The Joys of Apartment Searching

I know I complain on here a lot about the difficulties I encounter in daily adult life. I guess it's because no one ever stops to tell you what it's going to be like when you're a kid. Of course they tell you it's hard and difficult and all that stuff, and sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong. My twenties have been unbelieveably better than my teens. I wouldn't trade these years for anything. At the same time, when you're a teenager you don't have to go apartment hunting.

Apartment hunting for a 3 bedroom apartment reasonably priced (under$1500) reasonably near a metro stop, and with a backporch (we love our backporches) is unreasonably difficult. My sister and I are taking that giant leap into adulthood that we've been dreaming about for years. Problem is, we've only had to dream about it before. It was a nice fantasy, an escape from the annoyances of living at home with your mother, your other sister and her husband, not to mention all the other people who drifted through our home over the past few years.
Now, my mom is putting the house on the market in the next few weeks and Julia and I are getting the boot. We're happy about it, we need to move out and the sooner the better.
Unfortunately, we're having a hard time reconciling our dreams with our realities. Champagne tastes and beer pockets isn't us, exactly. We don't want an apartment that's more like a hotel. We'd feel out of place. But neither do we want a slum. So after weeks of looking I've come back to Julia with an ultimatum. We can have the price and the porch, and we'll try our hardest to get the location, but the time, the distance and the quality might not be what we'd wanted. Meaning, I found us a potentially great place that is further from Julia's job than she'd like, but closer to her school (which she won't be going to next semester, taking a break.), and closer to my school and job. But it's a lot cheaper than we'd thought (bonus!) and near the metro, but isn't available until a month from now (bummer!) I'm getting fed up with practically being laughed off the phone when I call up rental offices and I'm getting fed up with Julia's disappointment when I'm the one doing all the work. I just want a place now. I don't know how much longer I can take living under my mother's roof. I need my own place. I need my own place.