Want some wood? Not from you, buddy.

October 15

Hey, I managed another update in the same month. Yay for me. This first part is being written at 2 am on a school night as I wait for my Sudafed to kick in. I have no idea what's setting off my allergies, but something's making them unhappy. I had Monday off to celebrate that Italian guy who couldn't tell China from Cuba, so the sleep I got yesterday will hopefully balance out the sleep I won't get tomorrow. Or something.

We're slowly starting on the packing, scavenging boxes here and there and then finding out what will fit in them. I mostly dread packing my books, because those suckers are heavy and they'll take up more room when they're boxed on the floor instead of on the shelves.

It's pretty quiet on a Tuesday at 2am, except for the gentle snoring of deanpence, who is camped on our floor until we finish the move. That man can sleep like the dead, with the lights on and the TV blaring, the way Matt used to. He doesn't anymore, I'm not sure why. Old age, I suppose. But I used to be terrified there'd be a fire some night and I wouldn't be able to wake him. God knows I can't even drag him out of bed, much less carry him. I would just have had to let him burn.

I continue to be rabidly impatient to move; I never thought the idea of having a door that I could shut would seem like such a luxury. We won't be flush with cash when we move, so we'll probably have to wait on some things we need, like a cupboard for the kitchen, curtains, an entertainment center, and rugs for the linoleum floors. It won't seem homey right away. I don't care. I have some writing projects that I really want to start on, and once Matt has his studio, the bedroom will be all mine, complete with a window looking out on a tiny yard and a desk I don't have to share with anyone. Heaven.

We'll probably be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas there too, since we've decided that holiday trips home really cut into our finances and will keep us from getting out of debt sooner than later, per The Plan. But we will hopefully have time for a quick trip in January to say hi and let our family know we still care. I am Martha Stewart enough to wonder if we should get a tree, or decorate, our place; we could put up lights, but our windows face the back, so no one would see them. Given our neighborhood, maybe it's best we don't have room for singing Santas anyway. We won't roast a turkey, but maybe we'll make a nice pork roast and some wassail, or just go out for a really nice dinner. Maybe it'll even snow again.

It's getting cold enough now to make you believe summer's over. It's still sunny, but those breezes mean business, and it's almost time to get out my Medium Coat (navy blue sailor coat from, ironically enough, Old Navy). I have my Light Coat (Matt's old hoodie) for now, and sometime in November or December it'll be time for my Great Big Coat (huge black wool trenchcoat, very warm). That's how it works up here. Back in Texas, it was either Medium Coat or No Coat weather, mostly, and some years your Great Big Coat never made it out of the closet at all unless you went skiing somewhere. It was hard to have a Great Big Coat that was stylish, because they lasted for decades, since you only wore them for 2 weeks a year. I got rid of one which still bore traces of the late 80s (shoulder pads, leather diagonal trim) just before I moved here, but there were other ladies running around in those puffy full-length parachute things that they'd had for even longer.

Well, the Sudafed's showing up. Guess I'll go grab a few hours' snooze before it's off to work again.

***

We've been showing our apartment to prospective renters. Most of them sound really excited on the phone, because it's still a cheap apartment for this location. Then they show up--and their faces say "Oh." It's not a hole, by any means, it's actually quite a decent little place, but "non-glamorous" would be a really good description. It's not in the fashionable part of Hell's Kitchen, not a place that will impress your friends, if that's what you want to do. It's small, it's plain, there are no spectacular views. It will not raise your Hipster Quotient. It will keep the rain off. There aren't any crack dealers on the corner. So it all depends on what you're looking for.

I find myself amused by the unimpressed hipsters, because, you know, there's always Williamsburg, guys. Don't put yourselves out or anything.

***

Watched the final debate. To sum up Bush's performances at each debate, I'm going to steal a description I saw on the web:

Debate 1: Pouty: "It's hard work."

Debate 2: Shouty: "Want some wood?"

Debate 3: Doubty: "I am so going to lose to this guy."

October 2

Over a month since my last update. Work has been crazy as it always is this time of year. My political Anxiety Meter is turned up to 11, as we hit the home stretch of an election season like none other in my lifetime. Or yours, probably. If you're lucky.

But when I'm not contemplating the possible destruction of everything good about my country by a bunch of greedy, freedom-hating assholes, I calm myself by thinking about my NEW APARTMENT, which I move into in a few weeks.

Oh, didn't I mention my NEW APARTMENT? Yeah. Did I mention that it has 3 bedrooms? Is over 100.00 a month cheaper, even before my new roommate's contribution? Is in a nice neighborhood? Has access to a little private backyard? Is the first place we looked at? Is in a very nice and well-kept building?

As I told Matt, sometimes the universe stomps on your face. Sometimes, it gives you a break. I'm glad we appear to be in a break-getting phase, for now. Mostly, I am walking around inordinately happy about getting a living room, with a couch (our old futon, after we buy a nicer one for a bed) to go in it. I am spending my spare minutes contemplating cabinets and curtains, rugs for the floors and pictures for the walls. Matt is rubbing his hands anticipating having his own studio again, and deanpence is just glad not to be living in the Tiniest and Roachiest Apartment in Queens. We should be able to put what we save towards our debt. Maybe someday even buy a house, or at least, live in a bit more comfort and pay our bills. It's a happy thought.

Our new neighborhood, as you know if you followed the link, claims to be the biggest Jewish community in the world (does that include Israel? It's hard to tell, it's a crappy website). Boro Park is mostly Orthodox of one kind or another. Men in frock coats and enormous hats; boys in side curls; women with identical brunette bobs and little berets, wearing conservative dark skirted suits and heels, like 1950's stewardesses. Little girls in long dresses or school uniforms. Lots of children, period. And the occasional outsider like ourselves; a few Hispanic families, some Italian (like our landlady) one or two African-American families. Our subway stop is elevated, and (here's the downside) a long schlep from our front door. But it's a pleasant walk in good weather, wide tree-shaded sidewalks. We're not far from Prospect Park, and the Brooklyn Library, which is big and homey and centralized, a good place to hang out and read on a dull day.

I guess the reason these tiny little joys have so much weight to me is that we have in effect been camping for the last three years--since right after I started my first web journal in fact. First we moved out of our house in Arlington to share space with a roommate in Dallas. Then we lived in our tiny Sunset Park squat, sans cat and furniture of our own, for 18 months. Now we're here, crammed into two tiny rooms with no door anywhere and no privacy except in the bathroom. No place that was really ours at all, that felt like a home. And this place will have that, and I guess I didn't realize how much I missed it. Matt and I are both the kind of people who live inside our own heads a great deal of the time, which is why we neither divorced nor killed one another while all this was going on. But we both need this change and this space. There'll be just enough room to breathe. Ahh.

***

The other day, I was walking home from Times Square along the grimy sidewalk and thinking what a gray ugly place New York can be; then I looked up. The September sky was a pure endless blue that you get no other time of year, free of glare and clouds. From where I stood, the sun was hidden behind buildings, but its light was bounced in blurred squares from high skyscraper windows to lower ones, down and down and down, until the shade at street level was patterned with dapples of light that came from everywhere and nowhere. The soft, slightly chilly air was fresh off the Atlantic, and it made you feel, the way those kinds of autumn days do, as if dying from happiness were not an entirely impossible or objectionable idea.

***

Just as we're about to leave it, Manhattan decides to remind us what a kooky place it can be. Last week, I noticed a familiar-looking stocky man crossing the street at Broadway and 49th in front of me. "Why, that looks like Al Franken," I thought. And it was. Al Franken! Walking across Broadway! I burst out, like any slobbering fan, 'Mr Franken! I love your show!" and he replied, looking somewhat harrassed because people must say this to him 500 times a day, "Thanks! Keep listening!" I didn't want to bother him, so I left it at that. But still--Al Franken!

Today on my way home I watched a man zoom down the busy street on a Segway. He was dressed in a business suit, tie flapping nattily in the breeze as he wove in and out of traffic. I said to the guy next to me, "You don't see that every day." And he laughed, because you don't, not even in New York. Then, this evening, as I'm sure he'll report soon in his blog, deanpence noticed that our neighbor across the way had decided to sit on her couch and watch TV---naked as a jaybird. She's was pretty attractive (from what I could see) if a bit unobservant. I don't think she realized that although her first floor window was behind a courtyard wall, someone standing on our second floor balcony could still see her in all her nakedy glory. Or maybe she wanted us to. It's hard to tell. "Welcome to New York," I told deanpence. I think he's going to like it here.