Moving is a pain in the ass.

So, last Friday, we started moving. We've been living in a small, cramped, dirty apartment for the last 4.2599874158 years. It's a low-income place and carries with it all of the lovely little sterotypes that come with that description. A couple weeks ago, they found a dead girl in her apartment. They don't know if she killed herself or someone else did the job for her. We sometimes have fireworks going off in the parking lot for no good reason. VERY few of the parents actually watch their kids and if we were dumb enough to leave anything of OUR kids' outside, it was usually gone or broken by morning. Needless to say, we'd simply had enough. It had been enough for quite a while now, but only recently had we been making enough money to consider it worth the trouble of moving.
We found this place back in January. We had been watching it, thinking about it, for a long time and decided that we could finally do it. We put in our phone call for an application and waited. We filled out the paperwork and sent it back and waited some more. We got more paperwork, sent it back and guess what - we still waited. After a couple months of this, we learned that the owners of this collection of townhouses had decided to sell. We were told that they had been informed of our interest and would contact us. So we....waited. Again. Finally we spoke to someone and had to start paperwork all over because it hadn't been done right the first time. Eventually, after such a lengthy process that we had nearly given up, we found out that we got the place and we could pick up the keys on Thursday. This meant that we were able to give our current dwelling a whopping 5 days notice that we'd be out. Yeah - they were thrilled about that.
I can't tell you how much dirt and crap builds up in the corners of a house in a period of nearly 5 years. Granted, the girls were about 3 when we moved in and kids aren't very clean most of the time anyway. It took me a whole day just to clean the walls, floors, counters, etc, once we got all of our shit out.
In the midst of all of this, I asked my little girl to help me clean up the yard. I smoke and had a really bad habit of just tossing the butts all over the yard, knowing that they'd simply mingle with everyone else's. She agreed readily enough. After a few minutes of picking up trash and butts, she stops, looks up at me and says, "So, am I gonna get paid for this situation here?" I just about dropped my trash bucket, stared at her in disbelief for a moment and then burst out laughing like a madwoman. Her and her twin sister do this to me all the time, saying the strangest things. Just when you get used to them being 7, they pop out with something that makes you think they are 12 or some days, 23.
This place is soooo much nicer than our old place. The walls aren't that lovely smoker's yellow. The carpets aren't shit-brown. The countertops aren't stained and pockmarked from years of use. We don't have neighbors that smoke crack - that's probably the biggest plus. We had to make a certain amount of money to even get the place. Too much and we couldn't have it and too little and we had no chance. The townhouses are only ten years old, have updated appliances, large rooms, brand new heaters/ac's, two FULL bathrooms and three bedrooms. There is so much more light in this place. Which, would normally be a good thing, except for the fact that now I can see how old and dingy our washer/dryer and other furniture is. Luckily, we bought a brand new living room set just before we moved and have matching, beautiful, new furniture (for the first time ever) that no one else has put their stinky feet or ass on. And now I can dig out all of my decorations from storage and hang up family pictures, the hand carved mask collection, a couple paintings that I did and some of my kids' framed artwork. I finally have an adult's house and it only took me about 14 years!