Kat gets evicted

So I know this has nothing to do with being evicted, but I have some things to go over before then. So sit tight. I will get to the homelessness soon enough. Let’s start at the beginning.

THURSDAY.
Thursday afternoon I get a phone call from the booze store telling me I have the job. 6 weeks after my interview. Better late than never, I suppose. I have to go to Whitby on Monday to train. I did the training when I worked there last year, but that was at Christmas time. Apparently the drunks in the summer are different.
Afterwards, I leave with Riley to go down to Toronto and meet the Craigslist people. We get there around 3:30 and don’t have to meet the first person until 6. I know, I’m not the best planner. First off, we drive down to find parking, and then food. It seems as though every street we find only has parking until 4pm. Not acceptable. Eventually I find a nice shady street where I can park until 9pm. I pull in, gather all my belongings and head over to the parking meter. I have only used a parking meter once, but I put the money in and the ticket came out. Easy enough.
Today I don’t have any cash, so I stick in my credit card. I remove the card and nothing happens. I wait. Nothing. I put the card in again. Still nothing. I try to remove the card and find that it is lodged in. Like, maybe 4 millimetres of the card is exposed, and I cannot grab it. I retreat to the car to find pliers, but while I’m gone Riley gets it out. Crisis averted.
However, at this time I am not risking putting my card back in there, so we decide to look for new parking. Eventually we come to a parking garage. This is a first for me, but it ends up being really easy and convenient. We go into the building, which is a ghetto sort of mall-like place. We search for sushi but find none that we trust to consume so we settle on regular old Canadian food.
Not really sure where all the time goes, but eventually we make it up to Starbucks. Not wanting to loiter, I get in line to buy a drink. This is when the tallest, most intimidating man ever walks in and thunders, “I’M THE GUY.” Easy enough. He pays me $250 cash and walks out into the blistering heat with the snowboard.
Next we have to meet Jason/Denise, who I am still not convinced is two separate people. We are supposed to meet in front of the bank. This sounds like a good plan, because no one else is waiting there. We’ll be easy to spot. Then, as if the Weather Gods read my mind, it starts POURING rain. Goes from sunny, hot and still to torrential downpour in under 5 seconds. Now EVERYONE is under the shelter. Eventually the rain stops, and Jason and Denise (two people after all) find us with no trouble and buy 4 DVDs for $10.
Finally, we have to meet Chris in the subway. Chris is a poor student and doesn’t want to pay twice, so he asks us to meet him downstairs. I happily oblige and we venture down. Of course, the subway is a busy place, so we bring along the giant CHRIS sign that Riley constructed in the car. We are a bit early and Chris is a bit late so we end up standing down there yelling “Are you Chris?!!” to every guy who looks a little lost for about half an hour. We get a few chuckles, a handful of angry stares, and a lot of blank looks. I think it’s funny. The guys we yell at who aren’t Chris are not as amused. Chris, on the other hand, when he arrives, LOVES it. He loves the sign so much that he insists on taking it as well as the picture frame. He pays me $20 cash and two VIP passes to Tonic Nightclub. I don’t tell him that even with free cover, I will likely not be able to afford $10 drinks at the club. It’s still a nice gesture.
After a long day in the city, we go home. I get a moderate sunburn on my left arm from driving all day.
I come home to an email from the guy I was supposed to be renting off of in August informing me that due to personal problems, his apartment is no longer available. I am $280 richer, but am officially homeless.

FRIDAY.
I wake up in the morning and don’t do a hell of a lot, and around 3 I head to Fenelon Falls to see my mom. I’ve been meaning to go there on a nice day for a while now to take pictures of the falls, but every time I go it’s either raining, or I forget my camera. Today it is nice and sunny, and I have the camera so I stop for my pictures. It isn’t until after I leave that I realize that I took them in the wrong place. Anyway I head to my mom’s to raid her house for yard-saleables. I end up with a lot of really random stuff, but I have pretty high hopes for it. A lot of grandmotherly things, I think it’ll sell. My stepdad gives me his GPS, his snowshoes, and his fish finder ($90 total) and my dad has already either bought them, or told me he’s going to get my neighbour to buy them. Score.
I leave my mom’s and stop at the grocery store. My dad has gone away for the weekend and I think that I should grab some food for dinner. I end up with tortellini, chocolate milk, fruitopia, and chocolate truffles. I win at groceries.
I arrive home with my left arm a slightly redder shade of angry, but still not too bad.
I go home with the intention of going to bed early, and begin cleaning the stuff I got as it is all covered in dust. This is when I’m summoned to the bar. I go up for what I hope to be a quick drink but due to cheersing every 2 minutes, I end up chugging all my beer in a short period of time.
I get embarrassingly drunk off of two pints and stumble home.
It is now around 1am and I have to be up at 7, but in my tipsy state I can’t bring myself to stop looking at all my yard sale goods and go to bed. Then I remember that I never got around to eating dinner. This will not do. I cook said pasta, and I go all out. I chop up tomatoes and peppers, grate fresh cheese and make a killer sauce. Best meal I’ve cooked in a long time. I finish it around 2pm and stumble my way to bed.

SATURDAY.
I wake up Saturday morning and have to drink a lot of water and let my head clear to assure myself that I am okay to drive. Luckily the pasta seems to have done the trick and I am no longer drunk. Good start to the day. I hop in the car and cruise back to Toronto for the second time this week. In the morning when I leave, it is a little chilly, so I don’t think to bring sunscreen, but I still wear short sleeves. I meet new roomie Vanessa and we begin our apartment hunt.
The first place we see is literally a 5 minute walk from the school. You can see the school if you stand outside. It’s underneath a nail salon and has no windows, and the only entrance is from the back, where you have to walk through a long parking lot that has no lights. When you get inside everything is completely renovated. It clearly has never been rented to anyone before. Everything is brand new. Fancy counters and bathroom, and he’s installing cupboards and whatnot. It isn’t all done when we get there but it still looks promising.
We begin our journey to the second place. My directions say 5th street, so we walk about 30 minutes to get there. When he arrive, the house looks nothing like the building from the ad. We are confused. I double check and the email says 5th street. The original note I took off the phone, however, informs me that it was actually 15th street. It doesn’t help that I sent the email when I was drunk on Thursday night. I do not inform Vanessa that this is why I made the mistake. We hike back to the actual address and go inside. The building looks like a condemned high school and smells like something terrible has happened. There are dirty carpets everywhere and it’s just bad. That’s all.
We don’t have to see the third place for an hour now so we go get lunch and then drive around looking for the other places, to make sure that we have the right addresses this time.
The third place is behind a clothing store. There is an apartment above with 4 bedrooms that used to be rented out to 3 college guys. I was hoping they were still living there so we would have cool neighbours, but they appear to have just moved out. The 4 bedroom is HUGE and I consider finding some additional roommates so we can live there. The 2 bedroom that we are looking at is nice, but it has retro carpets in the bedrooms that we’re not fond of. It does have a view of the neighbouring roof, which has a lawn chair on top. I approve.
The fourth place belongs to a woman named Esther whom I love. She reminds me of a grandma and is very warm and happy. The apartment is really nice but a bit pricey and one of the bedrooms is a lot smaller. I definitely wouldn’t mind living there, but I think I am more attached to Esther than to the actual space.
The fifth and final place is so close to the lake that you can almost see it. It’s probably less than a 2 minute walk and the building was built in 1932. It’s an old Victorian building and looks SO nice. And the entrance is on a residential street and has a lawn, rather than a sketch parking lot. The apartment itself is nice, but again, one of the bedrooms is tiny. Like, it would fit a double bed, and maybe even my desk and bookshelf. But it would not fit me in there as well. And the bathtub has about 20 dead bugs in it.
In the end we decide on the first place. It’s the cheapest ($880/month, compared to the $1200 we were supposed to pay at the other place) and closest to school. It’s a little ghetto and I will miss windows, but for that price I will walk outside to see the sun. I call the man to tell him we will go with the place and he just replies “Yes” to everything I say. English is definitely not his first language, and maybe not even his second language, so there are some communication barriers to say the least. We still have a a few things to check on. Including the fact that neither of us can remember if it had a stove, which might be a problem.
All in all I think it went well, and we are supposed to go down on Tuesday and sign everything. I’ll make sure to check for a stove then.
After a long day of apartment hunting, I head home. Another 2.5 hours in the car with the sun coming in. At this point I have realized that my sunburn is getting out of control, and I try to keep it in the shade, but I’m not having much luck. I buy an aloe moisturizer and slather it on but the burn keeps getting worse.
On the way home I buy beer. I want Rickards White, and they only sell it in 20 packs, half Red and half White. I buy it and tell everyone at the party to remind me when I’m drunk that I probably shouldn’t drink all 20. I’m running on 4 hours sleep so I drink a redbull. I get to the party and pound back 5 beers in 2 hours and I’m happily drunk. No need to consume the rest. This is good news, as I now know I can start buying 6-packs from now on.
There’s a brief altercation where Riley accidentally smashes me in the nose and my freshly-healed nose ring bleeds all over me, but I clean it up and it’s all okay. At one point I open the car door and see someone’s sleeping bag. As I forgot mine, I think this is a great opportunity, so I lock myself in the car and sleep in there.
And by sleep, I mean lay there feeling bad because the sunburned arm has just gotten worse. It started to blister, and despite all the aloe in the world, it’s pretty serious. It actually aches, as if it had been hit with a baseball bat. The pain in my arm sobers me up pretty quickly, and I decide it needs my attention. I have committed to driving some friends home so I wake them up at 6am and drive them home, both of them still drunk. On the way home drunken Riley demands donuts, so I take him to Tim Hortons, where he proceeds to tell me he doesn’t want donuts after all. Not a total waste of a trip though, because I end up getting a Sausage McMuffin that makes me momentarily forget about the pain in my arm.
I go home, clean up a bit, put away the tent and party gear, and have a shower. Around 8:30 the exhaustion takes over so I lay down for a nap. At one point the phone rings. It’s Melissa and she’s telling me about her day. I ask her what time it is and she tells me 3pm. WTF. I could have sworn it was.. not that late at all. I get up and go to her house where we continue to sort through the yard sale stuff. I had no idea yard saling was so much work.

Anyway now I’m home and tired and have to be up in 6 hours to make the 1.5 hour drive to my stupid drunk training. And then back to Toronto on Tuesday to show my dad the apartment and give my deposit. It never ends.
xo.