Caterwauling

I do believe I did. Let’s remedy that before tonight’s results show, shall we?

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From Mom: “You only have to listen to a man until you marry him.”

Me: “You’ve just made the case for polygamy.”

The good: I got approval to move into my new digs!

The bad: Now to part with my money. (*weeping*)

The ugly: A $225 AMENITY FEE? What the HELL?!?! How is it that NO ONE bothered to MENTION that in the first place?!?!!

OK, if this is a one-time fee, maaaaaayyyybbeeee I will not bristle too much more, suck it up and deal with it. But hoo boy, what a way to take me from the top of the world to under the earth in a heartbeat.

No matter — I will USE that damn gym to get my money’s worth. (At least, that’s what I’m telling myself right now.)

In any event, woo hoo!

Valbee commented about the cost of my daily commute, and it got me thinking.

Let’s assume I spend about $35 a week on average fueling up the car. I drive out of my way (to Fairfax County) to get gas because it’s the cheapest on my radar, so of course I have to get it more frequently but the cost basis is worth it.

Which, yuck. But whatever — can’t fight City Hall.

But that’s the price of the commute. The cost is a whole ‘nother matter.

I used to bitch to high hell about my old job, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say there were moments of absolute clarity and incredulity at the smarts that people were hiding under the cloak of mediocrity, as I liked to call it. My old H.R. director was one smart cookie, and I never gave her credit for it.

She was very profound on the cost of time. When we were getting slapped with furlough days so we could make budget, she voluntarily dropped down to four days a week, every week. I’d thought I was some sort of saint myself for working on those unpaid days (as my deadlines didn’t change to fit the budget), but she was the smartest one of us all.

She thought about it and decided that she’d worked enough years in her life that she deserved some time to herself. She and her husband were getting up there in years, and she realized how precious a commodity that time really is. So she treated those Furlough Fridays as three-day weekends and was just as happy as a pig in poop.

Now, granted, she could AFFORD to take the time off. But it taught me a huge lesson in that time is WAY more precious than money any day, and having money means buying time.

I think it was in the “One Minute Millionaire” book that said your goal should be to have all of your days pre-paid. Like, idiots like me who are waiting for their pay raise and a miracle to afford to move to the apartment of their dreams (I’m being philosophical here, not entirely truthful, although it is a VERY nice place) are, well, idiots. That we should make/bank enough money to be able to say, “I’d like to spend the next six months in Tahiti. I’m going to go book the trip right now.” And then go DO it, because the money is already on hand.

Well, I guess that IS my goal, smarty pants. It’s just not my REALITY. Not right now, anyway. But wow, it’d be nice to not scrimp and struggle all the damn time. And yes, I can’t budget worth a shit, I admit it. But I also made a lot of stupid mistakes throughout the past decade that I now have to unravel, so I have to forget about pre-paying my days when I’ve got to finish paying for days I don’t even remember living!

Anyway, I digress. But the point (shut up, there was one!) is that I will be getting back all that gas money to put into my new rent … AAAAANNNNDDDD, I will get back about 10 hours a week of my time as well. YES THAT’S RIGHT — 10 HOURS! Half a day, practically. Better yet, I’ll get ME back, because Beltway Bitch Barbie^TM (vanity license plates that say “eat me,” “back up,” “U dick” and “die” sold separately) comes with a road rage that doesn’t stop when the emergency brake handle is lifted.

My mom informed me that extended-family members are all shocked and appalled at how much I pay for rent and how much I WILL pay for rent. That I’m a spoiled brat. That I’m wasteful. That I’m hateful and evil and have poor judgment and blah blah blah jealousycakes.

First off, I informed my mom that unless anyone is contributing to/footing the bill for my move, they don’t get input. Nor does she have to listen to it.

Second, my judgment is impeccable. (Give or take. …) Well, at least my intuition is spot-on — I never second-guess myself in that regard. It’s just implementing said inner guidance that’s my issue. But I’m working on that. It’s at about this point in my life that I realize that everyone ISN’T full of shit, but a lot of them are. And I ain’t one of ’em.

So no matter what I do, where I end up or what dreams I choose to have (or, for that matter, which ones pop into my head uninvited but that are fun as all hell to entertain anyway), they’re mine. I take it very personally when my decisions/judgment are questioned because I’m NOT DUMB. I have an excuse a reason for everything I do/don’t do/say.

Extended relatives with opinions are like bad drivers — if ya ain’t gonna NOT piss me off, then get outta my way. All I’m doing is looking for some peace and happiness — to fall back in love with the person I started out to be who’s hiding beneath the Stressed-out Angry Girl who has bullied her way into my skin.

And I can’t wait for that bitch to hit the highway … in the opposite direction. Pending credit approval, that’s April 30. Lord give me strength in the meantime. …

Reader Poll Monday, that is:

1. Do you have plans for St. Patrick’s Day?
It’s Friday night, so working late and going home to drink beer (green or otherwise; I have a six-pack of Yuengling I need to empty before I move) and pack shit.

2. When is the last time you consumed alcohol?
Saturday night. Beer. Holy ripping headache the next morning. As you get older, I guess your taste in alcohol becomes more refined (read: expensive) and cheap beer just doesn’t cut it anymore.

3. Have you ever been arrested?
Not for lack of doing absolutely stupid shit when I was younger, so I’ll say no, albeit surprisingly.

4. Do you have a bad habit you’d be willing to pay $250/month to break if it were guaranteed to work?
Stress-eating. When the little mind gremlins get the better of me, I will gnaw on anything and everything that’s handy.

5. Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right-dominant

6. Do you use a letter opener when you open your mail?
Nope. Although I do use one for emphasis while I speak. It ensures I have a 3-foot personal space radius at all times. 😉

7. Would you rather receive daily shoulder rubs or daily foot rubs?
Shoulder (oh, the stress knots I carry there). I don’t mind foot rubs but if folks are going to be all wimpy about it, don’t bother because I’m ticklish and would probably kick someone in the head.

8. Would you rather rappel down the side of the tallest building on earth, or walk cross a 6-inch wide beam suspended across the Grand Canyon?
Assuming I have ingested a lot of mind-altering substances, I’ll take the Spidey route and go down the building.

9. What time did you wake up this morning?
Alarm set for 6:10 a.m.; finally roused from near-dead at 6:42 a.m.

10. Ask me something.
What inspired your shutterbuggery? Have you been at it for years or is it a relatively recent hobby?

Not only am I a drama queen, but I am an EXISTENTIAL drama queen.  The joy of it all.

Do you ever just, for once in your stupid life, want someone to ASK you what’s wrong? Like, sincerely just want to know what you’re holding back? And then in the second that said moment arises, you tell yourself that your thoughts aren’t even worth mentioning and then you spend the rest of your life digesting yourself for missing an opportunity to unburden yourself once and for all?

Then again, maybe it’s a sign to grow up and get over it already. Maybe it’s your conscience’s way of slamming your mouth shut before a foot or two wanders into the gaping abyss.  I don’t know. I just wish I didn’t spend so much time wondering.

I dropped by my (hopefully) new apartment complex this morning to drop off my anal-retentively immaculately completed application. When they comment on how friggin’ comprehensively you filled it out and speculate on your detail-orientedness (is that a word? It beats my usual disorientedness!), you know you’ve made an impression.

Speaking of impressions, hopefully the resulting credit check/report won’t make too BAD of an impression, although it’s got to count for SOMETHING how I’ve been digging my miserable ass out of student loan debt. It’s come at the expense of *other* debt, but I’m all about getting the feds offa my ass first!

Anyway, I *really* should have worked a bit this weekend, but I really needed the time to apartment-hunt/clean/dream a little bit. I’ve never been so rejeuvenated after a weekend in my entire life!

Heh. Never thought I’d type THOSE words anytime soon!

But I am. I went to visit an apartment community today, and they had me from the wafting aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in the clubhouse where I entered to visit with the rental agents.

Seriously, I’ve heard that when you’re selling a home or inviting a boy over to your house to pick you up for a date for the first time, you should throw something cinnamony and sugary in the oven to make the home feel all inviting and tempting and tantalizing and shit like that. Lemme tell you, chocolate chip cookies work too. 😉

We just need a little earth to stand on
Plant our hearts on solid ground
Turn the lights out on this city
And wake up in a new hometown.

Get the song here.

This was the first and only place I will be looking at. It’s four miles from work. FOUR MILES. Not 34!!! It’s got every amenity known to man, and even though they offered, “We have an Olympic-sized swimming pool,” I pointed to my ass and said, “You actually think I’d exchange a dip in the pool for a drive through Burger King’s pickup window. Right!”

But anyway, I’d love to crow about everything, but suffice it to say that I put down a deposit. I have to turn in my application tomorrow and pray for the best with the credit check, but I’m feeling good about this one.

I almost didn’t go today. I have a BANGING tension headache, which I always like to say happens when you’ve got too much mess inside your head to contain it all. And I still have the headache (particularly as I was writing out a BAD CHECK, which they promised not to cash right away), but once I walked out of there, I mentally sighed in relief and started plotting my escape from my current abode.

I don’t want to face tomorrow
If we don’t leave this place tonight
I’ve never been more sure
Of anything in my life.

It costs more than my current place, and I’m not thrilled that I’ll have an electric stove (some units have gas, but none of those were available for my desired move-in date) and that I have to pay gas BUT I don’t have control over the dates that the heat goes off and the a/c goes on.

But seriously, that shit? Is minor. It’s cozy, cozy little community, very quiet, AND it has a concierge (!) who plans activities all during the week for residents to mingle.

Read: I’ll get to meet people! I won’t be a hermit forever!

I am SO excited. OMG, SO ready for this. It’s going to be a bitch to GET my shit there, of course, but now that I’ve gotten the place chosen, I can move on to the next step in the process.

I called my mom with my usual cognitive dissonance after I left the place. But she said that I have spot-on judgment in people, places and things and how dare I question myself. If it feels right, then I’ll make it work. And I had to laugh, because it’s the same advice I gave her when SHE moved in November. 🙂

In any event, I did leave the place and explore my new ‘hood, and well, I like it. A lot. I stopped for lunch and just felt good. And I got a balcony for the cats, so they shall be most pleased.

God, my best friend is coming into town in a week, I’m taking some time off from work AND I’m moving to what looks to be THE perfect place. I’m trying very hard to not look up to stare at the meteor that is probably going to wipe out my existence before all of these wonderful things come to pass — this time, I’m going to try believing that I deserve everything fabulous and more. It’s an interesting social experiment, but a successful one nonetheless, I hope. Wish me luck!

So I’ve been in full “So move her out, already” (from “About Last Night,” for fellow Brat Pack junkies) mode.

Everyone keeps asking, “When are you moving? Where are you moving? Why haven’t you visited any places? Why haven’t you CALLED any places?”

I’ll tell you why. Because you need MONEY to put down to catch an available space in a place you like. And I? Have $18 to my name till Wednesday AND I’m behind by two car payments. Keep asking me in that disappointed-in-me tone why I haven’t bothered. I’m a bit TOUCHY about that subject right now, here at T-minus two months.

ANYWAY, I got motivated by scaring the shit out of my neighbors by THROWING SHIT off the balcony. (It’s quite satisfying, seeing shit crash to the ground. Try it sometime.) (And yes, I dragged it to the dumpster. I just didn’t want to carry it down two flights of stairs.) So I sat in my car and called a dozen apartment complexes in my targeted neighborhood.

And may I just say that people are assholes. Seriously. I am calling based on looking at YOUR AD, and I am interested based on the amenities and prices YOU ADVERTISED. And you tell me, “Oh, that special is over”?!?! It’s a current ad, noodle nutted son of bitch.  My crystal ball failed to tell me that your March advertised specials aren’t good in, oh, MARCH.

*sigh*

I have an appointment tomorrow. And where money comes back to haunt me, after a half-hour on the phone with these clowns (nicer ones than the aforementioned, but sales monkeys nonetheless) I am told, “Bring money because we can’t hold properties for you.”

!

I should have known better than to say, “OK!” But my theory on money is this: When you’ve got a pile-o-cashish burning a hole in your pocket (let’s dream for a minute here), you go shopping and you can’t find anything. But when you’re broke and you go window-shopping, that’s suddenly when everything looks good.

So, if I see something I like, great. I can go back. If I don’t like it, enh, at least I broke the moving-odyssey cherry.

I’ve been working with an apartment locator service. And by working, I mean I’ve gotten one property in a week and suddenly today, when I got annoyed at the many follow-up calls/e-mails asking if I had contacted that single property and said I was looking forward to hearing about more places, I finally got more. But maybe I was unclear in my price requirements on the phone, because I am unimpressed to date.

Of course, I’m just unimpressed in general that properties in the suburbs cost so damn much.

My current complex offered to pay my moving costs up to a certain point if I sign up for one of our newly remodeled units. Like, it would cost me NOTHING to move, and I’d get a discount off “movin’ on up,” so to speak. It would actually, probably be more cost-efficient to stay in the ‘hood, believe it or not.

And I’m thinking about it. But I also know I’m in dire need of a change of scenery and I’d like my commuting time back. If only driving could be counted as physical activity — gym rats are getting buff and burning calories while I’m snarfing down the Fast Food of the Day and yelling at people who celebrate No-Turn-Signal-Monday (or Tuesday, Friday and everything in between).

Alas, though, if I can just digest the exorbitant pet deposits/pet rents/application fees/security deposits (but NOT move-in fees. Seriously, that’s highway robbery. What’s the fee for? Are you going to help me move my shit? Then fuck off), I think moving to the ‘burbs is the right decision for me at this juncture in my life.

Although, after cheating on my manicurist last week (i.e., going to someone different) and regretting it greatly, I’ll drive back every two weeks without complaint for the TLC to which I’ve become accustomed in my city!

I found myself with an unexpected free evening last night, so I decided to spend time with my favorite person on earth … moi!

Whenever I lived in Pittsburgh and got into a bit of a directionless funk, I made it a point to wander down to Point State Park, where the famed “three rivers” converge. There was something about hanging out at the fountain (here’s a great photo of where I liked to sit) with my journal, staring off into the distance and watching the water.

I am a water person. Now, I can’t swim and I sure as HELL don’t get a tan (the Irish roots overtook the Italian ones, unfortunately, in that realm), but when I think about “escape,” I immediately think of oceans and lakes and, if we’re talking immediate access to infinity, then rivers. I’ve grown up around rivers and I’ve mananged to stay near one.

Thus, around midnight last night, I ended up in Old Town Alexandria (which sits right on the Potomac River) — sitting on the rocks at the edge of the water and watching airplanes flying up from the south to land at National Airport. The planes are so low that you can tell which airline they belong to just from the colors, and you can tell the size by the location and structure of the wings.

You could even say I’m an outdoors-type person, although I’m not athletic in the least. I have my windows/curtains open constantly and I wither without sunlight. I mean, suffocatingly so. And when well-meaning people tell me to buy a fucking sunlight lamp, I want to ram one up their asses because a $99 lamp isn’t going to give me that feeling of smallness, of marveling at Mother Nature, of gazing (with shades, of course) into infinity. My greatest creativity is generated by warmth and without boundaries. Because there’s always the chance of seeing something *different,* you know? Of finding inspiration unscheduled and unexpectedly. Of just not forcing it and not being disappointed if it doesn’t come at all, because witnessing simple beauty is enough to motivate me to seek it again, and maybe the words and images will come next time.

Anyway, I’ve digressed. Per the usual. So, back to the river. …

I went there sans coat but with MP3 player and had what might possibly classify as the best night I’ve had in a long time. Sure, I wanted to toss all the couples molesting each other into the fishy depths of the Potomac (it’s a park at midnight. Go figure), but I had a rare opportunity to commune with nature as well as with myself.

I went there looking for some sort of revelation. Well, maybe that wasn’t my initial goal, but it was up there. I know I’m going to be moving out of this area soon (and at some point, I might acutally pack a box or call an apartment complex, as time is a-dwindlin’), and I just wanted to savor some time in my current stomping grounds.

I ask a lot of the universe sometimes. I have conversations (in my head, of course) with it and ask for guidance and assurance that I’m going in the right direction. The way I figure, the universe has (to date) overlooked me in a lot of ways, even though I feel like I’ve practically been standing on my head and jumping up and down, begging it to (allow me to channel “Meredith Grey” here for a second) “Pick me! Choose me! Love ME!” And every time, it laughs at me and looks at me like, “Why would I?” And I never seem to have an answer.

Anyway, while I don’t get everything (or much of what, for that matter) I want, I do get my little messages answered here and there. And if that means I have the wherewithal to keep going another day or year if that means I’m closer to *something,* whatever it might be, then that’s what I will take and I will savor it for now.

So I was looking for some Big Revelation from the universe as I sat on the rocks and stared down at the ripples of water seemingly rolling toward me personally, I got it. Now, it’s not earth-shattering, but for me, it was what I’d gone fishing for and I would say it was a successful expedition.

So I asked the Goddess (and not me as the Goddess, but rather the superhuman one) whether I were going to turn out OK. I threw that question into the water and waited. And waited. And out of the blue, a song popped up on my MP3 player — one that I heard on the very worst day of my life and I haven’t heard since — that has the line, “Everything’s gonna be all right.” (Shawn Mullins, “Lullaby”)

And I understood, I’ve GOT to be OK. I have no CHOICE in the matter. I’m going to have all the intangibles I’ve needed, and hopefully maybe some of the tangibles. (Mmm, MacBook Pro. Someday!)

So, I didn’t just jump in the water and be done with it. (Again, not my intention, but the visual was there and I was depressed to realize no one knew where I was and that I’d probably be missing for months before anyone even noticed.) But in the water I saw a published novel, I saw a tropical vacation, I saw family and friends and champagne glasses and music and celebration. I saw the anvil that seems to weigh on my heart and my thoughts being lifted. I saw a future I want.

More importantly, I got the feeling that it isn’t as far away as it has always seemed.

Maybe what I talked about in yesterday’s entry is what I’ve been doing all along — working on flourishing in the end. Trying to make the best decisions I can and be the best person possible and attempting to suck it up and get through the here and now with nothing but my character intact in the hopes that in the end (or, rather, in the next stage of my existence), all the good things will be resting on a solid and carefully built foundation and that those won’t crumble and evaporate because I’ve done the hard labor to ensure the great things will flourish from there for a long time to come. …