I have once again moved apartments.
And this move has been a stressful stressful time of uncertainty, let me tell you:
The end of our old lease was fast approaching, but my roommate and I put off finding a replacement home for a number of reasons. Well, no, that’s a lie. There was only one reason: overwhelming laziness.
So we hurtled towards homelessness, and finally started frantically grasping for somewhere--anywhere--to live.
Luckily, after lots of stress and frustration and driving back and forth between cities, we snagged us a pretty cool little place that isn’t exactly ideal in its location (it adds about fifteen minutes to my commute to work), but has what Calvin’s dad would call “character.”
It’s even got a real live mailbox, little red flag and all.
Another problem, though, was that months ago I had planned a trip home to LA for my birthday, which ended up being the exact same week that my old lease ended and my new one began.
Clearly my mom was only thinking of herself when she decided to go into labor right when 23 years later I was going to need to move apartments. Honestly, the lady’s never thinking ahead.
Anyway, because of the convergence of my move-out, my move-in, and my trip to LA, I ended up packing my entire apartment into my car (which is not a particularly big car) and driving it to and from work like a game of Tetris on wheels for a good couple of days as I went through the process of vacating and cleaning the premises of my old place.
I’m actually a little bit proud because everything I own fit into my car pretty easily--with the exception of my bed, my mattress, and the falling-apartest dresser you ever will meet, which all went with my roommate to her boyfriend’s garage because there was simply no other way. But everything else was transferred from my apartment to my car with hardly any trouble, and I was even able to squeeze in my roommate’s chair and lamp, which she couldn’t fit into her own car.
Either I’m learning to keep my clutter to a minimum or I’m unknowingly driving a clown car.
But packing my life into my car made me super nervous that someone was going to stroll past my car, see it jam-packed with cardboard boxes and garbage bags and bits of furniture and realize that parked before them was a nicely packaged life, just waiting to be seized.
I’m honestly surprised that nothing was taken. It was really very stupid of me to drive around like that for so long. It was painfully obvious that I was in the process of moving and that there might be considerable treasures awaiting a motivated criminal passerby.
Although that passerby would likely be disappointed.
I don’t really own anything all that valuable, except my computer, but I wasn’t taking any risks with that, so I never left it in the car.
The most valuable thing a person would find in my car would be my car, and I would think that a car thief would be better off selecting a vehicle that wasn’t nearly bursting with trashbags of old clothes and half filled notebooks and melted crayons. The acquisition of my car honestly wouldn’t be worth the hassle of having to empty all of its contents into a dumpster (where, truth be told, most of my possessions probably belong).
And yes, you read me correctly: “melted crayons.”
I had a big ol’ box of every color of crayon you could ever dream of, and I didn’t think through the decision of leaving them packed in my car for 3+ days in 90+ degree weather.
Melted, the lot.
I could probably stick a bit of string in the box and make the world’s ugliest candle, with its blobs and swirls of every waxy color of the rainbow and the scraps of crayon paper that are drowning in the mess. Maybe there’s an untapped market for hideous crayon candles, forged through a lack of common sense and the ridiculously hot heat of Sacramento summers.
I’ll be a millionaire.
Anyway, I guess if a tragedy had to occur, it’s better that it was the destruction of my beloved art supplies and not the theft of my car and my life packed within. The lesser of two devastating catastrophes, even if just barely.
But there was also a gap of a few days between me being scheduled to leave for LA and us actually being able to move into our new place.
So, like the crazy person I am, I just drove everything down to LA with me.
Yes, I could have asked someone to let me store my junk at their house.
Yes, I could have taken up my roommate’s offer to use her boyfriend’s garage for temporary storage.
Yes, I could have taken up my manager’s offer to leave all my worldly possessions at the store (my response to which was, “I’m pretty sure that would be a weird thing to do…”).
But all of that would have involved unpacking my car, packing it back up in a week, and then unpacking it again when I finally got to move in to my new place.
So I took the somewhat stupid and somewhat gas-inefficient route of driving my heavy life home with me.
...where I ended up unpacking most of it anyway so that I could drive to places without trashbags fluttering their red plastic ties in my face the whole trip.
Whatevs.
I ended up using a lot of stuff from my car during that week at home that I otherwise would have had to go without, so it worked out.
So I had a lovely week at home, and then I had to drive back up here.
I like driving and all, but seven hours is just too long a drive for me.
I can usually get through five and a half, no problem. Then I start getting the antsies and I start testing myself to see whether I might secretly have the power of teleportation (which so far I do not).
And then I got lost trying to find my new apartment (which I had only ever been to once before in my life) because Sacramento freeways are super weird and I hate them.
I’m sure I’ll figure them out soon enough and I’ll laugh at my current confusion, but seriously. They make no sense to me.
Being from LA, I generally don’t have many problems with freeways. It’s kind of a point of pride, being able to figure them out and deal with the traffic and all that jazz. But what in the world is this Business Loop, and why does it ruin my life EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to go somewhere in Sacramento?
It’s like a freeway for the freeways. Regular freeway taking too long? No problem, we’ve got this extra one to solve your commuting problems!
Unless you’re me, in which case it just causes me to not be able to find my exit ANYWHERE, even when I turned around twice to try again. Nothing.
Luckily Sacramento has lettered and numbered streets, so I was able to exit on...N Street, I think?...and logic my way home from there.
There was some further confusion when I mistook Q Street for a second O Street and thought that maybe P was in the middle and then the city continued on to A on either side, which would be madness and if that were the case I would have gotten right back on the freeway then and there and driven the 7 hours back to LA, giving up on NorCal for good, signed lease and job or no.
Anyway.
Point is I’m here. Lots and lots of boxes, no internet (I’m here at my good friend the Library), and a longish drive to and from work.
But I have a place with a real mailbox and a hallway with a pull-chain lamp.
I’m golden.
Here’s a picture of Icarus:
I like Icarus, even though he’s kind of a big ol’ dummy who couldn’t keep it in his brain that wax and high temperatures don’t mix (says the girl who is still mourning the loss of the crayons she let sit in her car for half a week in the middle of summer. Maybe I like him because I sense in him a kindred spirit).
Also, apparently in my brain’s version of the story, Daedalus is a soul-crushing villain whose goal in life is to drag his son down to mediocrity.
MORAL SCHMORAL--YOU GO, ICARUS! YOU GRAB THAT SHINY SUN!
