The Landlord's Game

House hunting is the biggest emotional roller coaster I have ever had in my life. Sure finding a job sucks, and dating is kind of hard, but I have never in my life been so up and down, excited as all get out one minute then completely depressed the next, as when trying to find a new place to live.

And we even have it easy this time. We're here. The last two times we've moved it's been from a different state. We rented the house we're in now from nearly 3,000 miles away, sight unseen. Before that we moved from Hell on earth Vernal to Washington. We found a house listed online, drove to Washington one weekend, took a short tour, signed the papers and moved in two weeks later.

Both times, and even before that when we moved to Vernal, finding a place was instrumental to huge life changes. If we didn't find a place to live we weren't moving and weren't taking new jobs. We would stay where we were. Now that isn't an option. We have to move. And nothing else is changing, our jobs will be the same, there are no giant life changes coming with this one.

Since we moved to New York in September we've been living in a fully-furnished lakeside vacation cottage. It's tiny but nice, but we knew when we moved in it would be temporary. Come June the amount we pay per month will rent this place for a weekend. We are grateful to have found it, but we are really looking forward to using our own dishes again, sleeping on our own bed again, sitting on our own couch again.

You never know what you're going to find when house hunting. This beautiful house is in Canaseraga and wasn't even the brightest one on the block. There was also a yellow one, a teal one and a baby-blue one. I couldn't not take a photo.

We have this nice two month window, from the first of April until the end of May, to move out of here. That is actually causing problems for my mental state. We find a place that would work but isn't perfect and torture ourselves trying to decide if we just go for it or wait to see if something better comes available.

In two weeks we've contacted dozens of people, through Craigslist, newspaper ads, from driving around looking at signs on lawns, and have found roughly 5 that will take our dogs. This is incredibly nerve-wracking, and makes it even more tempting to take a great house even if it is probably too far away. It makes it so I get incredibly excited every time the phone rings with a local number, even though it's usually just someone calling to say they don't take pets.

We're on several lists, which is always depressing to hear. If there are people ahead of us who don't have pets, they are more likely to get a place than we are. But then we get an email two weeks later letting us know that all the people ahead of us have fallen through and are we interested? And I'm ecstatic again, this place is close and nice, but it's more expensive than the great house that is far away.

I feel like I'm going insane.