Loverpants and my story is well-documented. We met as Resident Advisors in college.  Sharing  Walls, aka Building Community was the nexus of our romantic relationship. It is all we have ever known. Even when we have purchased a home, we have shared  walls with other condo association tenants. We have lived in the country, in the city, and we have always had people living either above or below us.

It is not the life I thought I wanted, but it's the life that I would not trade.

Our two children have only ever known this life. They came home from the hospital to a beehive of activity. We actively feared that if we employed the Ferber-method, we'd have some explaining to do to our neighbors. (We promise! We're not neglecting them by letting them cry! We're just trying to get more than 20 minutes of sleep at a time! Fingers crossed, hey? {Insert maniacally hopeful eyebrows raised in pleading hope that this works}).

We have experienced all the benefits and the drawbacks of living in close community with people whose blood we do not share which have included: feeling like a constant disruption; dealing with near-constant disruption; getting contact high from the weed being smoked downstairs; sharing holiday gatherings; never truly feeling alone; being able to call upon built-in babysitters; having an extended family.

In fact, we just moved to live at a boarding academy. We are off-campus now until housing opens on campus. We may live here for the rest of our careers, sharing walls with sweaty teenage boys. For us, the expense of living at a boarding academy is second to none. We have all the access to a city, take many of our meals in the school dining hall, and get to enjoy close proximity to brilliant people. Also, we have no house payment. Kerchingaling.

When we were searching for our temporary housing, though, we relied on beaucoup online resources since we were not able to fly to prospect apartments. That's right, we had to ferret out housing from afar and hope that it would be as described.

We used all of the usual online resources to browse apartments online and even benefited from the new venture of Cara Concierge who put boots on the ground when we couldn't otherwise be there. We couldn't have landed in a better place, with better landlords and better location. Most of all, we're glad to share walls once again with non-family. We may not be the HGTV poster family, but we're grateful for our grown-up life that makes us feel like young RAs.