The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

Hooray! New apartment! With space! and closets! and light! and air! and, as of half an hour ago, internet access.

Moving was moving; a longer post about that will be forthcoming. Enormous gratitude to whuffle, halleyscomet, happyfunpaul, and quezz, and my parents.

I spent yesterday unpacking my bedroom and my kitchen, and cleaning things as I unpacked. I'm getting away without rent for August because the place needs cleaning, so I'm cleaning it. Yesterday involved one trip to the grocery store for things like light bulbs and toilet brushes and a larger broom, and one trip to the hardware store for tension rods and shelf space not in the pantry. Neither errand took longer than an hour and a half to get to, get done and get back from. That was a shock.

Today's list, now that the RCN guy has been and gone, involves fabric shopping for door curtains, hardware store again for Metro shelf clips, getting the gas turned on for the stove (did that, since I found the number online, since I'm online again), and trying to hunt up more bookshelves and counter space.

Due to its previous life as a dining room, my bedroom has two entry doors. One goes into the hallway and the other goes into the kitchen. I really want a curtain on the kitchen door, to the point where I'm willing to hand-sew it. I think it's fabric-shopping time, after I hunt up some lunch.

Hooray!

Four more days and I still won't be able to find anything, but at least then it'll all be somewhere else. Grocery shopping is fun when you start thinking about things you can make without cooking and then realize that you can't make anything at all because everything you could put it in afterward has been packed.

This morning I woke up early enough to lie around in bed for a little while. Unfortunately my brain chose to use its free time to dwell on the things I still have to do packing-wise, and some various other details I wish I hadn't thought of. I hate it when my brain does that.

It will be good to have places to put things when they come out of boxes. If I'm really good about unpacking, I bet I can get it done by Tuesday night.

Today I'm blue. I'm not truly depressed, sunk in angst, worried or scared or anything, just blue. Weather-wise, it's a good day for it. I wish I knew how to make it go away, though.

My apartment is being shown again on Sunday afternoon. I did point out that it won't be pristine because I'm packing. That was the second call from my landlady this morning; the first was her asking me when I'd be moved out so she can have the cleaners in. She thought I was moving next Friday. Apparently she doesn't actually have to read my written notice of intent to move, even though I was required to write it. I said I'd be out by 4:00 on Saturday.

I think I'll do the hardware store/bare necessities run on Sunday afternoon so as not to be home. That means I can use tomorrow to clear off the rest of the horizontal surfaces and clean everything I can reach.

Bleah, I say, and I say it with great emphasis.

YouTube is a wonderful thing in that I can watch old Bugs Bunny cartoons on it. That fact, however, has led to me walking around singing "Why look so perplexed? Why must you be vexed? Can't you see you're next?" from The Rabbit of Seville intermittently for the last couple of months.

My other favorite quote-out-of-context lately happens whenever I'm at work doing something and get interrupted. When I get back to whatever I was doing, I generally think "Where was I?" and the answer comes back courtesy of Mr. Dickinson from 1776: "Somewhere between New York and Pennsylvania."

Other news: I've got most of my kitchen and most of my living room in boxes, if not officially packed. I got to the point yesterday of being disgusted that nothing fit in any box I tried it in the way I wanted it to. (What do you mean, the tube pan won't fit in the stock pot?) I think I'm fighting a losing battle there and I should probably just throw a lot of sweaters in that box and call it done.

Tonight, I buy tools. I need allen wrenches to take the futon frame apart, socket wrenches to take my table apart, and a mat knife (mine cracked in half crossways last month when I tried to use it on the stuck-together paint on a window I wanted to open. The window is still shut.).

I've been living paycheck to paycheck for so long that the idea of not having to do that any more is somewhat daunting.

I don't particularly enjoy the work-related "print this letter and get it signed, but don't send it yet" dance I end up doing sometimes, because sooner or later it's September and I end up sending a letter dated July. I don't know if I'm the only person around here who cares about that, but it makes me feel silly.

Speaking of feeling silly, today I am filling out paperwork for somebody who was approved as a professor last October.

I really wanted to beg off work this morning and go puddle stomping. Somehow the thunderstorm got mixed up with a dream I was having, in which I was trying to call somebody at MGH and couldn't hear them because of the thunderstorm, but they wouldn't believe me because there wasn't a thunderstorm going on over there.

In the process of trying to look busy while the Comcast guy disconnected my service yesterday, I found the Packing List with the shopping list on it. If I had bubble wrap or packing paper and sufficient motivation, most of my kitchen could get packed tonight. Since I don't have packing paper, it'll probably get packed on Wednesday at the earliest.

The Question is, what am I going to read for the next three weeks? I read a lot more when I don't have internet access. The Answer is either three or four very long books (think Shogun-length), or most of a shelf of short ones. Problem being, I want to pack the rest of my books, so not packing most of a shelf is not going to help much.

I think part of the problem is that in spite of moving day rushing up at me, it isn't really real yet. I know in an abstract way that it's going to happen, but Moving is getting filed with Vacation under "Mythological Creatures" in the back of my brain.

Sometime today I have to go hunt up that other mythological creature known as the post office. I've only been meaning to do that for about four days now (not counting Sunday).

I got the laundry done this morning, which is good. I don't know if it's the weather or the number of washing machines that are out of order or both, but the laundromat smelled like mold and mildew. That was less good. I still have to wash towels and blankets, but those can wait a week. I always seem to have slightly more laundry to do than I can carry in one trip. Not for long, though.

I have a whole list of things I could pack if I could get myself to do it. What I really want is a staging area in which to put things to be packed. If they're staring at me, I'll do something about them. Unfortunately the best place for that is the table, and the table is where everything that doesn't really have a home lives. I'll have to clean that off first, and I'm having a terrible time convincing myself to get around to it.

Speaking of getting around to things, I suppose I should go close the shutters before my bedroom gets rained into.

I am so ready for the July SOP meeting and the office lambada to be over with. I really do like my job, but I needed vacation at the end of May and I haven't had it yet. I'm at whatever's on the far side of done. Next year I'm taking a week off in April and a week off in August.

I won't say today was an absolute wash, because I did get my hairs cut (thank goodness) and I got a birthday card from my grandparents with a check in it, but I spent most of the rest of the day being a lump. Mostly my day consisted of waiting half an hour for the bus (have I mentioned lately that I really don't like the 66 on weekends?), eating too much, falling asleep for an hour in the middle of the afternoon, packing exactly two boxes of books and nothing else, being completely uninspired about what I'm going to eat for lunch next week (except that it's going to have chicken and lime juice in it), finishing the book I was re-reading and starting to re-read another one, hearing my neighbors tromp up and down the stairs and slam the front door on the way out and have loud conversations in the garden, and minor embroidery.

Tomorrow is looking like more of the same, except it ought to have more cooking and less waiting for buses in it.

My new tattoo is mostly healed. It's still shedding, but it's pretty much done shedding color.

I've drunk the Kool-Aid and given iTunes a credit card number, mostly because of Lifted and the DaVinci's Notebook song "The Gates". That song was the one they opened with on September 11, 2002, when I saw them live. Being the day it was, I had been in a very introspective and depressed mood all day, but it took about five seconds of that song to make me start laughing. The words are very funny and the tune is a song I've known since I was two years old. Some of my strongest associations seem to be music-related. There are certain songs that always make me think of where and when I heard them first, or sometimes if I bring music someplace with me, it gets permanently linked in my head to where I went. It's funny how memory works.

Ahhh, Saturday. Does it count as productivity if you can cross a lot of things off a list even though they didn't actually produce any concrete results?

Last night I went off to Harvard Square for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I ended up in the Coop, bought a book I didn't know was in print in this country (the author is British), fell asleep in it last night, and finished it this morning.

The other thing I did last night and this morning was finally figure out what my next tattoo will be. I already knew where on my person I wanted it; now all I need is to find somebody to do it. I don't know how to get to the place in Providence that did my other ones except by highway, and the place I've heard most recommended in Boston can't even give me a consultation until late July. I know that because I went there this morning. Anybody want to come on a field trip to Providence?

Having had that fall through, I went to Coolidge Corner for coffee, Allston to look at prices for Metro shelf poles and butcher block tops, Downtown Crossing for shirts (and a sandwich), and Chinatown for muslin to make at least one door curtain. I didn't find any shirts, because the Eddie Bauer outlet's selection is downright paltry just now. I did find muslin, and was followed all over Winmil Fabrics by Winnie, the resident cat. Good stuff. Now I have to figure out whether I want to paint the muslin, or draw on it, or dye it, or try to embroider it, or do something entirely else.

(By the way, whuffle, check this out for undyed (or dyed) silk. I'm considering buying some dyed cotton from them myself.)

I really must remember to buy a beach towel and some more packing tape. Providing I can find anyplace that actually has packing tape, anyway. I've tried to buy more twice now and both places were out.

It's officially moving season. Somebody got a truck stuck under an overpass on Storrow Drive this afternoon. (In semi-related news, whichever auto manufacturer it is with the "it's truck season" ad campaign always makes me wonder if, since it's truck season, it would be legal to go out and shoot a truck. It gets very meta when you start thinking about how you're going to get your truck home once you've shot it, though.)

Anyway, speaking of moving season (and meta), I'm realizing I've been in limbo since I got back from grad school. The amount of thinking I've been doing about what I want to do with my new/old apartment woke me up to the fact that I actively want to live there. That's the first time I've actively wanted to live anywhere in four years. My grad school apartment and my current apartment were a means to keep the weather off self and possessions. Now I want a place with defined areas to do things in. I'm looking forward to not eating at my desk and not having the computer in the living room unless I want it there.

I'm getting the idea, finally, that even though I haven't got the faintest idea what's next, there will be a next. All I have to do is go look for it. I wonder what it looks like?

2 pairs of jeans
1 pair of bike shorts
1 pair of pajama pants
1 pair of shorts
21 shirts (no wonder I couldn't find any clean ones)
2 sweaters
3 pairs of socks
multitudinous underwear
2 bath towels

I really don't like doing laundromat laundry, which is what happens when I wait until the last possible day to do laundry and then do it all at once. For one thing, that much laundry is heavy. For another, it means I'm stuck in the laundromat for an hour and a half. The day is coming, however, when I won't have to do laundromat laundry any more. I'll be able to do laundry whenever I damn well please, or whenever I damn well need to.

Life in Brighton won't be all wine and roses, because life never is, but every so often something like that will occur to me and I'll just grin from ear to ear for a while. I'll be able to eat in the kitchen, at the table. I won't have to keep my bicycle in my living room. I'll have a pantry to put food and things in. The bathroom floor will be warm in the winter, at least in places. The laundry hampers will have a closet to live in.

This will all happen in less than three months. This makes me rapturously happy.

Since the Brighton apartment has been painted white and I've been requested to leave it that way, I'm seriously considering having an art party by way of a housewarming. By which I mean I'd invite everybody to come create things to put on the walls, or in the doorways in the case of door cloths, so as to liven up the place. Am I cracked or does that sound like an idea?

*Hey! Too Much Laundry