The Creaky, Erractic, Malfunctioning Windmills of my Mind.
I’ve never been so happy to be at work. I am moments from passionately tonguing my Ethernet port, so grateful am I to be connected to the wonderful wide world of the web. Our new apartment has no phone, Internet, or television, and will not until Thursday afternoon. Thursday! Afternoon! It is like Manor House, over there. Do you hear that gnashing sound? Those are my poor, beleaguered molars. (And if I get so much as one comment about how grateful I should be to have shelter, bacon, and running water, the top of my head will fly clean off—but hopefully not before I have a chance to send the commenter a copy of The Hyperbole Primer: BEST EVER Edition).
We spent the night at our new apartment for the first time on Saturday, nearly a week after the movers schlepped our belongings back towards downtown. Because the old apartment never rented for July, we took our time putting together furniture and moving the stray items that didn’t make it into boxes, but eventually the stress of living in two places at once began to show in subtle ways, like panic attacks and crying jags and the consumption of an entire box of Scooby-Doo-shaped Macaroni and Cheese. I have said it before and here I go, saying it again: I am not portable. Moving does not agree with me. No matter how shiny the prospective floors and un-squalid the bathroom, it is disorienting to be uprooted from one’s home and deposited somewhere else. The sheer fabulousness of the new kitchen makes me feel like I am trespassing—I have lived in old houses and old apartments since I was born, and the sleek remodeled cupboards are unsettling. Don’t get me wrong: I love the cupboards, and the clean bathtub, and the shiny, shiny floors. I love our new couch and the small flatscreen TV we bought with our wedding money. But the apartment doesn’t feel quite like home, yet, and thus I am edgy, nervous, unmoored. Moving is one of the many things that makes me curse my nervous system’s propensity to treat any disequilibrium as catastrophe. Why can’t I be the sort of girl who gallivants across the continent with only a Ford Pinto and a diaphragm, instead of the sort who would drive an hour at 4 am to avoid spending the night at a friend’s house, where I might not have access to my cheese, books, and favorite cat?
In case you are wondering, yes, I am ashamed (and a little awed) at myself for having found a way to complain about my spectacular new home. I am like a prodigy of whining! I suspect that I am having a harder time than usual with the customary patois of moving neurosis because of my mother’s impending departure for Schweiz. I have been terribly maudlin lately about the fact that I am now married and have moved ALL THE WAY ACROSS TOWN, and my mother is absconding to live with foreigners, and my brother will be off to London in the fall for his Chef-ery internship. The family, you see, has been torn asunder, and we will most probably never live in such close proximity again. Insert gauzy montage of The Good Times We Used To Have, etc.
But I’ll probably feel better after a long bath and a large margarita. And a buffalo burger. And sweet corn with butter and salt. And a frozen, chocolate-covered banana. And another spin of my new dishwasher, which is everything I hoped it would be.
16 Comments
Oh lady, you are hilarious though, even in your moving-related despair.
And it’s funny, how the phrase “across town” makes me imagine old small town Americana, and not anything like the town you probably just moved all the way across. I am picturing old general stores and dusty intersections where everyone knows everyone else and gossips about them incessantly. With the all-encompassing “Bless her heart!” attached, of course.
Congrats on the new place :)
Yeah, yeah cry me a river. You never should have posted those pictures. I’m pretty much not feeling any sympathy.
Plus, I LOVE moving. So there.
You’re ALIVE!! I was worried you got eatten by a mover/moving box/moving truck .., eh you get the picture. I feel your pain on Moving, I HATE IT ..no no, i LOATHE it! Glad you will get internet soon
manor house! I have to say I prefered Frontier House
You’ll feel better once you get settled and have stacks and piles of books all over that huge, gorgeous living room.
And I’m with Heather. Frontier House had much better drama.
I’m kind of sad that The Hyperbole Primer: BEST EVER Edition is not an actual book. Would you like to write it? I think you’d do a fabulous job. I’d buy copies for all my friends.
You ARE a prodigy of whining! I’m so impressed that I will not even mention Peruvian children sleeping with guinea pigs in mud huts right this very minute as we speak.
Seriously, I do know how unsettling and just *ugh* moving can be on a body. While I would drive around the world in a Ford Pinto with, well, my husband, my mother would be freaking out. She can’t be away from home more than a few days or she becomes a scarily different person. (Seriously, she grows an extra head. It’s frightening.) I your new place feels like home to you very soon.
xo
That last sentence should include the word “hope.” And I’d like to aside with Frontier House in the FH/MH debate.
I want to meet this Ford Pinto driving, diaphram wearing trollop. I have to say I’ve always been a little jealous of women like that. I will drive an hour at 4 am to get home too.
I want to commend you on your strength, as I start to hyperventilate at the thought of going on a day out and being unable to access a computer. I can’t imagine being without computer AND television. Thursday is just plain unacceptable.
Moving into better digs when you have lived in a pit is a bit of a shock to the system. After 6 months of occupying our lovely new flat, I still get excited that I get to flush the toilet and don’t have to watch whatever just went down come back up again two weeks later through the glass filter of a hose pipe. (We lived on a canal boat previously. For 7 years.) I must admit that the dishwasher fair made me widdle myself in excitement as well! Enjoy!
I hate moving as well. But I seem to do it nearly every year, which drives me insane.
Also, I totally LOVE chocolate-covered frozen bananas! LOVE. Did you make them yourself or did you buy them somewhere in Minneapolis? I must know!
moving sucks so bad!!! I still cannot sleep soundly at night and I am completely out of sorts during the day (the dogs too.) I agree the new cabinets (that we both share) are fantastic but cooking has never been more awkward and frustrating. I long for that “settled feeling.” where is it?!
The Hyperbole Primer: BEST EVER Edition should most definitely be written by you. I wonder if that would garner a decent advance?? Then, you could buy an even (if you can imagine it) better apartment! Although, you’d have to move. So phooey on that.
I am thinking that it’d be a good thing if we were more alike, in addition to my being funnier, I’d also have not moved from our old house. Then our mortgage would still be exactly less the amount of our new mortgage that our IVF loan payment will be.
I hope you grow comfy in your new digs soon.
Recently found your website. Love it! My husband and I have moved 10 times in our 19 year marriage. Yes; I did have a nervous breakdown after one of the moves!
“prodigy of whining”… You crack me up, Alexa. Moving is indeed stressful, but enjoy the new digs! Today is Thursday, so you’re almost back on the grid.
Also, Scooby-Doo shaped macaroni. Hehehe!!!
I only met you after Simone’s birth and only found this older post because you linked to it (sure, in an ideal world I’d have gone back and read all your archives, and it’s I who am the worse of for not having done so, but there it is). Anyway, just want to introduce myself; I’m the Ford Pinto driving, diaphragm-wearing trollop! And a fun life it is! Well, was — I’m now, you know, hitched, and yes, after several IVFs, also mommed (praise be). Also, technically it was a Datsun 210. Still, good times, good times. But, I get that not everyone can appreciate the joy.