In my dream apartment...

Chevrons, green chevrons, everywhere!

But for real: it's a three bedroom in my current neighborhood. One for me, one for my sisterroommate, and a third I can use as an office (and guest room when needed). I want a real desk, where I can park my laptop and maybe get an external monitor, with room to stash my already tiny printer. (Right now, it lives on the floor in the living room, because there's nowhere else for it. It's about a half inch too tall to slide under the living room shelf o' miscellaney.)

I want to be able to hang up corkboards where I can pretend I'm going to post inspirational pictures or plotting notecards, maybe a whiteboard where I can scribble unreadable notes I'll never remember to erase. Lots of bookshelves. Oh, and a closet - since it's not one of the bedrooms, we can keep the freaking guest sheets there, and not folded in a hamper in the corner of my bedroom. And maybe the broom and mop and vacuum, since right now they live in a different corner of my bedroom and a nook in the kitchen between the wall and the fridge.

(I don't care about the kitchen much, tbh. It can be small, we don't use it often. But maybe a little more counter space than our current place. Seeing as our current place has literally none.)

It would also be nice to have that office with that desk so I can get rid of my current, barely-usable desk, which is in my bedroom. I'm lucky, my bedroom is actually pretty large. (My sister's is the size of a closet.) The desk is a fold down: three big drawers at the bottom, then the fold down space above. The flappy part that provides the writing surface is starting to come loose. I can't rest much weight on it at all -- my laptop and a mug of tea starts to get a little worrying. Then there's the fact that my cat, who weighs in at a glorious 18 pounds, will jump on it if she can get in to my room, which she always can, because she knows how doors work. I would replace the desk if I could, but... I can't, because those three drawers? They're my dresser. Which I need more than a desk. This is the compromise that lets me have one at all; if I get rid of it, I have nowhere to keep my dozens of stripey shirts. (Or the rest of my clothes.)

So: I want an office with a desk, a bedroom with a dresser, a bunch of closets. I daydream about a doorman on the UWS, or a brownstone downtown. But frankly, those are both bonuses.

I just checked Zillow. Every time I do that, I give in and slide the maximum price up 50 grand. I have to go up to $450,000 to get up to a dozen results in all of Manhattan. (None of them in my neighborhood.) That is... more than I can afford, or will be able to.

This isn't a realistic goal. But a 2BR, uptown, with a 30-year mortgage, before I'm 40. That is actually a not totally implausible goal.

Maybe it will even have closets.