My roommates and I have to be out of our crappy little house by the end of the month - our lease is up. One of my roommates has plans to move downtown. Another roommate and I have been through some recent drama-rama and haven't spoken in a few weeks, so I'm not sure where she'll be living. And my last roommate, your very own assistant editor, Miss Ashley Plummer, will be living somewhere again with yours truly.

As I write this, it's the middle of the month and Ashley and I do not have a new place. Our requirements, I thought, were not too demanding. Ashley has plans to adopt Lulu, a small two year old Rott-mix with a very sweet face, so we require a place that allows dogs. I would like a place with a washer and dryer available. We both would like a place where we could bring people over and not have to open our front door, saying, "It's kind of crappy, but there are four of us, and it's really tiny, and you really should've seen it before we moved in, it was so much worse, and. . . " We would also like this little imaginary home we haven't been able to find to be a house - not an apartment - and affordable. Preferably under $900 a month.

And Broad Ripple? We want to find this house near you! I just want a place where my couch actually matches the rest of the furniture, where the drapes are not hot pink, where there aren't holes in the drywall of the ceiling from past tenants who would have parties, get drunk, and throw knives skyward so they'd stick to the ceiling above them (come over, I'll show you the little holes). This was the house I was able to tolerate when I was still in school. We made it kitschy and fun, nicknaming our house the Toilet House for the toilet on the porch that I'd planted a sunflower in. We're the house with Christmas lights strategically pinned along the walls, an oversized poster of Marilyn Monroe smiling down over our living room. Ashley and I, in a fit of inebriated rage, made a huge poster sign to hang up in the living room that reads, "WAKE UP! CAN YOU HEAR ME?" - the first couple of lines from a song by Sparta. We have photos of Billy Idol covering the inside of our front door and a small bouquet of tampons tied together, their stems sprouting a bushel of pink faux-daffodils. We have a lawn sign one roommate stole off of someone's grass that reads, "St. Thomas Aquinas SAUSAGEFEST!"

We were a fun house when I was still in school. We really were.

But I stayed in this house my first year out of college, which may not have been a good move. And it's not that I'm trying to be a grown up, to find a grown up house to fit my grown up job and blah blah blah. Frankly, I think that's incredibly boring. I just want a decent house in Broad Ripple where I can move on from the College Phase of my life.

I've begun to ramble.

Anyway - this fantastic house Ashley and I have been looking for near you, Broad Ripple?

We can't find you. Anywhere. In fact, we're wondering if we're being a little presumptuous, thinking we could find a house to rent in Broad Ripple that allows pets, has a washer and dryer, and is not crappy for under $900. Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places. Maybe.

So, happy little village. I want to move to you, I do. I want to bring you over and not have to preface my home with excuses about how it's crappy. I want to introduce you to Lulu. Will you help me find a home?