Our new home

The first time I saw this apartment, I knew it was "ours." The apartment in Manhattan was the third that Brent and I looked at when we wandered around several neighborhoods with our broker.

It is HUGE, by New York standards, meaning is it 650 square feet... all for the low, low price of, well, let's just say it's not QUITE $3,000 a month. (I know, I know - it's I-N-S-A-N-E!)

So Brent and I now live in Clinton in Manhattan, which is near Central Park. Native New Yorkers know the area as Hell's Kitchen, but it was recently re-named Clinton to clean up its bad reputation.

On the first floor of our apartment is an Italian restaurant I have yet to try and a bar and grill. The only annoying part about living above a bar is their patrons often smoke outside and get pretty roudy by 3 a.m. But it's all good. I've noticed that the windows in New York are amazingly sound-proof.

Otherwise, I've been telling people that our apartment is on the edge of crappiness. There's an abandoned building right next door to our apartment and the sidewalk is paved with trash. Old ads and movie posters line the building. My favorite is a poster where Tyra Banks is portraying four different emotions - happy, surprised, scared, and fierce. The "surprised" Tyra stands out the most because someone stuck a bright yellow sticker on her forehead that reads "I'm an asshole. I wear fur." Everything past our apartment and the abandoned building also leaves something to be desired. A psychic practices across the street and there's a high school down a ways. That means there are dozens of punk teenagers who pick fights with each other around 3 p.m. every day.

But the positives of our apartment far outweigh the negatives. Everything from our apartment toward the park is beautiful. And I love that our apartment has doormen who are on duty from 7 a.m. until midnight on weekdays and from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. on weekends. They question everyone who doesn't live in our building and call us when we have visitors so we're never surprised by a knock at the door.

This way, I won't have to worry about some stranger wandering the hallways of our building waiting for me to come home so he can force himself into my apartment, slit my eyelids, and rape and torture me for 19 hours. ( True story - happened to a woman in Manhattan earlier this year.)

There's washing machines and dryers in the basement, trash chutes near the elevator (no walk-ups for us!), and any type of food that I happen to be craving within a few blocks, including an Italian restaurant on three of the four corners right outside our door.

And there actually is a Starbucks on every block - three within less than two blocks of us. So no matter where I'm heading, I can grab an eggnog latte on the way.

Now all that's left is to figure out where to go first!