Crystal and I just signed our fifth lease at our apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s our first apartment here, and we moved up from Atlanta with basically no idea how any of this worked. Here’s a running list of the blunders we’ve racked up along the way.

• I saw a charge on our account I didn’t recognize and got locked out of our debit card. Had to use Coinstar to scrape together cash for the things credit cards couldn’t cover.
• We drop off laundry at the local laundromat sometimes. Every year they announce a two-week vacation and a last day open before they close. We’ve forgotten this and had to re-wear clothes for two weeks more than once.
• Crystal got bit by a dog not long after we moved here.
• The cats figured out how to open the freezer while we were away for a night in Boston. All the food had to be thrown out.
• I didn’t know the gas company needs two weeks’ lead time to turn service on. We cooked everything in a crock pot while we waited on National Grid.
• We slept on an air mattress for a month because we didn’t have a bed yet and didn’t know where to find a mattress store.
• I threw our keys away while cooking dinner and spent a while convinced someone had stolen them before I found them in the trash.

Five years in, we’ve mostly got it figured out. Mostly.