after one long season of waiting

Dear Universe,

I wanted to look at apartments today. I hope you have something good up your sleeve, because it's very suspicious that the dozens of people I have called and e-mailed in the last week haven't gotten back to me, and that the apartment finding service who refused to make an appointment for me over the phone because walk-ins would be fine made me make an appointment for next week when I walked in.

I wonder if this is some kind of karmic retribution for being afraid to take that cute place in Pilsen. Are you angry, universe, that I'm frightened of roommates who are significantly older than me in combination with a complete lack of trees and two feline threats to the poor adopted rat I also house? Surely there's a good roommate out there for her.

I don't understand why every year, it gets harder to find an apartment. I am even looking at sublets. It should not be this difficult! Especially since I can afford a lot more than I used to. I mean, really, I'm not looking for a 2-bedroom that's less than $900 a month anymore. Nor am I looking for one that's less than $1200 (which was, ridiculously, harder than finding the less-than-$900 place). Now I'm looking for a perfectly-standard sub-$700 studio. A studio! I don't even care that I won't actually have room to exist in this place. I am actually fine with lofting my bed and living underneath it, with absolutely no room for guests, because I'd really like my own place. But for some reason, the Chicago Apartment Gods have ordained that there will be NO available studios for less than about $900, unless I want to move to Rogers Park, which is basically Evanston and also No (almost entirely because I'm tired of hauling all my crap across the entire city every time I move, and the very idea makes me weep openly and without restraint).

A bit of logical triangulation identifies this sketchtastic listing as, at about a 73% probability, the horrendous, foreclosed-upon-by-me building next door. I'm wondering if I should ask to see the place, in case it's somehow involved in the universe's karmic retribution against me, so I can get it over with and move on. (No way, even taking karma into account, am I paying a non-refundable $400 to move in to anything (unless it's in outer-space, or at least another city, and the $400 is my one-way plane/space shuttle ticket out of here), let alone a building in administrative limbo.)

Please Let Me Move in Peace?
- evilhippo