Today I had to chauffer my mom around town so she could look at apartments. Normally I actually enjoy doing this because I like to see the different places and what they look like. But todays search sort of went down in flames and became a huge waste of time. That was a bummer. But the only upside for me was that she put gas in my car and bought me lunch, which is awesome because I'm pretty low on funds at the moment and my car was on E.
But the afternoon started out when I went to pick her up after I got off work. She had told me she was mapquesting everything and would have directions all laid out in an orderly fashion. And she wanted me to drive so she could be my awesome navigator and read the maps and instruct me where to go. I'm terrible at directions and reading maps and finding places, and she knows this. However she's just as bad as me. So it was like the blind leading the blind. And when I got to her place, there were no maps. Just a scribbly piece of paper that she jotted some stuff down and she told me she didn't need a map because she knew where were going. And there were about 10 places on this list. I asked if she was sure she didn't need any maps, and she just gave me a look like, "of course not, you fool!"
So we set off, ate lunch, got gas, and proceeded to head out on the apartment journey. I turned down a different road than I would normally turn down, but only because coming out of the gas station, that was the only way to really go without needing to make U-turns and other complicated bullshit. But its not a road that is unfamilar and I know my mom has driven it a million times too. But she was looking around and saying, "where are we? We can't get to this place from this road." That right should have told me my navigator was not exactly gonna be of much help. I told her where we were and that the turn we wanted was at the next stoplight. And she was like, "oooh...well I didn't recognize anything here." There is a huge waterpark right in front of us and it's pretty hard to miss even from miles away, so how could she not recognize anything?
But whatever, at this point I actually did know where I was going even if she didn't. But not for long. We turned down this one street where apartment building number 1 was located. We took one look at it and immediately said no, and turned around. It was inches from the railroad track and some kind of ballpark with huge stadiums lights all over the place, and I can bet they'd light up the whole place like daylight. Plus the apartments themselves were old and dumpy. So scratch that. The second apartment place was supposedly located on the same road, just going the other direction. And my mom kept telling me that she remembered from the map she saw online that the place was on the left of the street. So we drove and drove and drove and there was nothing there. Lots of apartments but nothing with the name we wanted, and we could not find the street name she wrote down where were supposed to turn.
We finally came to a dead end, turned around, went back, and started looking on the right this time since she was convinced that was the side of the street to turn on. We went the entire way back to where we started and never found it. So I pulled into a church parking lot and fired up my Google navigation map on my phone. (incredibly handy thing, btw!) And this map indicated we were basically sitting directly in front of the street we couldn't find. All I had to do was look behind me, and there it was...lol Only instead of being on the left as she insisted, it was on the right. And the street sign wasn't on the corner, but back a ways from the street and completely covered by an overgrown tree. I didn't have a prayer of ever seeing it without my GPS map.
So we went down there, found the place, and according to her scribbly notes this place was 'beautiful'. The website showed how awesome it was, nestled in the trees with gorgeous apartments. Lets just say 'beautiful' would not be a word I'd use to describe this place. More like old and tiny and run down. I guess the pictures on the website were 20 years old or something. But since it took us 30 minutes to find the place, we figured we'd at least inquire about them. This was tricky because we couldn't find the office. And I kept driving in circles and then we found a map at the entrance. The office was indicated by a blue dot on the sign. But I couldn't make heads or tails of the map to figure out where the hell the blue dot building actually was in relation to where we were. My mom insisted she could figure it out, but her eyes are bad so I had to turn the car around, yet again, so she could be the one next to the map and not me.
Of course the place she told me the map said the building was, wasn't it. So I turned around again. Then we saw this old dude in a walker getting his mail. She told me to ask him where it was. But I kind of grimaced at that because he looked grumpy. So she said she would ask him. So we stalked him over to the mailbox and I pulled into a parking spot. Then she told me, "I'm not getting out of the car, you need to pull sideways so I can just yell out the window." *sigh* I backed up AGAIN, and pulled sideways, and by now I was sure the old man was thinking we were crazy people since he'd been watching me drive in circles and back up and turn around all this time. But my mom asked him where the office was, and he turned out to be nice and not grumpy like I feared. And he told us we were basically right next to it if I would only look to my left. And sure enough, the ONE aisle we didn't go down was where the stupid building was. However it was really hard to see and didn't look like an office, but more of a supply closet with the word 'office' taped to the door.
We thanked the man and I pulled away from the curb, which required backing up AGAIN, just so I wouldn't run over the sidewalk and take out the nice man with the walker. Then we drove down past the office and there was no visitor parking at all. It was all covered parking for tenants. What sort of apartment place doesn't have any parking in front of the rental office? So I had no choice but to attempt a 3 point turn to get myself out of there, and the old man was watching me and shaking his head and laughing and telling me, "the office is right there!" and pointing to it, because he thought I still didn't see it. But I shouted back that I had no idea where to park. He seemed to realize this too and just kind of shrugged and went on his way. So I had to go back to the mailbox area where the only 2 open spots were located. And we finally went into the office which was literally a tiny little closet of a room, and the bitchy chick behind the desk was like, "we have nothing available and there's a year long waiting list." And then just went back to her paperwork.
ALL that fucking hassle to find the place and find the office and park was all for NOTHING! We wasted probably about an hour just on this one place and it proved to be a completely fruitless effort. But my mom had other places on her list. But they were far away so I told her to call them first and see if they even had anything available before I drove out to butt fuck Egypt for no reason....lol I attempted to look up the phone numbers on my phone with Google, but it wasn't giving me any numbers, just addresses. So I made my mom call information and get the numbers. Then she called places and pretty much no one had a place available except one. They had something December 1st. But if she was interested she'd have to come out and get the paperwork, and the sucky thing was, they had no unit to show us even. So we didn't even know what the place really would look like.
But my mom wanted to go there anyway and see, because again, the internet pictures made the place look super nice and posh. So I headed out there. This required getting on the freeway, which I hate. There was a big accident so traffic was totally backed up and horrible. I was stuck between a bunch of big rigs and I felt like I was gonna die any second. It was not a calming experience. And then as we got on another highway to head to the place, I noticed just how desolate everything was out there. There was nothing but fields and cows and a rickety looking arena that said it was the town rodeo. And just then, a tumbleweed drifted across the road. I felt like I was in an old western movie....lol And this is where my mom was thinking of living? I can't imagine that.
We finally got to where we were going and it was next to a huge logging mill. I'd never seen anything like it. But the actual place was kinda meh. Not bad, but not awesome. But when we got out and went to the office, the lady in there was kind of a bitch. Not helpful at all. And not nice. And the apartments were more money than we were expecting them to be. I told my mom that she should just forget it and wait longer and get the apartment she really wanted. The entire day was a bust really. I was just glad to get home after all was said and done.
Anyhow, that was my day. I swear it seemed funnier and more interesting when I first started writing it. But I had some issues here with my computer getting a virus for the millionth time, and I just lost my momentum of what I was saying. But there you go. That was my day. And maybe some of it was slightly interesting?
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