Overly Verbal

I know it seems highly unlikely that I haven’t had anything to say since Tuesday. Because it’s not true. I just can’t be creative when my environment is not in perfect order. (Which is not to say that I consider this particularly creative, but it is, at least, created.)

So here’s a list:

Things That Were Broken When I Moved

• a dirty ashtray (please don’t ask why I was moving a dirty ashtray - that last day was a little rough)
• one of the drawers in my filing cabinet (I dropped it in a parking lot. It’s made from particle board, as is most of my furniture, but the damage is mostly cosmetic, so it remains a fully functioning drawer.)
• my will to ever move again

But now, at least, I’m pretty well settled in, and I have working telephone, cable, and Internet services, but the story of how that came about, and the exact state of my living room, is a long, sort of tiring one, so I’ll save it for later. But my recent absence has been largely based in the fact that getting settled in is a long, sort of tiring process, and I’m glad it’s nearly done. I’ve now reached a place where I have no obligations to anyone or anything (save checking in on some cats) until Tuesday morning. That is not only awesome, it’s much needed.

So other than the trials and tribulations of acquiring telecommunications services, nothing much has happened since Tuesday.

I took the cat to the vet this morning: he’s well, and the doctor was super-nice.

I got a new tape measure, and a really nifty adjustable combination wrench (but only after I purchased and returned two other wrenches that I did not like as much).

I bought a new tablecloth. It cost $4.99, and cheers up the living/dining room rather nicely.

I replaced the windshield wipers on Goethe’s car. I’m nice like that.

I went on a rather enjoyable date with a rather enjoyable man, and we played Scrabble in a bar, as people do, and I won, but only because he was out of practice, I think, and not because I will always beat him at Scrabble. And it was mutually agreed that there should be a rematch, so that was nice.

I think that’s it. I hope that the restoration of my environment to something resembling the level of order I’m accustomed to will allow me more time to write here in the near future, particularly because I hope to have a lot to write about - I’m super excited about the approaching new year. You should be too.

So happy new year, then, and I hope whatever celebration you involve yourself in goes off without a hitch.

Nothing interesting at all is new, so here’s a list of random crap from inside my brain. It might not be new to me, but at least it’s new to you.

My right hip hurts. It started hurting the other day, and then I started favoring it without noticing that I was doing it, and now, in addition to my right hip, my left knee is bothering me. Ouch. It might be because I’ve been wearing the same pair of shoes since last Tuesday, or it might be because I have the gout. I hope it’s the former. (Except that it would be fun to say, “Oh, can we take a cab? My gout is flaring up.”) (Maybe I’ll just start saying that anyway.)

When we lived in Alexandria, it was necessary for Mouse to have a license. I’m all for licensing your pets, even though I’m a Libertarian, because if Mouse accidentally got outside, I would like someone to find him and then bring him back to me. Plus, cat licenses are what, $5? But now Mouse does not need a license. I took his collar off earlier to remove the license, and then I decided he needs a new collar, but I couldn’t be bothered to go to the store, so now he’s wearing nothing but his birthday suit. And you know how when someone switches from glasses to contacts they look weird for a couple of days, until you get used to their new look? Well, the cat looks like that to me now, but he seems kind of happy about it, so I’m torn.

I love ham.

Little Miss Sunshine was not a good movie. (Raisinets, however, are a very good thing to eat while watching a movie, or, in my particular case, hours and hours before you’re going to watch a movie.)

Everyone, and I mean everyone, should move their refrigerator at least once a year, and clean the coils on the back. Otherwise, it gets really, really dirty. Trust me on this one. Just go do it now, while you’re thinking about it.

A drill bit that will not go through metal dry will suddenly gain the power to go through metal if you put oil on it. I guess you’re supposed to use some sort of mechanical-type oil, but canola oil works just fine, and smells a little less foul. I wish I understood better why that works, but not enough to spend any more time thinking about it.

The other day I misused the word hopefully. That’s one of my pet peeves, and I guess I do sort of go out of my way not to say “hopefully” when I mean “I hope.” I’d blame it on my life being in shambles, but it’s not really. It’s sort of all coming together, so I’m going to blame it on something else. (I’ll let you know when I figure out what.)

Michelle caught me out on my earlier statement about never having lived near a McDonald’s. It is true that when I lived in Park Slope there was a McDonald’s between the subway station and the apartment. I forgot that. (I seem to have forgotten a number of things about living in New York, not least of which is why I ever stopped doing it.)

But I’m happy here. I really am. And so is Mouse. We will be happier come Friday, when a person shows up to legally connect me to the Internet, provide me with a home phone, and give me cable. That’ll be neat, and the interaction may very well prove to be entertaining, because cable guys are sometimes amusing, Jim Carrey notwithstanding.

Otherwise, I got nothing. And I’m going to sleep now, before my gout flares up again. (Why, oh, why, can’t I keep things like my utter delight in saying the word gout to myself? Wouldn’t everyone be happier then?)

Someone within 100 feet of my new home has an unsecured wireless network! Granted, I had to go to Best Buy on Christmas Eve (it was not as crowded as I thought it would be) and spend $41.99 to learn this fact, but I’m considering it a miracle nonetheless.

(And while I was out, I also got new pajamas. They’re mighty cute.)

Of course, I think we know how Christmas miracles usually end. So this might be a short-lived joy, and I should probably sit here and use the Internet to do everything I could possibly need to do, in case there’s no connection later (but if it’s really a Christmas miracle, I’d expect it to last 33 years), but I’m going to go back to lining the kitchen shelves now.

I thought that by late yesterday I’d be sitting happily somewhere and writing a long, engaging, and amusing post about the move. But I was not. My computer at home is not yet plugged in, and I spent way too much time at Home Depot to allow me any writing leisure whatsoever anyway.

But here are two things I learned:

I am constitutionally incapable of putting books onto shelves in anything less than perfect order. I thought I could muster up enough wherewithal to just toss the books onto shelves and rearrange them later, but I couldn’t.

Plumbing is hard.

And here are two things about my new place that I really, really appreciate:

My old place had one bedroom, with the bathroom inside the bedroom. The new place has one bedroom, with the bathroom outside the bedroom. That’s pleasant, because it means houseguests don’t have to traipse through your bedroom to brush their teeth.

I can walk to McDonald’s! I believe this is the first time in my entire life that I can easily walk to a McDonald’s. Even when I lived in New York City, the closest McDonald’s to my apartment was 20 blocks away. Sure, I can walk 20 blocks, did so frequently, but having a McDonald’s five minutes away is, I believe, the height of all civilization. (I do intend to finish unpacking my kitchen soon, though, so that I don’t have to eat all of my meals at McDonald’s. I mean, sure, I want to, but it will be nice not to have to.)

So it’s Christmas Eve. When I was little, on Christmas Eve we’d always get to open one present, and it would always be pajamas. If I have time today, I think I’ll go buy a new pair of pajamas, to go with my new job and new apartment. (Yeah, like I’m going to have time to do that today. Who am I kidding?)

And that’s all I’ve got time for. I’ll be back tomorrow for sure, hopefully with that long, engaging, and amusing post about moving.

Because I am apparently superhuman, I managed to almost singlehandedly move all of my personal belongings in the space of two days, and to do so without making Mouse too upset. He hid in the closet for a while after I took his favorite chair away, but as soon as I let him out of his box at the new place he took an immediate liking to the new windows, and happily chose the one above the kitchen sink as his favorite. Which is fine.

I am going to have a lovely three-day weekend, at the end of which I hope to have a fairly organized house. I’ll get a lot more done than I would normally, since I’ll have neither a phone or Internet access to distract me. If I don’t appear here again before Saturday evening, don’t worry.

Now I’ve got to get back to work.

So I’m driving back from the new place, feeling good about this whole moving thing - I’m getting a lot done, I’m not tired, it’s only 3:00, and I still have all day tomorrow. And I’m singing along with the radio (Blister in the Sun), and I’ve got the window down, because I’m all sweaty from the heavy lifting, and this cute boy pulls up next to me at a stoplight, in one of those new Mustangs. So I’m looking at him, and still singing, and thinking, “Ooh, he’s cute.” And then I realized I was driving a minivan,* and that the cute boy was probably thinking, “Hey, there’s a MILF.” And then I started laughing out loud, and then the light changed.

So I arrive back at the old place, and decide I’d like to know where that acronym came from, because even though I hear it all the time, I do not know its origin. And in addition to quoting the movie American Pie (which I have never seen, although I do know each and every word to the Don McLean song), Wiktionary has this to say: “MILF has become a much-used descriptor on the Internet for pornography sites featuring women mostly between the ages of 35 and 50.”

So it’s settled then. I am officially old enough to be perceived as a MILF. That is just precisely what I needed.

(Later, I switched radio stations, and got to sing along to “Carry On Wayward Son.” I love it when the radio talks to me, especially when the message it’s sending me includes the lyrics, “I can hear the voices when I’m dreaming; I can hear them say, ‘Carry on my wayward son, there’ll be peace when you are done.’” That just cracks me up. (Because I can hear the voices when I’m listening to the radio in a minivan, and they’re saying, “Rest your weary head.” While I’m moving, and have just realized that I’m old enough to be a MILF. That’s funny, see?))

In other news, I just learned that there is no public library within easy walking distance of my house, whereas there are two at my old home. This may pose a problem. Although I can walk to a Barnes & Noble, where I could not previously (and to two different craft stores (although they’re both crappy chains)), and I can walk to a Borders from work, I don’t like to buy books, unless they’re really, really good, because then when you move, as I do frequently, and shall in the future, most probably, you have to move those books, and books are heavy. So you should only buy really good ones. And I imagine I could use the library in DC, but the only one of their libraries I’ve ever visited was scary, so I’m not sure I wanna do that.

(You know what really bugs me? When someone’s address (say, a library’s) is right on the first page of their website, and I need to map it, and I can’t copy and paste the address, because it’s in a picture. That’s just Stupid.)

Oh yeah, and if I believed in Hell, I’d believe that I’m going to go there, and soon.

Today I threw out about 75 Styrofoam packing peanuts. I had a box of packing peanuts in the closet, and it was overstuffed, so I couldn’t tape it closed without getting rid of some of them. But I didn’t have time to take them somewhere to be recycled, so I put them in a dumpster. They’ll be in a landfill shortly, unless they blow out of the garbage truck, and then they’ll be strewn all over some beautiful natural landscape in Northern Virginia, forever and ever and ever. (Unless some nearly extinct bird chokes on one and dies, and then one will be inside a dead bird whose species is just that much closer to being gone forever and ever and ever, and all because of me.) (But if one part of atonement is admitting your sin, maybe I’ll get off easy. Otherwise, I’ll see you in Hell. If I’m wrong, I mean, and such a thing exists.) (I mean, other than here on earth.) (Not to say that you, personally, are also going to Hell.) (Well, okay, maybe some of you are. Only you know.)

So back to the moving then. Although we’re in the home stretch, I’m afraid a wrench has just been thrown in the engine. I will be finished moving by the time I go to work on Friday morning, come hell or high water; I just don’t know now exactly how.

And why do the best laid plans always fall apart at the 11th hour? (Or the eighth hour and a half, as it were?) (And does “best laid” take a hyphen?) (And did I just say, “take a hyphen”?)

I do know where a lot of day laborers hang out - is it illegal to hire day laborers to move your personal belongings? What if you don’t pay them in cash, but instead in beer? English lessons? Help finding a permanent job? (But really, what if you pay them cash? Is that illegal? Anyone?)

Finally, is there a psychiatrist in the house? I’d kinda like to know whether using, oh, say, fourteen? sets of nested parentheses in one short blog entry is actually a symptom of a disorder listed in the DSM. I mean, just so I’d know.

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* Which is not to say that driving a minivan is not cool. It’s perfectly cool - if you happen to have kids, which I do not. (Also, I misspoke earlier - it’s not a “Caravan”, it’s a “Grand Caravan”. God this thing is huge. Still, it’s a minivan. I didn’t feel like a dork until it occurred to me that no one but me knew that I was driving a minivan because I was moving. They probably think that’s just, um, how I roll.)

Although I did wake up well before the sun rose this morning, I was glad to find upon waking that the weather forecast for today includes “abundant sunshine”. Because you can’t move if there are only moderate amounts of sunshine, now can you?

I may have missed my calling as a weather forecaster. “Tomorrow it’s going rain like nobody’s business.” “Expect enough snowfall to kill a horse.” “In the morning, the fog will come in on little cat feet, then sit on silent haunches until early afternoon.” “It will be so windy that you will eventually find that the wind is not honest, or good, or true.” “Put on a hat! It’s freezing outside to beat the band.” See? I think I have a knack for it.

I was also delighted to find that the Guttmacher Institute has published a report in which they detail their findings about premarital sex. Apparently, it’s normal:

“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

Hmm. Didn’t I say that already? Why yes I did, on November 9. So now not only am I wondering why I don’t work for a think tank, but I’m also thinking I might want to change the subtitle on my blog to read “This is your reality-check.”

You know what the worst part about moving is? It upsets the cat. He’s 15 and a half, and I’m afraid he doesn’t have that much more upset in him. Right now he thinks this is fun, because I keep opening and emptying cabinets that he can then explore the insides of, and there is a plethora of boxes for him to sit in. But once I start disassembling furniture, I’m afraid he’ll get worried.

But since this will be the tenth time that Mouse and I have moved in the eight years we’ve been together, I feel fairly confident he’ll get over it. He always has before, and we’ve been through moves that were a lot more dramatic than this one is proving to be. (This one, for example, does not involve any turnpikes, expressways, bridges, or interstate transport of three cats - we’re only going 6 miles. (But somehow those 6 miles require at least 20 minutes of driving. Oh, the traffic.))

But there are several fun things about moving. First, flirting with the guy at the rental car place. Second, renting a vehicle, and then getting to drive it. It’s a Dodge Caravan, which is significantly larger than the CRV I was going to borrow, plus it’s got those fancy Stow ‘N Go seats. Those are cool. (Good thinking, Mr. Stow ‘N Go.) Third? Oh, no, there’s no third thing yet. I’ll try and think of one, but don’t hold your breath.

And why I am sitting and writing this, when I’ve got to move my stuff, and already have a vehicle in which to move it? Because it’s 31 degrees outside. (When the guy at the rental place said, “Will this one be okay?” I said, “Could I have one that doesn’t have any ice on it?”) I refuse to do physical labor outside until it’s above freezing, so I’m counting on the abundant sunshine to warm things up quickly. But I also never quite finished packing, so there’s plenty to do inside in the interim. (And if you’ve suddenly decided that you feel like taking the rest of the day off to come help me, give me a call.)

Although it is really tempting to just polish off the Southern Comfort instead of moving it, that isn’t probably a very good long-range plan. (But you might just as well go ahead and drink all the beer. Beer is heavy. Southern Comfort, not so much.)

It is not strictly necessary to own three types of vinegar. (And when people call you “Martha”? Well, you oughta just suck it up, because you own three types of vinegar.)

Jello apparently never goes bad. (Condensed milk on the other hand? If that was “best used by” July, you probably don’t wanna hang onto it. Perhaps you should be a more discriminating grocery shopper. (But then again, if you suddenly need condensed milk and you don’t have any? That kinda sucks.) Hard to be me, I tell you.)

If you forget to eat lunch, you will be really, really hungry at 7:30, but there won’t be anything to eat, because you’re moving. So order a pizza, and while you’re at it, change your address with the pizza joint. (43!) (And while you’re at that, why not just sit down and write a list? That’s productive.)

Don’t pack the corkscrew. Put it in your purse instead, because you never know when you might need it.

Didn’t you used to have some of those cute little corncob-shaped things for eating corn on the cob? Where the heck are those?

Very many of the things in your refrigerator do not, technically, require refrigeration.

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Watch this space for further helpful lists, one of which may very well be: “Lists to Make When You Are Fed Up to Here With All The Damned Packing.”

So over the last couple of days I’ve been making a list of people who will need to know that I’ve moved. Including only companies with which I regularly interact, and no people I actually know, that list has now reached 42. And I know I’m forgetting a ton of places. Why the hell do at least 42 different companies need to know where I live? (Um, Jennifer, maybe because in 2006 you managed to have three different jobs. That might be a contributing factor.) (Speaking of which, for days now I have had the idea in my head that next year is 2008, and not 2007. I feel younger now that I’ve realized my error.)

You know what’s really boring? Going online and changing your address. You know what’s worse? When a company doesn’t have an online way to let you do that, and you have to call them. What a pain in my ass.

But you know what’s really neat? I get to take another day off work, to let the Verizon guy in. Initially I thought they could do it on New Year’s Eve, but after dangling that possibility in front of me, they yanked it away. Luckily, I don’t have a lot to do at work until after the first of the year.

I think I’m going to start using my blog as a way to remind myself to do things. Or to have you do it for me. Remind me to do these things, eh?*

• Take Mouse to the vet
• Get a Virginia driver’s license (since I’ve lived here for 16 months, it might be just about the time to do that, don’t you think?)

And now, another short list.

Things In My Home That Are Hard to Pack

• the taxidermied frog
• the little glass monkey
• the little glass kitty-cats
• plants
• a martini glass full of seashells
• my manual typewriter
• Goethe’s roasting pan (which has been at my house since Thanksgiving even though he’s come over innumerable times since then - he just never feels like carrying it home)
• shoes
• Mr. Bunny (I’m afraid to put him in a box, in case he gets scared)

I should probably re-apply myself now.
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* Goethe, I know you’re going to leave a comment immediately upon reading this that says, “Hey, Jen, don’t forget to take Mouse to the vet and change your driver’s license.” I don’t know who started that, but you can feel free to continue now, as you see fit.

No, I don’t have “Our House” stuck in my head now. Good guess, though. (I should probably have my head examined. Who, precisely, am I even talking to?)

Here’s something: you can get a heck of a lot more done in a day if you just leave work three and a half hours early. In forty minutes this afternoon I managed to conduct transactions with both my bank and the post office. (And stop in yet another store to see if they had any baby Jesuses. They did not. They had grown up Jesuses, but no babies.) (Uncle Wiggly said he’d take me to the mall on Friday, though, and they’ll surely have a baby Jesus there. All is not yet lost.)

(And at the post office, I was so delighted to learn of these gorgeous stamps that I bought twice as many stamps as I needed, just because they’re so pretty. I wonder if post office clerks are on commission?)

And I just spent a long time considering the options regarding my new home phone, Internet, and television services. I’m going to the other side. I will soon be a person with cable. Now, when everyone’s talking about some program that’s on some fancy channel, I won’t feel so left out. And while I will not have a home phone for at least eight days, maybe longer, I will have one, because I’m really just not ready to give that up yet. Heck, I’m just now getting this highfalutin cable thingamajig. (Here’s something else - with home phone service, you get a directory, “at no additional charge”! Talk about added value - here I thought I was just getting a dial tone, and instead I get a whole book too! With phone numbers in it! In alphabetical order!)

Last night I was thinking, “There’s no way I’m going to pull this off. This is madness. I can’t possibly pack my entire apartment before Wednesday morning.” Now? I’m thinking, “Gosh, I’m practically done.” What a difference three and a half hours makes.

So let’s hope I don’t find cause to write here fourteen more times today, because that will mean I am not applying myself.