Life, or something like it.

Well, I guess I have some stuff to tell you guys.

First off, I've decided not to move. My significant is moving in with me, and we're going to take over the 2nd bedroom as more or less a big closet and shooting space. This is a pretty expensive ordeal since it is making my rent go up significantly, but after multiple apartment rejections and the frustration of looking at a zillion places, it just seems like the most ideal option for the time being. I'm going to hope to buy a house at the end of the year if I can get my savings going okay. This whole experience was so stressful that I lost some weight (I'm not complaining about that, lol), and I was having pretty severe sleep issues. I would wake up worrying about where I was going to live. Thank goodness I have the best landlord ever. He is very understanding and just threw out my 30 day notice.

I found out with all of this that part of the reason for the housing shortage that I've been running into is due to airbnb. People that usually rent out properties are turning them into hotels and making triple the profit. There's a big class action lawsuit here because some apartment evicted or let all their tenant's leases lapse, and then kicked them out so they could just airbnb the entire building. A full apartment in Los Angeles can get $500 a night from airbnb, and a full apartment monthly to tenants only makes $1500. This is definitely a problem.. so I figure if you can't beat em, join em. My goal is to be the best slum lord ever in a year, lol.

On Sunday I decided to take the next step to test out my vintage resale skills, and a friend and I got a booth at the Pasadena Rose Bowl swap meet. This required leaving home at 3am so that we could do the full booth set up, and be ready for some of these crazy people who start shopping at 5am (seriously, what is wrong with them?!).  I was very excited about this, but we ran into a major snag... it was 108 degrees. Yes, that's what I said, 108 degrees and cooking on dark cement. by 10:30am everyone started to leave because of a freak heat wave. Vendors aren't allowed to leave until 3pm though, and I seriously thought I was going to die. I was panting like a dog, and had to take breaks where I'd sit in the car in the a/c so I didn't pass out. The money was okay considering how few people were there (I've gone many times and never seen it so dead), but I want to do it again when the weather is less torturous.. I'm thinking Sept or Oct.  When I got home I immediately took a cold shower and slept for 3 or 4 hours. I'm pretty sure I'm still recovering from the exhaustion of it all.

I am currently trying to upload the monthly video to dropbox for my higher level patrons, but it is taking forever. I may have to reboot or try again tomorrow. Clearly something is wrong when it says its going to take 12 hours. Anyway, keep your peepers open for the video, should be there soon (hopefully). I'm doing things a bit backwards this month.

I'm going to stop this here. Thank you all for being here with me!!

xoxo

Carlotta

PS: the photo above is by Isaiah Mays