some basic math...

I most definitely believe in signs, that is to say I believe that in order to reduce the chance of dying from some sort of stress-induced heart attack, that ladybug that just crawled up my leg means one of two things. Either I can now expect myself to have the heebie-jeebies for at least five minutes because a bug just touched me, or that horrible string of misfortune I have been fighting through all week is most certainly about to dissipate. I began to use this method for determining my mental status around the time that I bought my first vehicle. I bought the GPS first, named her Dorothy, and the car second. It was a Mitsubishi Lancer and more specifically the OZ Rally Edition with 92,222 miles on it. Two is my lucky number and well... Dorothy was looking for the wizard of OZ, so I signed the check and have been following the Yellow Brick Road ever since. My most recent dilemma has me faced with the task of finding an apartment to live in. After two months of countless tours of stained carpets and yellowed ceilings led by stringy-haired landlords, and no sign, I am debating whether the added privacy, cheaper price, and and the aptitude for me to maintain my job, are really worth it.
I thought I had found a place, a quaint victorian home in Fountain Hill. Sure, there may be an abandoned gas station down the block and a couple gangs in the next town over, but the second I stepped onto the wrap-around porch and looked out over the white iron railing, all i thought about was the neighbor’s lawn gnomes and the edge of a yellow brick road. It is just ten minutes from my college campus, two minutes from my favorite coffee shop, 15 minutes to my job, and 18 minutes to my figure drawing class. I would not have to share a bathroom with three other annoying teenage girls, and I would not have to listen to them complain about their boyfriends, their classes, or about how the obnoxious TV that they leave on all night is only playing Friends reruns.  Some nights I do not get to leave work until two in the morning. When I arrive home there is never the worry that I will wake someone up with my intense and skillful gourmet toast making.  College dorms, with their thick cold walls and funny smelling desks drawers, is not an ideal habitat, especially when it costs thirteen thousand dollars.
It just takes basic math skills to determine that living off campus and paying a monthly rent can save thousands of dollars. Even with the price of gas, groceries, and electricity, the fee is easily justifiable when paralleled to the expense of its counter part, the idealized “college campus life.” Though all the signs keep saying “there’s no place like home,” one part is just not adding up. In order to move in I must sign this man Kasper’s lease form.  It is extremely difficult to do when he wont return my phone calls or emails, it has been two weeks since he originally told me the place was mine for the taking and I have learned that it is, in fact, impossible to sign a form when that form does not exist. Do I stray from the yellow path and start up the futile hunt on Craig’s List all over again, or do I wait it out?
At this juncture I am so exhausted by the task of finding a home that I am overwhelmed with jealously of all the students living in that thick cold-walled room, with its funny smelling desk drawers, and its propensity to contain four teenage girls who somehow manage to not peel each other's flesh off. Is thirteen thousand dollars the price to pay to not have to deal with the stress of apartment hunting, or is the stress of debt the price to pay for not having the will power to hold onto a space of my own? Someone send me a sign.