If your idea of a perfect Sunday is one that opens with you going temporarily blind following a fit of frothy, incoherent rage, The New York Times real estate section is your jam.

Last Sunday, the Times' column "The Hunt," which normally features the trials and travails of in-over-their-heads New Yorkers trying to find a suitable 700 square feet in which to spend their eternity, served up a horrible 26-year-old child's horrible parents buying her an apartment and also an Oompa Loompa because she wants an Oompa Loompa NOWWW.

The Evans trio, Mom, Dad, and 26-year-old, are like a family of bears or aliens, literally unable to conceive of a world in which various mundane things happen. Why would you live in an apartment with a lobby, when an apartment with a lobby is too much "like a hotel?" Why would you have narrow kitchen when a nice kitchen has already been invented?

They are like a brilliant work of acerbic fiction.

This is their story:

Lena Evans is a 26-year-old adult who has a job in PR but I guess works for free because her parents are buying her an apartment. Her parents, Ronald and Ellen, live in California but sometimes visit their daughter in New York. Worried that they might otherwise have to sleep on the street, huddled over subway grates, when they visit, Ronald and Ellen decide to buy or rent their daughter an apartment that is big enough for them to physically exist in for brief periods of time every once in a while.

The budget for renting an apartment is in the $2,000s; the budget for buying in the $600,000s; the allotted tolerance for bullshit: N/A (the limit does not exist).

Let's go shopping.

Lena Evans feels that it is important for her apartment to have a beautiful kitchen because her mother (who will visit sometimes) cooks (Lena doesn't, really) and will most likely want to spend her time in New York City confined to the kitchen, cooking for her daughter.

Another interesting fact about Lena's mother (not her), is that she exists beyond space and time, i.e. that the temporal laws of our dimension do not apply to her:

A great kitchen, Ms. Evans said, was important to her mother, whom she described as the kind of cook who if she "doesn't have time to pick something up, like a chocolate cake, she will make one instead."

The first apartment Ms. Evans sees is a studio in Greenwich Village that is within her price range and that she likes.

FUCK THAT STUDIO. NO WAY THAT'S HAPPENING.

Next, she checks out a "large studio…in an Art Deco co-op building."

This apartment is "spacious and bright" with a sunken living room and windows—little rectangles of glass through which one can peer, how charming—in the kitchen and bathroom.

This apartment is listed at $775,000, plus maintenance totaling a little more than $1,000 a month.

"It was perfect," Ms. Evans said.

Here, the definition of "the perfect apartment" is not "an apartment that meets all of our criteria for an ideal apartment" but rather, "an apartment with many enjoyable features that is also hundreds of thousands of dollars out of our price range." Using this definition, many of the world's finest homes and landmarks become "the perfect apartment."

And that concludes our tour of the White House.

"It was perfect," Ms. Evans said.

We hope you enjoyed your visit to Falling Water.

"It was perfect," Ms. Evans said.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built as a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu sometime around 2560 BCE.

"It was perfect," Ms. Evans said.

Ms. Evans' mother tours the fancy apartment and describes it as "everything I'd dreamed about having," because her dreams are nightmares and in them she pays $200,000 more for an apartment than she initially intended.

Ms. Evans sidles up to her mom like a drunk hooker at a craps table in Vegas, whispering to strangers "Let the chips fly."

"I said to my mom, let's roll the dice here." She gambled that the purchase of the Minetta Lane apartment would come through, and quickly.

But alas; every fairytale must have its villain and in the Evans' narrative, that is villain is Pater Evans.

Ms. Evans' father is briefly a frowny poopy pants, dismayed about spending three quarters of a million dollars sight unseen to buy an apartment that he thought his daughter was going to rent or, more correctly, to buy an apartment that he thought he was going to rent for his daughter.

"I was kind of in a grumbly mood," Dr. Evans said, because he had been under the impression that his daughter planned to rent, and here they were buying and above their limit at that.

BUT:

But when he arrived in New York, "I saw instantly why they liked it."

Why exactly did they like it? Probably because it was a fucking nice apartment that cost $770,000. Of course they liked it. Who wouldn't like it?

Her goose that lays the golden egg boxed up, her Oompa Loompa imprisoned in his puppy playpen, her apartment bought and paid for, Ms. Evans moves into Valhalla a few weeks later. To cover her "rent," she pays the maintenance (recall: a little over $1,000/month) which is crazy because the apartment is so nice why is it so cheap lol.

Unfortunately, the family soon realizes that life in the perfect apartment is far from perfect.

The one drawback is the noise made by sanitation trucks early in the morning. The family is considering soundproof windows.

They'll have to burn it down and start over.

[NYT]