This has been the first time in weeks that I haven’t needed to give my time and energy over to moving boxes or houseguests or column deadlines or IKEA pilgrimages or I Love The 70s or grotesque, soul-withering heat. For the next three hundred words or so I’m devoting myself to YOU, the people.
Hello! How are you? How are your walls? Do you have stuff hanging on them? Do you have stuff on your shelves, too? How did that happen? How did you do that? Did you ever know that you’re my hero? And everything I would like to be? We’re definitely making progress, but it’s taking awhile. Right now, we’re at the point where almost everything with a power cord is plugged in where it needs to be, and all the electronic displays are sentient and unblinking. However we keep buying power strips, which baffles me. I mean, X is the number of things we need to plug in and Y is the number of available wall outlets, and in the course of changing apartments, X remains constant, at least for now, and Y, thank God, has increased, AND YET, this means that Z, the number of power strips we need, somehow increases as well. I mean, first the logic was: if X > Y, then Z, right? So why is it now X ≤ Y+Z = EVEN MORE FUCKING Z?
But of course, I’m glad we moved. Here is a list of totally mundane things we have in our new place that I did not have the pleasure of experiencing in my old building, and, in a few cases, my entire adult life thus far:
- Garage space.
- A bathroom exhaust fan.
- An open-air back porch.
- One of those sprayer thingies in the kitchen sink.
- Three-prong receptacles in every outlet.
- Water pressure. No, really.
- Enough room to comfortably walk around the bed.
- Basement storage that is clean and dry and well-lit and does not appear to have been dug out by Jame Gumb.
- A laundry room that can be reached without having to go outside and through the alley.
- Lights in the (get this!) CLOSETS.
See how easy to please I am? I know this might sound totally absurd to those of you who live in suburban areas and/or newer buildings, where everyone has central air, and remote-control windows, and wet bars in every cathedral-ceilinged walk-in-closet. But for the city, and for an older building, what we have is pretty good.
I didn’t have a chance to link to it before now, but I have to agree with Mr. Walter’s letter in response to my NY Times piece about the Eno Incident (the news of which also somehow managed to reach The Guardian, as well, so you really ought to be pleased with yourself, O Unknown Rossi’s Jukebox Prankster). I feel I should add that while “Thursday Afternoon” is best experienced in a quiet environment with a quality sound system, Here Come The Warm Jets is best listened to in a new apartment, while cooking dinner, on the quality sound system your boyfriend somehow managed to set up and get all plugged in. Or so I learned last night.
Oh god, when my husband and I moved into our first apartment from the shithole-no-heat-so-damp-there-was-mold-on-the-walls-and-carpet room he was renting, we were so thrilled–no, make that ECSTATIC– that our towels actually dried at night and weren’t still wet in the morning. Now that was something to behold and I’ve never taken dry towels for granted Ever again. That sooo sucked donkey balls in the middle of winter.
You wouldn’t believe how happy I am to hear that an intelligent, adult, published person like you also finds moving boxes and making IKEA runs a little trying.
We just moved too. We have walls, but the answer to the other questions is “no”. We do however have A UTILITY ROOM. My parents have never lived in a house with a utility room…
But we can’t plug everything in, either, mostly because the sockets are on pieces of wall we want to cover with bookcases.
Ha! We just moved too…but we don’t have anything on our walls yet…that task, just seems too daunting. Okay, my husband “decorated” his man room downstairs…but I tend to like it better when the pictures on the wall..you know..make sense, and are level. May I also add how jealous I am of the lights in your closet..and we got a kitchen sink with a sprayer too..but the sprayer doesn’t work. WTF!!??
Congrats on your new place! 🙂
Also…have you figured out all the light switches yet? This place has so many light switches, I have yet to figure out which one turns on what light!
It seems that we figured out “The Mystery of the Light Switch That Turns On the Ceiling Fans in Two Different Rooms” much faster than our predecessors. Our landlord was very impressed – so impressed, in fact, that he gave us our sixth month of rent free!
A sprayer thingie in the kitchen sink???!!! You are so lucky! My dishwasher is the Jaracz 2000 model (i.e.–me). What I wouldn’t give for a little sprayer thingie in the kitchen sink!
I too got to upgrade laundry rooms when the Boy and I moved in together. It’s such a treat to not have to haul laundry through the alley in winter!
wow you are living the American Dream. I sympathize too with the long trek to the store to expand the number of outlets to meet your three pronged power hungry needs, I got back from Radio Shack with another one.
How well do I know the mess that is an apartment after a move. It took me almost a year after my last move to settle in, then we had a baby and moved again when she was a month old. That was almost five months ago now, and we’re still winding our way through the house between mountains of boxes and piles of homeless stuff. I use the baby as an excuse, but soon she’ll be the excuse the find it all a home because she’ll be pulling up on the box-towers-of death as she gets ready to walk. Yipes.
Your apartment is gorgeous. I’m so happy that you and Chris hooked up and found a nice place. May your neighbors be quiet, your appliances functional and may you always find a parking spot close to the door when you come home.
Hi, I too am glad to hear that a famous author has to do everyday moving. I moved months ago and still haven’t gotten settled in!! By the way I love your book!
Michaella
Well, congratulations on your move, hope the unpacking is humming along. Look out for having all of those things you wished for though! Easy access to a laundry room can make it a very difficult place to escape.
Personally, I am considering pitching the dream home and moving to a cave. It is Wednesday morning and I do believe that “Thursday Afternoon” is the only suitable soundtrack for the mountain of unsorted socks that I am facing.