Frustrating day - spent most of it running around doing errands - grocery shopping, other shopping, looking at an apartment (which was depressing), getting temporarily lost...

This place is really weird 'cause when you look at listings and such, there seem to be oodles and oodles of places, but even if you call the same day, there's some reason why you can't have the place. And it's difficult to get anyone to show you a place if they know you're not desperate to be in within a couple of weeks. If you're planning ahead (or trying to) it's just an exercise in frustration. And on top of that, lots of the good places have really long waiting lists (i.e. a couple of years). We're on some of them, but it's really a moot point. I don't know if I have the energy to persevere and find a great place - it's just depressing so far playing telephone tag, having people freak out about lead contents (until I tell them how old the kids are), or tell you they don't even want to show the place if you're not looking for the 1st of the next month. What a pain in the ass!

At least the car is working (knock on wood) right now! This would be a real pain in the ass if I had to do it all on transit!