MOVING
17 November 2000, 00:00
Well. Here it is. We have procrastinated for a whole year up to this point. We have to find a place to live, move there, clean up the place we live at now, and be happy in a week. A freaking week left. There is just too much to do, too much to worry over, too much to go wrong. I thought my biggest worry was finding a place to live with a landlord that would say, ‘‘Three big dogs? No problem.’‘ It was, don’t get me wrong. I just didn’t think far enough ahead to all of the other problems I would encounter, the considerations I would have to consider, and discovering just how cheap I really could be.
Putting aside that here in Do Dah, you can rent a nice three bedroom home with two baths and a basement for $700 a month, whereas some other parts of the country, that would probably buy you an airy outhouse with no view, I still thought that we could have done better than that. The cheap part of me is the part that said, ‘‘You know, for $500 month I could put up with having the boobie bar two blocks away, and that strange smell coming from the hall closet really makes the place feel homey.’‘
And then there is the clean up and the packing. I would rather have my tongue stapled to the mechanical rabbit at the Greyhound Track just before they release the hounds. And. I have to admit that whahizface and I have been a little lax. Mostly him. It came down to that he started not giving a crap, and then I started not giving one because of his not giving one and the place has ended up showing a bit of the attitude change that overcame us (mostly him). I stopped being nagware, and consequentially the house is in a bit of disarray (it looks like hell.) Clothes and books and dishes and fast food bags. Thank god the dogs eat whatever could mold before it does, or we’d be up a crick. We (me) started doing the cleaning and packing thing today. All I can say is the trauma I have suffered today, makes the cost of the cleaning service we hired seem like peanuts. What made the cheap, and miserly part of me do this? When the cheap and miserly part of me was moving the dog food bags from the utility room and a small, but determined mouse running for his life, jetted up my arm and sent the whole me screaming toward the bedroom. I had decided then, I’d rather be house hunting.
I’d rather be tromping from house to house, calling and babbling into other people’s answering machines on how my dogs have references and there are two of us, but we aren’t married, but its like being married because we’ve been together for years, and that they don’t need to worry because I could pay a buttload of money to fence in an unfenced backyard, and that I wouldn’t object to a strip search and a urine test. Desperation makes most unreasonable things sound reasonable. Plus, being an unmarried couple living together does still make a difference with some folks around here. It’s the heart of the Bible Belt, where common sense and puritan values rule, and to hell with the environment, and the pinko-liberal-commie-unmarried-shacked up-bastards like me.
I’ve seen cracks in walls, big holes in ceilings, exposed wiring, neighbors that seemed to have moved next door straight from the road company of ‘‘Deliverance’‘, brown water, green doorknobs, collapsing roofs, and a slightly tilted front door. And boy are people proud of this stuff – proud enough to charge and arm and a leg and a first born for it. It’s really our fault. We have dogs. Multiple dogs keep people out of the good home market – the market where there is hot and cold running water and really nice carpet.
Anyway, isn’t it what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s probably a crock of shit.
But after three weeks of waiting for whahizface to get a nibble or two, a lead on something – anything – - after waiting for a MAN to start the ball rolling, I busted my ass on the phone, babbled incoherently into six or seven strange answering machines and found the three bedroom, two bath, basement, two and half car garage, small fenced yard, two blocks from a liquor store, three blocks from a Bionic Burger, house that whahizface JUST adores and is, as we speak, sacrificing goats, doing Rosaries, and spinning prayer wheels in order to better the chance of getting this house. A house that is $700 a month. I am not convinced that this is not a WEE too much to pay for a roof over our heads and a yard in which the dogs could poop.
But, JAAAAYYYYZZZUUUUSSSS, it IS a nice house.
