For the first time, in a very long time, Hungry & Fit will live somewhere for more than a year. After heading to college in 2007, Hungry hadn’t stayed in a single place for more than a year. Sometimes those moves would just be from one room to another in the same building, but once Hungry & Fit teamed up, we’ve had some much more distinct moves. After leaving New York in May of 2012, with a car packed with nearly everything we owned, we settled in Boulder, Colorado. This is when our string of moving into new apartments after one-year leases began.
We lived near downtown Boulder, on the creek, in a 450-square foot, second floor, apartment that had a nice fireplace. Nymeria and Misty joined the family, and after Misty passed, Sajah joined us. I can’t remember what we paid for rent, but my gut says it was somewhere around $550 a month.
We moved a tiny bit east, closer to the Dive Shop/Swim School, with easier highway access for Fit to make it to the Y. Dovah and Noke joined the family, and she ended up costing us our entire security deposit, since they had to replace all the rugs in this larger one-bedroom apartment on the second floor. I think that this one cost about $800 a month.
Even though we originally decided to live in Boulder for longer than two years, in order to pay off our student loans, we did well enough to pay them off sooner, and bored, we decided to move to LA, so we could be closer to Fit’s family. We installed a trailer hitch to the CR-V and rented an incredibly-hard-to-reverse-with trailer from U-Haul. We packed everything in it, and the car, loaded the four animals up, and made the drive through the desert.
We crashed at Fit’s parent’s house in Santa Monica while looking for employment and housing. We never had work lined up when we moved to Boulder or Los Angeles. We don’t mind challenges and adventures as long as we’re in it together.
We found a large one-bedroom apartment on the 4th floor of an old building, with a really old elevator, in Koreatown. Parking was a nightmare, the cockroaches were massive and it wasn’t a great place for Fit and Noke to walk around, so after a year, we decided to move. Looking back, it would’ve been nice to continue to pay the very reasonable rent, which was about $1050 a month.
We decided to move west, to try to avoid some of the heat you find further east. We settled in West Hollywood, in a one-bedroom apartment that had a dedicated parking space. Unfortunately, there were a lot of smaller roaches here, parking remained challenging because of some nightmarish neighbors and it was still really hot. It was a great neighborhood to walk Noke, and my commute was much better, but at $1500 a month in rent, we decided to move again.
Then, we came to what is arguably our worst apartment yet. We decided to give two bedrooms a chance, since at the time, we were making the most we’ve ever made. This massive spot in Mar Vista was a first floor apartment with a dedicated parking spot, just a few miles from the beach. Unfortunately, due to climate change, we couldn’t beat the heat and still suffered. Parking was an issue since our horrible neighbors would block parking spots and the driveway. Management was completely useless so problems were never addressed. There were even more roaches here than ever before. At $2200 a month, we were facing constant flooding and plumbing issues. Outlets weren’t connected inside the wall. The place was a complete joke and we asked to move out early, citing multiple ways that they broke our lease. They gave us our full security deposit, despite damage that the 7 cats/kittens that we fostered for months did, and we moved out after about 10 months. This was the first time we didn’t have a year lease in 5 years.
Rebounding from arguably the worst year of my life, due to professional issues (I got royally screwed by my employers) and personal issues (I don’t talk about my family here), but with the never-ending support of my lovely wife, we found a place in Hollywood, not far from our West Hollywood apartment. This second floor, one bedroom apartment looked pretty nice when we checked it out. There was a locked parking garage with a dedicated spot, a pool, laundry machines that take credit cards and secure mailboxes inside the locked gate to enter. Also, it was close to Alana’s former gym and it sits at the base of Runyon Canyon.
We just passed a year here, this week.
For the first time ever, in our eight or so years together, we’ve stayed somewhere for more than a year! Rebounding from the least productive year of my life, I’ve moved into the most productive. We’ve been so busy here that time flew by, and instead of counting the days until we could move out without breaking our lease, we rushed to see if we could stay here month to month. We found out we could and after a short debate, we decided that the pros of staying here outweigh the cons. Even though it is so “not us” to stay here, we couldn’t justify leaving. I think that means that life is pretty damn good!
We just want to thank everyone for their support, whatever form it may come in, and I’d like to thank Fit for being the best partner that I could possibly ask for, considering how much of a handful I can be!
Yours truly,
Hungry
