1st apartment has reminders of home, family

---

Tweet

My parents used to get out of bed and stand on their tiptoes in front of the window in their pajamas, peering over one another to see if my then-boyfriend lingered in the driveway when he dropped me off.

Living in an apartment is kind of like that: everyone on top of each other, right there with you any time anything happens, which can be good and bad.

I’m finding my new apartment came with all the comforts of home.

It’s all so familiar.

I have a shower I can stand in without wearing flip flops. I have a kitchen I don’t know how to cook in. I have a place to park my car. I have the same bedroom set I’ve had since third grade.

And it appears I have a mom here too, who leaves sticky notes on my bedroom door reminding me to “turn off the lights and unplug anything you’re not using,” followed by a little smiley face.

You might think moving off campus and into an apartment makes you more independent, but in my experience, I just keep having déjà vu, remembering the “DON’T USE THE TOWELS, MOM” notes taped to the towels in the bathroom I shared with my little sister three years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, these girls are some of my best friends and now it’s just like we’re a real family — my family — in fact.

We’re a whole happy family in our four-bedroom, two bathroom, too-fancy-for-college-students apartment.

We don’t have to show our student IDs to get in the door, or check in our guests. We don’t have to worry about being written up or getting a knock on the door from the resident mentors.

My parents aren’t thrilled, now that they’ve seen the “luxury” apartment the four of us conned them into paying for each month.

We have a balcony, keys for the building and for each of our bedrooms and a pager system for security.

We have a dishwasher, an elevator, and a separate bedroom for each of the four of us. And we have air conditioning.

“Enjoy it,” my parents say with a laugh, “You’ll be slumming it next year.”

And I think it’s safe to say I am enjoying it.

During the summer, my friend and I subleased a house with a stove so old and difficult to use the plastic coating on the pan melted into scrambled eggs I tried to make.

It’s nice to know that even if I probably won’t cook anything, I have that option in the new apartment.

When my roommate and I moved out at the end of the summer, she was surprised to find mildew in the back of her closet and on the possessions she’d stored back there.

That’s not a problem this semester. The only clothing I’ve lost so far are several pairs of socks.

When I come home from work, I’m sometimes greeted by Asha, who looks up at me from the couch and then runs away, one of my socks in her mouth.

I wonder where she’s keeping all the socks she steals from me.

Maybe our apartment is more like a zoo than a family — there’s Asha and Kara, the two black cats, there’s the two rabbits, the two fish, and then there’s me and the other three human roommates.

I’m struggling to keep my fish, Fish, alive, but mostly because Asha and Kara take every chance they get to try to sneak into the bathroom and jump onto the counter to swat at his plastic bowl.

Fish now spends a lot of his time in the medicine cupboard.

Asha spends a lot of time in my bedroom, knocking over water glasses and flower vases, probably in preparation for the day I forget to hide Fish.

Luckily, there’s a note on the bathroom door to remind me to keep it shut.

I spend a lot of time missing my meal plan, wondering why we all used to complain about dorm food, wondering if my parents will notice if I charge a meal plan to my student account and thinking I might as well be a vegetarian, since all I eat these days is Instant Breakfast and pasta.

Pasta with butter. Pasta with Prego sauce. Pasta with Ragu sauce, which, by the way, is disgusting.

It could be worse — Fish has the same little brown pellets every day, twice a day.

Except, of course, for when I forgot to feed him because I forget I have a fish because he’s in the medicine cabinet.

Which is part of the reason having a stand-in mother as part of my stand-in family is so great.

If it weren’t for Mom checking in to see if I’ve fed Fish, if I’ve changed his water, I might be the only roommate without at least one pet of her own.

Even better, maybe someone will make a sticky note about that, and stick it to his bowl: “Feed Fish! Lock him in the medicine cabinet!”

---