The home that paper mache built. Or some other crappy material.

We have lived in our new apartment for 30 days now.

When the wind blows, it rattles.  And it’s cold.

It’s like the house that the second little pig built out of sticks. Or a house of cards.  The walls are made of paper mache, and it’s held together with Elmer’s glue.

Oh, or to glam it up–  it’s like we’ve moved onto a movie set. Everything looks all nice and shiny, but IT IS NOT REAL.

We picked this place because it had just been redone, it was in a neighborhood that we knew, and it had a central AC and heating system. We live in Southern California, but in the dreaded valley. The day we moved in it was 103 degrees, and tonight it is 47.

We found out on the first day that the AC did not work, nor did the heat. The little box on the wall is there. The vents in each room are there. It appears to have central heat and air but… gotcha!

We also have shiny, new faucet handles in the redone bathrooms. The second day in our new apartment, I learned that they are not really for turning water on and off- they are for show. I learned this when the hot water faucet handle came off in my hands and I could not turn the water off. The water, by the way, that comes out dark brown for the first few minutes. Because, of course, one is not expected to actually drink, clean, cook, or bathe with it.

It also appears that we have several doors to separate our rooms, but that, my friends, is just “movie magic”.  They only look like doors.  Real doors are expected to simply do two things: open and close.  Ours do no such thing. Well, most of them just don’t close. But you truly can’t open a door that doesn’t close. Side note- put that on a fortune cookie.

The building also has a security intercom system so that visitors can buzz your apartment to be let it. Correction, it has a pretend intercom system. No packages, no visitors. We might not even have a real address, I’ll have to check on that one.

We also have fake shower doors that my Bam Bam tore off the hinges the first week we were here. In all fairness, that could be due to the fake doors not actually being attached, or it could be my toddler’s super human strength- that one is up in the air.

But the full length, mirror- closet doors in the bedroom for sure, are not up for debate. THEY SHOULD BE ATTACHED TO SOMETHING. They were seriously just “placed” in front of the closet, and soon enough just fell over into the closet. If I must get technical, this is a huge, rolling- door- thingy.  Yet if you stand on the other side of the room and blow, it topples over. Completely over- like a domino.

Through our paper mache walls, I can hear our neighbors brush their teeth, and I am astounded that other people actually live here in this fake building. We are an average, well educated, family that somehow got tricked into living in this disastrously, cruel joke, of an apartment.

As my husband still recovers from swine, and our fight for heat continues, I am surprised I haven’t had several heart attacks over the last month.

I live in constant fear that this sucky, trap, house of cards is going to fall apart around us the next time the wind blows.

On the bright side… yeah… I have to get back to you on that one.  The whole “at least you have your health” thing doesn’t fly in this case, since we are all suffering from a horrible cough.

All I can do is bundle my Bam Bam, hold my family close, and cuddle on our “new” Berber carpet that is quickly unraveling like a poorly knit sweater. And I can’t get over this gnawing feeling that there is a 180 foot Marcia Brady standing outside, with a dangly charm bracelet, about to knock us all down.

Home Sweet Home.