Just some random thoughts on things you could try. Simply tell landlords you are looking for a small apartment for you and your husband, due to the location of his job. There's no need to get into the fact that only your husband will be using it the majority of the time. If you live near any colleges or universities, many students rent apartments on a full-year lease and then need to sub-let them over the summer when they return home. It might be possible to sub-let for the summer, which would give you a feel for how noisy a particular apartment building is. Try to find a three or four unit apartment building that is owned by an individual landlord, rather than a large management company (Moonshadow's suggestion of Craigslist would be a good place to start). Bonus if the landlord lives in the building, because then the landlord will have a vested interest in keeping the building quiet (or at least mostly quiet). Smaller buildings tend to have less noise, just because there are fewer people in them. You might also try to find an in-law apartment attached to someone's home. There still might be noise, but it would be the noise of one family, as opposed to lots of people above you, below you, on all side and tramping through the hallways. Top floor apartments tend to be quieter. You don't have anyone walking overhead, or dropping things on the floor. End or corner units tend to be quieter because you have fewer walls shared with other units, and therefore fewer sounds to travel into your unit. So look for a top floor end or corner apartment, away from the stairs or elevators, because people can make a tremendous amount of noise on the stairs and people can congregate by the elevators, chatting and laughing while you are trying to get to sleep, especially on weekend nights. In general, the older buildings tend to have thicker walls and floors and therefore sound travels less. I'm thinking of pre-war apartments in places like NYC and Boston and Chicago. I currently live in a two-family house built in the 1920s. There's a little baby downstairs, but I only hear him cry on occasion, and only when I'm in the room directly over the room he's in. And the noise level is not enough to bother me--I don't even turn up the TV sound when he cries. About the month to month arrangement--Moonshadow has given some very good reasons why landlords don't like to do this. In my area, almost every lease starts on September 1 and ends on August 31, because of the large number of colleges and universities in the area. It's a hassle for a landlord to get an apartment ready for a new tenant, cleaning, painting, cleaning carpets, and then have to do it all over again in a few months. What you might try doing is offering to pay a slightly higher rent for those few months where you would be month to month, to compensate for the problems and added expenses that might arise if you vacate the apartment in two or three months. I've mostly seen this done at the end of a lease, where someone needs to stay in the apartment a few months longer than the lease is for, but knows that they can't stay for a year. Landlords in my area charge $75 to $150 a month more to let you stay on a month to month basis. And finally, if there is noise but it's not too bad, say the occasional indistinct noise of a TV rather than the blare of the music student next door's trumpet or sax, there are white noise machines that can cancel out the sound. Or earplugs.

Please, get him to the dr. for a complete physical. At his age, there could be medical reasons why he's unable to perform (and since no guy is going to admit that, they feign disinterest). Some of the medical causes can be serious like prostate cancer. Others can be things like a side effect of drugs he's taking for something else. But he needs to be thoroughly checked over, before you start worrying about spicing up things in the bedroom. Get him a clean bill of physical health first. Then make sure there isn't anything phychological/emotional going on (like depression). Then it will be time to start working on the spice. Look, I lost my dad way too early to prostate cancer--he had to have it in his mid/late 40's, BUT he ignored things until it was way too late for him. That was 30 years ago. Today, there are much better treatments for the disease--and found early it's rarely a death sentence these days. You obviously love him, so make it your business to encourage him to be checked every year so you can have him around for a good long time. Of course, it is nature's cruel joke that we turn into sexual maniacs when our hormones go out of whack in our 40's, just at the time when men's bodies are slowing down. Doesn't seem fair, does it?

This reminded me of a recipe I have had for many years, and somehow had forgotten about. I searched and found it in my documents/recipes folder. I'll definitely be using it again at Easter, and hopefully more often now that I've been reminded of it. Petit Pois Salad I pound frozen tiny peas, raw 1/3 cup chopped celery or water chestnuts 4 hard cooked eggs, chopped 3 dill pickles, chopped 1 small onion, chopped 1/8 tsp pepper 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1 tsp prepared mustard ½ tsp hot sauce Parmesan cheese, optional Combine first 6 ingredients. Combine rest of ingredients and blend the two mixtures. Garnish with parsley. Cheese may be mixed with the peas. If so, use 3 Tbls. or sprinkle on each serving. Attractive served in a tomato shell.

Rooms are what they are for the most part. You can't just make them something else. A garage can't turn into a bathroom. A family room can't magically turn into a bedroom. You're better off keeping the room as it was intended to be. In your case, the only things I can see that space being are a formal living room or a piano room/lounge extended in from the entry way. A library room makes no sense. You're not going to welcome someone into your home and offer them a book to read. But you should welcome someone in and offer them a nice seating area, a drink, and listen to some music before you work way into a nice meal in the dining room. A house floor plan should naturally progress as your relationship and time spent with the person does. This is why bedrooms should not be in the front of a home.