Continued from here:

Wednesday: I took the morning pretty easily off, then got my keys to the new apartment and did the run through during the lunch hour. It's...smaller than I expected. I know I've looked over the schematics a LOT and using that online room planner, but there's things you just can't tell from that.

Good points: kitchen is a lot bigger, living room not too bad in size either, patio's nice, lots of shelving space, bathtub is new and has its own shower bar, two bedroom closets. Bad points: bathroom is smaller, bedroom is a LOT smaller, CLOSETS ARE EFFING TINY. Even the hall closet. This last point and the bedroom point are huge problems for me. But...too late now, what can I do, etc. Just gotta put up with it. So I basically did stuff like a bit of cleaning, saged the place, and started moving things over. I did go to writing group that night as a break, and Melinda was all, "I told you it was gonna be small." I know, I know, but somehow I can't figure that out until seeing it anyway. I also attempted to move one piece of furniture--the shelf that Mom bought me that goes over the toilet--but it doesn't fit there because there's shower racks blocking it. I told Mom this and could I just get rid of it and she was all, "Save it!" Uh, why? I literally can't fit it and neither can she in her house.

Thursday: Continued to move things into the apartment. I set up the kitchen and bathroom, since those were the rooms that I didn't have to put furniture into. I made various Target runs. The kitchen has way more cabinets than I really needed for kitchen things, which is good because at this point I'm probably gonna have to stash books and yarn in them on a permanent basis. Since the kitchen didn't need to be free to move furniture into and the bathroom is too small, I ended up piling all of my boxes directly into the kitchen. I filled all the shelves in the kitchen and bathroom with stuff to be packed later. I put stuff all over the counters, then in the aisleway...I left room to get into the fridge and that was it. Can't cook in there right now. I also made yet another pile for the SPCA. I tried putting a 2000 Flushes into the toilet and it took like 25 minutes for the toilet to stop running, which worries me.

I went to improv that night, which actually was pretty great, but I'll write that up separately sometime later.

Friday: Continued to move boxes in there all day. My car is STILL making noise when I turn the ignition sometimes (it did it the first time I turned on the car each day and then not at all after), so I brought it back to the shop thinking, "Hope the warranty covers this!" They said to leave it overnight and they'd see what noise it made in the morning. Okay, fine, I finished my Target and SPCA runs early. I bought some tension rods to put into the closet in hopes of doubling the space, and I got a new shower curtain and blackout curtains--Melinda assured me one can use a tension rod to put them in even under blinds, and huzzah, that seems to be working! I also moved all of the tinier furniture I probably won't be able to fit onto my side patio. We'll see if I ever have the room to put any of it indoors or not, but since most of it's plastic, it probably doesn't matter if it's outside for awhile. I have stacked some emptied boxes out there (there's something called "Cardboard Fest" coming up in August, if I ever come up with an idea I should be stocked) and got annoyed that it started SPRINKLING last night. WTF? Raining in California in June? Just wrong, global warming.

Incidentally, I do not get why curtains are sold ONE CURTAIN AT A TIME, or shower curtains are sold individually without a liner. Cheapskates.

Dawn said she wanted to bring me dinner sometime this week, so I decided Friday would be the day. She hung out with me for a few hours after that, which was good.

Saturday: The dreaded day. I actually managed to finish putting every single damn box in there all by myself--that's all of them, by myself. There is a near avalanche in the kitchen at this point. I threw the lighter boxes on the top of the pile. I also started to put clothes into my tiny closets with the tension rods, and one of them broke. Joy. I also got spare keys made for all. According to the car place, the new repairs are fine, I just need another $380+ repairs in the steering column or something to fix the OTHER squeak. I was all, "I CANNOT DO THIS RIGHT NOW" and they were all, fine, it can go for awhile until the whole thing dies. I now need a thousand dollars of work on the car. Shoot me now. My plate is way too full right now and I cannot take this on.

I also spent my morning waiting for Mom to show up* and for the Internet repair guy to switch my service. The appointment was supposed to be "between 11 and 1," so I spent that time trying to unpack clothes. The guy showed up at about 12:15 to tell me that there was something wrong with the box across the street and he'd called a repair tech and he was going to go take another job and come back later. The repair tech showed up around 1:50 and spent most of the next hour trying to fix the box across the street. Happily, after he did that, the Internet was working just fine, so when the first guy came back, I told him it was okay. Go figure...but I'm glad I didn't take the later appointment time they offered me. I ended up not doing too much while the repair guy was around, but at least I'd gotten the boxes all done by then.

* She didn't until 3. She called me earlier in the morning and was all, "Can't I just bring my car and not unpack the van?" I was all, "If you want to SAVE things, you're gonna wish you had the van. Go unpack it. Or not, it's up to you, but don't come crying when you can't take things."

Mom showed up around 3 right as the tech guy was finishing up, so we started moving the bookcases and other easier furniture, according to my floor plan. You'll be surprised to hear that we actually didn't get into any crazy screaming fights, so go figure on that one. She managed to stay pretty calm about the smallness of the bedroom, at least. On the other hand, she did drop a drawer on my foot, which now has an obvious wound, is kinda black and blue, and I'm limping. Whee.

I'm really surprised that we managed to fit all of that furniture in there. Hell, we even got my hamper in there, and I couldn't fit that in the original schematics. At this point I've got the bed surrounded by one bookcase, one desk, three hampers (two have small bookshelves on top of them), the armoire, hamper, and file cabinet. Crowded, but there's still some floor space around the door so that's good. Mauricio showed sometime between five and six and he was a total godsend when it came to moving the heavier furniture. We managed to cram in almost everything, really. The placement of the TV is unfortunately a bit awkward compared to where the seats have to go, and one chair probably can't watch TV at all really, but....well, the point is to get it in there, after all. I'm amazed it all went in, down to the kitchen table (that's lived in the craft room for years) and chairs and other kitchen furniture.

I only ended up having to give up entirely two pieces of furniture: one desk that wasn't from any of our family members and the couch because I could not keep every precious bit of dead relatives' inherited furniture and still fit the couch in. The couch is probably at least as old as I am, the cats I used to live with went at it, and the armrest is falling off, so even Mom didn't want to save it. Moving it out of the apartment...well, we really needed Mauricio for that. It had to be flipped end over end and it ended up taking out one of the lights in the hallway. Uh-oh. They were moved to the "free furniture" area across the street (oh, college towns) and the desk was gone the next morning.

The huge furniture moving finally wrapped up around 9, and we had a late dinner before Mauricio had to leave. It was an exhausting day. And yet I still didn't get to go to bed because Mom insisted we move stuff like the drawers back into the furniture. Oh, and she peed in the toilet and noticed that it wasn't flushing, so she was up for hours trying various remedies to fix this, and it didn't work. Greaaaat, now the toilet doesn't work? And the manager was gone for the weekend. We went back to my old apartment for that sort of thing. I was exhausted and yet with Mom around we couldn't go to bed until 1 a.m. I didn't really sleep.

Sunday: We had to wake up early despite last night because oh, btw, Mom's got a fake BeeGees concert to go to in the Bay Area at 2! I was...super unthrilled to hear that. (Also, fake BeeGees? This is a thing like the fake Beatles?) We finished moving the very last of the furniture into the place and then started cleaning. Mom did a great job on oven duty, even though I had to run out and buy more cleaning supplies--you'd think with the oceans of them I have around here (including five different kinds of Febreeze from when I lived with cats and birds), she wasn't satisfied. She also has insisted on buying the Miracle Mop from the movie Joy, and I guess also its accompanying bucket and also what I'm guessing is a Miracle Vacuum. I already have three mops and two vacuums and originally told her not to do this, so....that went well. Anyway, Mom got the kitchen cleaned and the biggest of the vacuums fixed (she griped at me to go assemble the new one, but nope) before she left me all alone to clean.

I actually did get it all done--all the vacuuming and mopping and bathroom cleaning yet again--all by myself by 3 p.m. That's a shocker for me. While I did the best job I could of cleaning the bathroom shower stall, it sadly doesn't exactly look white and new. And the floor has all kinds of marks and stains--you can see where I had carpet down very easily, I'll put it that way. They put in rather crap linoleum the last time it had to be fixed for flooding, and it doesn't look clean even though I tried two of the four mops and three cleaning products on it. Oh well, I give up.

After that I was pretty exhausted. I went to the library to pick up some books and then went out for pizza by myself for some quiet time, followed by making a brief grocery run and taking back the broken tension rod at Target. Then I dragged myself home to start working on unpacking. Mostly clothes. There is no way in hell they are all going to fit. This makes me want to drink. Yes, I've got those shrink wrap bags, but I'm gonna need more of those for the entire sweater collection and there is no way on earth I can hang up all of the nice clothes--or fit all of the damn vacuums and mops into the tiny hall closet. I started making a pile of stuff to give away to the SPCA some more, including half of the dang mops.

I'm still afraid to use the toilet, so I am holding on to the old apartment keys until I'm satisfied I have somewhere to go besides the shower.

On the one hand: GREAT! I GOT ALL OF THAT STUFF IN THERE! On the other hand, I think I'm gonna spend the next few weeks just trying to figure out how to fit everything into this tiny-ish place. Wah. I'm exhausted.

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry