Apartment Hunt Horrors

A couple weeks ago, my husband brought home great news: A promotion! That's great, honey! They're moving him to a higher volume first assistant manager position at the Big 5 in Oceanside. A 55 minute commute from our apartment in Ramona. We're like, okay. We have a month to month lease, we'll just move. I hop on Craigslist. And thus began the horrific experience that is apartment hunting on a budget in southern CA.

Apart from the near impossible task of getting an apartment complex to call me back, and the one private owned place that had a dead mouse under the kitchen sink, the search hasn't been all that remarkable. Except for the following:

A Craigslist ad for a $925/month 2 bedroom (what! A two bedroom for that cheap! That would mean you could leave for work during the baby's nap without you having to climb out through the window and cause the neighbors to wonder if I am cheating on my husband with a man who sure does look an awful lot like my husband!) in Fallbrook, a half-hour northeast of his new store and an hour drive from here. So we load the baby in the car, plug in the address from the Craigslist ad to my maps app, discover there is no such address, and navigate to a nearby address that does exist, as our baby gets increasingly more irate over being in the car for so long. 

When we can't find the place, I call the number from the ad, only to learn they have cancelled the open house. We can still go “look in the windows” if we want though. Swell, that's exactly what I drove an hour to do. So we finally located the place, and the front of the six-plex was slightly reminiscent of of a third-world country, with lots of dirt, junk, and a few matted-hair-barefoot children. We walk around back to take a look at our unit: 

The window is open, emitting a puke/pee/cleaner/moldy smell. While both pretending we're not about to wretch from it, we peak in. At first glance, we're both like, “Eh...” and then we look a little more and it turns into hell no. A pile of half-swept crap on the stained floor, a hole in the corner of the wall so that the mice and rats have easy access between units, torn carpet in the bedroom. But my favorite was the refrigerator: it was open, revealing stains from what I sincerely hope was puke because the alternative is definitely grosser for a fridge, and a lone styrofoam takeout container that was dripping a clear mucus-like slime (I think it's fertile, honey! #nfpjokes). Needless to say, we peeled out of that place as quick as we could. But actually, it was more like we hauled our baby back to the car parked a block away, buckled him in, tried to console him with graham crackers, and went zzzzzzoom away in my husband's yellow Aveo.