How to choose an apartment

I don’t make Nino pay child support and I pay him back for almost all the money he spends when he’s with the kids. He just sent me an accounting for all the times I haven’t paid him back in 15 years. I owe him $8540. I told him he has to wait because I’m currently being evicted from an apartment I love, and if I kill myself over being evicted and people see I just paid Nino they might think I killed myself because of him.

He laughed because he knows I know he wouldn’t care. Anyway, don’t worry about the eviction. I mean, worry a little, okay, because my rent is $5000/month. We can both worry a little together maybe, since obviously Nino is not worried, but I have things under control. It’s just a cashflow glitch — that might crush someone without my superhuman dissociation capabilities.

I go to CVS to cope. I buy Cookie Brownie Bar Mix because I am a mature adult now and I’m on Vyvanse and Topiramate, both approved by the FDA for bulimia, so I have things totally under control. I’m buying scientifically determined (by me) perfect food to avoid binging. The mix has two packets, one for the brownie and one for the chocolate chip cookies. So you can ration yourself.

Monday I got the letter from the landlord’s lawyer. It reminded of the kind of letter that Mr. Rogers used to open. They came to my door, knocked, and I said (to my dog), “Oh! Who’s at the door?” And then, there it was the little package of court documents that says: You’re fucked.

I wish I could make a trade with the law firm for SEO or something. I miss the go-go 2010s when BMO Harris Bank paid for a link on my blog without caring that I was social media non-grata because of a recent post. Anyway, not only does the law firm not care about backlinks, they also don’t care about phone calls. I know because they didn’t return mine. I mean, why would they? We will meet in court.

Did I ever tell you about the only time Nino took me to court? Nino had a huge stack of papers. I had nothing. The judge asked me why I didn’t bring anything. I said, “We don’t need to be here so I have nothing to say.” She asked Nino to explain why we were there. Then she yelled at him for a full five minutes for wasting her time. Maybe five hundred minutes. The amount of time doesn’t matter because this is not relevant except to explain the genesis of my courtroom hubris.

I open the chocolate chip cookie mix and eat the chips. Then I stand up and put the packets in the box and put the box in the cupboard like a high-functioning self-loving person. And then I make a list of the things I need to do to make sure I don’t get evicted.

I know you’re thinking it’s a little late for that. But the building manager has been so nice. And anyway, people have thought I’m past the point of no return so many times. And I’m not. Yet.

When we first looked at this apartment, on the 24th floor, I saw the windows could open. Like, for real open. My great grandparents bought a condo in John Hancock Center when it was built in 1969. There were huge window seats built around the whole edge of the interior to keep you from feeling like you’d walk to your death. You didn’t live so close to windows then. Now windows invite you to your death.

So I did a sanity check: Would I kill myself if I had an open invitation when I got out of bed every day? I thought: Nah. And then I thought: Look! I just made the assumption that I’d get out of bed every day! This apartment is great for me!