Last Gasp

We've put if off until the very last minute. We've come up with tons of excuses. And now we can't avoid it any longer. We have to return to our apartment for the wrap-up. There is only one task I know must be completed: the retrieval and return of our Time Warner Cable boxes (oh, Time Warner, I miss you so - you have no idea how much better Time Warner is than Cablevision; it would be like comparing apples to horse shit...). This is my task.

Devoted partner had work obligations that prevented him from partaking in the 2-week odyssey that was packing the house and I pretty well made clear that once we left the apartment I wasn't lifting another finger for it. There's some cleanup that should be done and, even though there's stuff we're simply not moving out, we should make it look like we tried. That is, if our neighbors haven't already broken in and stolen everything that wasn't nailed down; or if the mice have taken over and prevent us entry; or if the landlord hasn't already rented it to someone else.

I so don't want to go. Saturday is a time for fun. A time to make that cheesecake I want to give the neighbors, time to shop for lamps so our house isn't so dark, time to look into getting a work table for my prep kitchen. A time, frankly, for chilled wine and sex. Not a time to wade through militant mice and felonious neighbors on the way to figuring out why the local post office has forwarded exactly two pieces of mail in the three weeks since we moved.

This feeling of festering hate that wells up within me at the thought of four hours or so spent in a place I lived for six years leads me to believe that I have learned a valuable lesson: don't let it get this far. By the end of year two, I was ready to move on. So was devoted partner. We spoke about it in the abstract, complained about the good deal we currently had vs. the bloated rental market everywhere else; spoke about the ridiculous housing market and how if we were ever going to buy, now was certainly not the time as townhouses on our block were asking 3 million dollars - and I think I've mentioned how active drug dealings were done on our block. We just didn't do anything about it. I was still adamant about staying in Manhattan as opposed to shopping for living scenarios in Brooklyn, and I also didn't want to give up our space - devoted partner and I would never have survived in what passes for a one-bedroom in Manhattan.

But we could have done something else. We had a lot of good excuses why we didn't move: paying an exorbitant broker's fee to move into a place like the one we were already in seemed a poor waste of money; what if the new place proved worse than the existing place?; remember what our friends are paying for their places; and so on. But we should have found something that didn't make us so irretrievably miserable and resentful. We would have been happier. His shitty job would have seemed less shitty if his home wasn't also so shitty. Ditto my shitty job.

The thing I like so much about this new place, even though it too is temporary, is that when I come home, I like what I've come home to. Sure there are boxes in the hallway that need to be broken down and as mentioned above, it's a little on the dark side what with the lack of lights, but when I get home, I'm happy this is the place I get to call home. And I'm going to remember that this is a feeling worth having and worth sacrificing a little for.