iggy popsicle
WARNING: I’M ABOUT TO GET ALL DOMESTIC AND SHIT
We moved! And professional moving guys are worth every penny of their astronomical cost, if you ask me. I can’t believe we moved ourselves like suckers all those apartment-dwelling years, with our aching feet and flaky friends and double-parked unreliable rental trucks. No, the way to go is a bunch of rather fragrant men who will just schlep your stuff until there is no more stuff to schlep. These movers did go a bit overboard on the moving blankets and tape, swaddling my not-so-very-precious furniture in absolute layers of the stuff. They kept showing up in the house with heavy amorphous blobs asking me “where does this go” and I sounded like a dithering moron because I didn’t know what “this” even WAS.
Everything is unpacked, although the guest room (yes! a guest room! come visit me!) is in disarray because it is where I am putting currently-homeless items. Although damn, the storage in this place! Giant basement that is barely being used. A whole room, a whole closet, half a garage—empty. I am not complaining, nor am I planning to fill up those spaces with junk. After years of relatively cramped condo living, I am enjoying the Nothingness. Me and Sartre, twirling around in my empty basement, condemned to be free.
Speaking of the nausea of existence, our cats had a very bad case of that due to the move. First, LT stuffed them into separate carriers and took them over to the new house at the crack of dawn, so that they could be barricaded in the empty basement room during all the chaos. During the process Rocko managed to escape into the unfinished portion of the basement, and LT had to hunt for him down there Silence of the Lambs-style, since he was not able to find the pull string for the lights. Cat was eventually discovered desperately trying to tunnel into the center of an old roll of carpet, and tossed back into his prison. When the movers left, Lola cautiously made it upstairs (wow! stairs!) and slunk around different rooms exploring, but Rocko refused to budge. I ended up literally carrying him from room to room, on a forcible house tour, until he conceded that maybe things weren’t so scary. Now they go up and down the stairs easily.
I was worried about inappropriate urine from Rocko, since he has a bad track record in that area, but it was actually Lola who ended up with a Piss Demerit—she jumped in an old suitcase as I was putting clothes away and peed inside it, right in front of me. I threw in some old rags in a half-hearted cleanup effort, but ended up just zipping the thing closed and putting it out in the alley. And later witnessed a man dragging it down the street behind him. Hey buddy! There’s a surprise in there! Enjoy!
Worst parts of the house: kitchen straight out of 1982, right down to its preppy colors of pink, white, and green. I wish I were kidding. Everything is functional for the time being, but the minute we recover some of our time, energy, and cash it will be demolished and rebuilt. And I am going to ask the contractor for a chance to swing the sledgehammer myself. There is also a first-floor bathroom that had a horrid floral wallpaper border. The past tense is deliberate, since LT and I spent several hours spritzing some caustic chemicals on it and then scraping tiny little shreds of it off with a putty knife. THAT was fun!
Best parts of the house: the storage. My bedroom’s skylight. The pleasant, head-clearing, half-mile walk to and from the train. (No more stupid bus!) The charming, retro, bungalow-ness of it. The neighborhood. The giant open field right across the street, complete with nature trails, oak trees, and friendly dogs, and where yesterday Nora spent an hour patiently trying to build a snare trap out of twigs and milkweed stalks. The fact that we’ve met about four houses’ worth of neighbors, including one family with small boys who are starry-eyed about Nora because of her scooter, her Nerf bow-and-arrow skills, and her knowledge of Yu-Gi-Oh cards. That we’ve already been invited to dinner at someone’s house.
Okay, I’m sorry for the giddy house-love gushing. I am going to try to get back to a more frequent posting schedule, and I am going to try to shut up about my stupid house.
YOU’RE A LET DOWN YES YOU ARE
I spent a weekday night drinking wine with a friend and the next day when the alarm went off I was all like, “Woo hoo! I am not even hungover!” I was inexplicably proud of myself and took extra OCD-style care with Doing Everything Right, including packing a protein-y work snack, making sure Nora had all her backpack items, even motherfucking FLOSSING. Then I got to work and discovered I had my sweater on backwards.
—mimi smartypants has everything backwards.