Glass half-full (even if it's dirty, chipped, and cutting my lips)

In an effort to not become totally suicidal slightly forlorn, I have decided to focus on the good things about living in an apartment.

All three of them.  Because there are many.  Many, many good things.

For instance, I have firmly cemented the positive habit of making my bed every day.  Mostly because, if I don't, you physically cannot walk through my bedroom with one or two pillows on the floor.  There's just not room for the bed, the pillows, and me in this tiny space.  Gone are the luxuriously lazy days of not making the bed at all until the Husband came home at night.

(You know we only make it half the time because they're going to see it and think we're lazy bums if we don't, right?)

Another positive lifestyle change is the increase in efficiency in the kitchen.  I can literally stand in one spot, not have to lift my feet at all, and I can load the dishwasher, put away all the clean dishes, make dinner, and clean the kitchen.  Think about this.  From one spot, I can reach everything in my cupboards, drawers, and stove.  With all the free time this has afforded me (no more walking, hooray!), it is a wonder that I have not found the time to cure cancer.

Cancer cure:  Coming soon.

(Note to self:  Learn how to cure cancer.)

A special treat that we've also recently discovered is the burst of freezing-cold water in the shower that comes if anyone so much as thinks about touching a faucet anywhere else in the apartment.  It's like a wake-up call.  Hey, you!  You in the shower, enjoying yourself and relaxing.  Wake up!  You've got things to do!  No time for conditioning rinses!  Hurry up!

Loving that part.

Also of note are the new cultures my kids are being exposed to on a daily basis.  Like the next door neighbors, who seem to be home all day, every day, out on their back porch smoking weed hopefully just cigarettes.  Teaching us, once again, that age-old lesson:  Love thy neighbor anyway.  (Or at least ignore them and keep your windows and doors shut tight.)

My favorite thing (legitimately) is that we can clean the place, top-to-bottom in about 13 minutes.  That includes toilets, vacuuming, sweeping, dusting, and pick-up.  Sure, it still looks pretty crappy, what with all the piles of stuff we have no place for, but it's clean.  And I like that.

Also amazing is calling someone to come fix things and not having to pay a dime.  The drawer in the bathroom broke because I filled it too full of hair and make-up products?  Not my problem!  Come fix it for me now!  I love it.  (Though I do wish the maintenance man had teeth.)

But the one thing that gets me through it all is the multi-thousand dollar difference every month between what our mortgage was and our rent is now.  Seriously.  We are saving $2,000 every month by living here.  Multiply that by twelve months, and five-and-a-half years of living here.   (Insert me pulling out a calculator...)  By my calculations, we could have had $132,000 more in our pocket had we rented instead of bought a home.

I can promise you, we did not get that handed to us when we sold our house.

Maybe renting isn't so bad...

No, it is.  It really is.  And thank heavens it will end in four more months.