I really need to set up my household goods move this week. I’ve just about accepted that continued occupation of the fabulous River Place North Building does not nurture a balanced mental state of being.

The rent for my apartment is reasonable. It includes all utilities, a parking spot, access to a renovated gym and wireless Internet throughout the building. It is also a five-minute walk to my language school and the Metro. This all sounds fantastic on paper, and if I were as kind as the previous tenant, I’d tell my landlord that I’d do the Craig’s List posting and show the apartment for him. But I just went through the Hell of selling my condominium just a few months back, so I’m going to do the renter thing and move on out without feeling bad that the owner has to find the next victim on his own.

While grateful to live in a place that offers basic shelter and amenities (you can see that I am preparing myself for the unknowns of life in Africa), I am counting down the days until the movers come and I turn these keys over. Why?

First, I like doors. There is a door to my closet-sized kitchen (which I don’t really understand in the first place) whose handle comes off every time someone attempts to use it. It’s like a gag doorknob. The door to my bathroom has been coated with so many layers of paint that it will never click shut again. I laugh quietly any time the occasional guest panics mildly when the door pops open 30 seconds after they attempt to wedge it closed and are using my bathroom in supposed privacy. One-half of the sliding doors to my closet sits off its track and next to the bedroom entryway. My untrained eye thought it was actually the door to my bedroom when I first got here- but it’s not. I have no idea when the bedroom door was removed from its hinges and left this apartment- but I miss having a bedroom door in general. Not that I enjoy having guests in this Rosslyn paradise, but when I find there is someone sleeping on my living room floor, there is no escape or privacy.

It is the 8th of November here in Washington D.C. and I am presently clothed as if I live in the tropics. This is because the building heat has finally been turned on and there is no thermostat at my disposal here in the apartment. Some invisible authority decides when I do and do not get heat or air conditioning during the year. It doesn’t help that my big picture window faces east, so while I get plenty of sun in the morning, I now understand what a Thanksgiving turkey goes through if I don’t vacate before 8:30 each morning. I suppose it’s better than the first cold snap about two weeks ago and the building still blasted air conditioning and also ran out of hot water. That was the night where I ran out of patience and walked out of my apartment (clad in PJs and wrapped in a blanket), and banged on the door of my neighbors at 10:45pm to ask them to keep it down.

My neighbors- I am sure that they are very nice people. But they have three children under the age of five and everyone goes to bed at about midnight every night and spend their waking hours screaming or yelling. I hear their phone ringing, the answering machine pick up and the messages that are left. I am also treated to the father’s many shower performances of bad songs in Hindi (at least I think)- which accompany all other manner of things in the bathroom that I don’t need to tell you about in any detail. It’s pretty classy.

I was going to go on and gripe about other things that drive me crazy about this building, but I’ll end it here. I have an aversion to whining, which I have sufficiently accomplished in this post. Besides, the rising heat level forces me to wrap this up and head outside in my skirt and tank top to see what today’s real temperature is like. I look forward to spending December and January on Cape Cod when I can start complaining about how the thrill of cold weather is gone and I am ready for sub-Saharan Africa.

They say that a bitching sailor is a happy sailor.