May
31

The Liar, The Glitch, And The Gauchos.

The past week or so has been like a comedy of errors. Only without the comedy.
Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!

The problem with returning after a prolonged posting hiatus is the sheer volume of material to cover. Should I start with the fireplace incident? The case of the missing hippie? The regrettable stylistic lapse? I think I will confine this entry to the events of this past weekend, because…well, because I am tired. Tired and lazy. And tired. So, so tired.

The Nearly and I woke Saturday morning ready to begin the move. While temperatures the weekend before had topped out at a breezy 70, this Saturday’s high was expected to reach 95. We were thrilled. Because nothing puts the “labor” in “manual labor” like hot, humid air creating the sensation of being wrapped in sweat-soaked wool bunting.
Now, I do not own any shorts. I am firmly anti-short, because I am pale, and my exposed legs have a flabby, undercooked appearance (one of the Nearly’s nicknames for me is “Whitefish”). But after panting through a few hours of packing swaddled in corduroys, I began to weigh sartorial concerns against the potential unpleasantness of heatstroke. I decided to suck it up and run to Target.
This next part of the story is painful for me to recount, so please, no heckling.

I don’t know if it was the heat, or the stress of the past weeks, but when I left Target, a pair of gauchos left with me. I must have been hypnotized by their light, cooling, swishy fabric. And the clearance tag. And my aversion to exposing the upper portions of my thighs.
The gauchos made my hips appear to have roughly the circumference of the Earth, and overly emphasized the triangular shape of my Lady Parts. I did find it perversely satisfying that despite their obscene comfortableness, they were every bit as unflattering as I have always maintained.
“We should take a picture for you to post on your blog,” sniggered the Nearly.
Some people think they are SO FUNNY.
Anyway, clad in the very clothing item I have pledged to destroy, I began to pack. And carry. And then subsequently to UNpack—because, you see, we had so few boxes we were forced to load them up, empty them at the new duplex, and then take them back to be filled again.
Yes, really.

The day wore on. The sun beat down, The Nearly and I each lost several pounds of water weight. At one point, we ran into our new landlord, who waved a cheery hello. Ashamed of my be-gauchoed state, I pretended not to see her and scuttled back into the car.
Sunday was more of the same, except I cut a pair of housepants into shorts, unable to bear my own hypocrisy for one second longer. Movers were scheduled to come for the furniture on Monday morning, so we wanted to have everything else out of our apartment by Sunday night. At one point the Nearly’s car thermometer read 102 degrees, but I knew that couldn’t be right. It felt much, much hotter than that. Certainly hot enough to cook my favorite flautas, which require the oven to be set at 350. I would estimate the actual temperature that day at 412 degrees Fahrenheit.
Oh, and did I mention that I had my period all weekend? No? Well I did. The only way conditions could have been less favorable for moving would have been if we hadn’t really begun packing until Friday. Oh, wait, we hadn’t? Fine. I give up.

Sunday afternoon, the cats were losing their tiny feline minds. In case you don’t have cats of your own, I will tell you this: cats don’t like change. On a list of great supporters of the status quo, you will find cats near the top, just under the preacher father from Footloose. The Nearly and I decided that it would be easier if we took them to the new place so that they could get their bearings, instead of scurrying frantically underfoot at our old apartment, their eyes screaming WHY ARE YOU MOVING THE DESK??? HOW WILL I GET ON TOP OF THE DOOR IF YOU MOVE THE DESK???

Some words that describe the process of transporting three nervous cats in a car: Sharp. Bloody. Furry. Squealy. I’m sure there are more, but they are probably all variations on those four. Upon arrival at their new home, all three cats promptly ran behind the stove and refused to emerge. For reasons that are now unclear, we were determined to force them into the open. We drove the cats from behind the stove to behind the refrigerator, and eventually out of the kitchen altogether. At this point, Irma, the white neurotic one, dashed into the fireplace.
Luckily, there was no blazing fire within. But there was soot. Lots of soot. She wedged herself behind the metal gas-fire machinery and stared up at us, cobwebs hanging from her ears. An hour later, when it became obvious that she planned to stay there forever, we dragged her out. She skulked pitifully in a corner, rubbing her pathetic, sooty body against the white walls and opening her mouth in a silent meow.
So, that was Sunday.

By Monday morning we had all the furniture at our old apartment disassembled and pushed into the living room for the movers, who were due to arrive at 9:00. I sat limply on the floor, on our mattress, almost ill with relief that the end was in sight.
I am not really portable. I do not move well. I am made panicky and weepy by the feeling of being between homes, and by Monday, I was clutching at the ends of my rapidly fraying rope. Also, I had 500 pages to read in the coming week and two papers due, and I was starting to feel that if something wasn’t taken off my plate, I would have a breakdown and end up curled in the fireplace where Irma had been, rocking jerkily and grinding my cheek into the soot.
So, you know what happens next, right?

THE MOVERS. NEVER. CAME.

No, they didn’t call. Yes, I called them. Yes, I left a message. In fact I left messages, plural, each subtly more hysterical than the last.
These were movers I found through Craigslist. They were part of a small contracting and odd jobs company run by an ageing hippie named Earl. In retrospect, perhaps I should have been alarmed by the fact that Earl’s ad offered the information that he was willing to trade services in lieu of payment. Or by the fact that when one calls him, one hears a folk-pop song instead of a ring tone. But Earl had asked professional, mover-sounding questions when we spoke, and I had Googled his company, and everything seemed above board, if a bit patchouli-scented.
Late Monday morning, after I managed to stop crying, the Nearly bought me a bagel and some iced tea and carried our tiny bedroom TV into the living room. He rubbed my back as we sat on the floor among our UNMOVED furniture, watching a Law & Order marathon.
Every single episode was one I had seen before.
We spent Monday night in our old apartment, struggling for breath on a mattress laid on the floor between an armoire and the disassembled pieces of our bed. I say “struggling for breath” because we had no air conditioning, having decided Saturday that it would be foolish to drag our window air conditioners out of storage only to shlep them across town to the new place two days later.
I would have laughed, but it was too hot for laughing.

As I write this, Fancy Moving Conglomerate, Inc. is moving our furniture to our new home, for about $200 more than we had planned to pay Earl & Co. When I talked to Fancy Moving Conglomerate’s representative, he started to explain my estimate, and I cut him off:
“Great. Excellent. Can I just give you my credit card number now?”

EDITED TO ADD:
SIX HOURS, people. That is how long I wore the gauchos, and I haven’t worn them since. I thought telling you about my faux pas would bring us closer together, perhaps even help you to understand how severely I have been tested by this past week, but instead my revelation has resulted in merciless mocking. I thought our relationship was stronger than that, I really did.
Hrrrumph.
On an unrelated note, I have suddenly started averaging about 400 spam comments per day (presumably because the spambots now figure that if I am stupid enough to wear what appear to be pants stolen from a tiny sailor, I can be fooled into thinking that this recent comment, from “tylenol” is a genuine response from one of my readers:
“allow me, sweetness, to gaze upon your vale of venus, he gushed, and i figured he wanted me to take off my panties.”
Because, of course, this is just the sort of blindingly astute observation my readers are always making.)
Anyway, if you post a comment and notice that it doesn’t appear, please let me know as it was probably mistakenly redirected to my spam queue.

I will post pictures this weekend, as soon as I figure out which box contains the digital camera…

P.S. PICTURES OF THE APARTMENT, you smart ass, not the gauchos. Now let us never speak of them again.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |