. Obviously it hasn't been working out so well for me lately. I think the extreme separation anxiety phase is dissipating because I can finally skip off to pee by myself again but she's still pretty attached & wants to be near me most of the time. Sometimes she'll be playing on the floor with her toys & I think I can sit 8 feet away in plain view at my laptop but within a couple of minutes she'll notice I'm not beside her & will crawl over & pull herself up on my chair, wanting to be picked up so she can bang on the keys. So much for trying to type. It's just been a losing battle so I've sort of given up writing anything during the day. I keep thinking I'll do stuff in the evening when she's finally gone to bed but by then I'm so brain dead & tired that the words are lost. It makes me a wee bit sad. Reality TV & light beer numbs it pretty good though.

I'm also feeling under pressure to find us a more permanent place to live. The place we are in is nice & I love the freedom of not having all of our accumulated possessions surrounding us. It's made us realize how little stuff & space we actually need to be happy. It makes me want to sell / give away most of our belongings that are sitting in the moving company's warehouse right now. There are items in there with a lot of sentimental value but that's it. Sentiment. Does one really need thses objects to remember the past? I'm not sure. I know when I see some of the trinkets & books & old articles of clothing I'll be overcome with the sense of remembrance but right now I don't miss them. They are just stuff. Taking up space that I don't need. That I don't have right now & that I'm not really looking for in a new place to live. This is the dilemma. Do we look for a house because of the convenience of having somewhere to put all of our crap or do we look for an apartment & pay extra for a storage space that we can keep extra things until we are ready to sell them? We are both thinking the latter but then there is the complication of only having the movers one more time. We'd have to rent a truck & make several trips to take stuff that would be delivered to a storage place if the building we choose didn't have a big enough space for us. So we would essentially be overwhelmed with boxes & boxes of stuff, large furniture items & patio furniture for a few days. All this clutter in an apartment... I couldn't live too long like that.

Because I'm a worry wart I'm also concerned about where to live. Neighbourhood wise. Right now we're in Queen Anne - South Slope. Walking distance to downtown, Safeway is 3 blocks away, lots of restaurants & coffee shops (go figure!) around & we're 4 blocks from Seattle Center (Space Needle, etc.) There's a bit of traffic noise, loud seagulls (Elliot Bay close by too) & weekend drunks yelling, but it feels safe & pretty vibrant. If we can't find something else we could always get another apartment in the building so at least there's that option. Then there's Belltown which is pretty much downtown so I'd be really close to anything I'd want to do (Library, art galleries, shopping, restaurants etc.) but there'd be a bigger noise factor (traffic, buslines & more partying drunks) & some sketchier areas that are kind of weird walking through with baby. We've also been looking in an upcoming area called South Lake Union which has some cool apartment buildings, REI (= MEC but with more selection), & a soon to be Whole Foods. There's also noise from the float planes & nearby major traffic routes & well, it's a transitional area so some parts have a really industrial feel which I don't have a problem with but it's not so family freindly. Capitol Hill, Madison Park & Madrona look great & would be good for Calvin getting on to the bridge (bike/bus or car) to go to work but there doesn't seem to be as much available there.

Then there's Eastside. Which is where Calvin works. Which is where it seems many Seattleites thumb their noses at & vice versa. At least this is the impression we have from a few travel books & maybe one or two people. Surburbia versus culture. Nitty gritty living versus clean family fun? Who knows if it's true or not but it just gives me more to consider. I love being an urban dweller in a metropolitan city because I imagine myself to be ever so cosmopolitan & chic, taking my funky-dressed infant to galleries, cafés & cool stores where she doesn't protest while I sip a soy cappuccino & read a good book. Ya right. I'm lucky if a shower every day, the baby hates wearing anything other than a diaper, she will scream like Alice Cooper if I'm not paying attention to her & likes to tear up & then devour paper. I want to think that we would go out to restaurants once a week to enjoy ourselves & take in the gastronomical delights of Seattle but really, it's too freaking hard & I feel like I'm eating like a savage half the time because I can only use one hand which is busy tearing up what I'm eating into teeny pieces that I can feed to the suddenly ravenous birdlike creature that is sitting in my lap. I guess what I'm saying is that we don't necessarily take advantage of the conveniences of living the urbane urban lifestyle.

Not that there isn't any restaurants or any other attributes missing from living on the Eastside. It's just doesn't have the same feeling. Which is fine. I really don't care but it's just something else to think about while searching. Along with some things we're not used to like leasing offices instead of just an elderly superintendent couple, 20 day notices instead of 30 day making searches before the 10th of the month just pointless, high rents (more than our mortgage payments in Ottawa but less than what we'd be paying here for one) & then there's the whole doggone dog restrictions. Most places have restrictions by weight - 20, 25, 30, 45, 50, 60 pounds, some also have breed restrictions like no Pitbulls, Rottweillers, German Shepards & yes, even Dalmatians. Crazy neurotic aggressive dogs. At least according to some leasing companies. Whatever, I'm not going to start ranting about what a pussy our dog is but try to be cheery that our choices are narrowing which should make it all easier. Right? Thing is, it seems that all the (nicer) places I'm interested in are the ones we won't be accepted in.

Anyway, this has sadly taken me two days to write because of a certain someone with a very mean temper. Seriously, the little bugger can be nasty even on the day when we should be celebrating her 10 month birthday. And now I can feel the bass from the sex freaks' stereo in the apartment below so I gotta go slug back a beer. Pronto. Ahhhh apartment living is fine....