So, I decided to move the week before Christmas, which, who in this fine old world has better timing than I? Nobody. No. Body. Well, maybe my own sinuses, which — coated in a shag carpet of book dust, cardboard lint, and the dander of the dust golem that lumbered out from under the dresser — might as well have hung a banner on my upper lip: “WELCOME ASSOCIATION OF COLD GERMS.”

While the cold germs milled around in my head, wearing fezzes and drinking cheap scotch, I fumed in the direction of my computer, which for no apparent reason decided that it had to break up with its video link, and can you just fix that shit on a notebook computer? No. And did I have a spare monitor lying around the house? No. What I did have was two hours to spend on the phone with Dell, unscrewing teeny tiny little screws and opening up the key plate and finding a fossil record of shedded fur, stray sesame seeds, and Post-It fragments. Oh, wait. I didn’t have that, either. I had to pack.

I packed. I packed and packed and packed. I packed. I barked my shins. I stigmata’ed myself with the corner of a banker’s box. I dropped baseball encyclopedias on my toes. I whacked my head into an open cabinet door, cursed, clutched my skull, slammed the cabinet door closed so hard that it bounced open again, forgot all about it, whacked my head into it again, “FAAAAAACK!” clutch slam forgot aaaaaaaaand whacked my head again for the hat trick. If you’d shaved my head that day, it would have looked like…I don’t even know. A Romulan, or whatever that Jovian moon is with all the constantly-erupting volcanoes. I mean, damn. And on top of bonking my head into every door and drawer in the place at least once, let’s talk about the veritable Wal-Mart’s worth of shit that fell onto my head during the packing process. Among the household items that earned their expert marksmanship badges:

1. a ping-pong paddle
2. a box of photos
3. a barbecue fork, which missed my eye by millimeters, and why the hell do I, a vegetarian, even have a goddamn barbecue fork? Oh, right — so I can kill myself the next time my computer breaks
4. wrapping paper
5. the other ping-pong paddle…I’m not even good at ping-pong, for fuck’s sake
6. the extra cable-box remote
7. and, because they go everywhere together, the extra cable box, although technically that one hit me on the shoulder, but still — fuck off, cable accessories
8. a framed photo of me and Djb
9. an expired bottle of multivitamins
10. a four-inch heel
11. a commemorative New Jersey plate, but not the light aluminum-tray one, oh no, the niiiiiiice heavy china one, and yes I have two of them, shut up
12. a ream of paper, which whumped me so solidly that I am now five foot five
And I accidentally packed the cats a couple of times, blah blah, you remember all this from the last time but eventually everything got done, and I ferried the cats over to the new place and locked them in the bathroom. Okay. Fine. Ready for the next morning at eight AM sharp.

…Heh. No. The movers didn’t show until close to noon, because it had snowed, and because the Port Authority had issued a dangerous wind warning, and because the news said for everybody who isn’t an Olympic athlete to stay inside, since that day’s projected high of eighteen goddamn degrees might not prove conducive to, you know, survival. Yeah. It’s freezing, the snow is only melting enough to turn into black ice…enter the cold germs, drunk and ready to get their phlegm on. Ask me if we’ve had a day that cold since.

Not even close. I MEAN COME ON.

Oh, and also, the main office at the moving company hadn’t told the moving team that 1) the new place is up two long, steep flights or 2) that I have two cats. Guess who’s allergic to cats? Thaaaaaaaaat’s right. Two out of three guys on the team.

But then it just kind of worked itself out. We all hustled enough to keep warm, maybe it was too cold for allergic reactions, I don’t know, but somehow all my crap got into the truck and over to the new apartment and up all the stairs. Apollo is expensive, but those guys busted ass. And! Were cute.

Time to unpack. I believe there’s some Newtonian law of thermodynamics which, restated in apartment terms, states that your stuff will expand to fill whatever space you give it, but having just moved from a weirdly laid-out two-bedroom to a larger but more conventionally arranged one-bedroom, I think it’s more that your stuff comes to fit whatever space you give it, and then when you move to a different space, your stuff is like, “Hey, don’t look at us,” because where you used to have three drawers in the kitchen, you now have one, and where you used to have three closets, you now have…one, again, and where you used to have enough lighting, now you live in a Transylvanian cave and have had to jury-rig Christmas lights in the bathroom, which would look cool except that a previous tenant wanted the bathroom to look like a sauna, so showering is like an orgy at the Arctic Circle. But without…the orgy…part? It’s hard to explain. I can tell you that the bathroom is kind of small. I’ve stepped in the wastebasket like ten times.

The new place is really swell, though. I have way more space, so much that I don’t exactly know what to do with it. Conversation pit? Dance floor? Dark room? Petting zoo? Everything slants to one side — my desk faces “uphill” and I roll away from it in my chair if I don’t wedge an ankle in under the desk — and the street I live over is loud, but it’s definitely an upgrade.

To afford it, though, I had to sell the car. I don’t miss the insane clown gas prices, I don’t miss the parking tickets, I don’t miss hitting a pothole full-bore and praying the car doesn’t just come apart like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon in the middle of the Battery Tunnel, I don’t miss the jaunty angle at which she wore her broken sunroof (don’t think you can have wind shear inside a vehicle? Think again), and I especially don’t miss every other driver in Brooklyn, but I mean to tell you, that little jalopy got wicked gas mileage, and on that super-cold morning of the move when she’d sat outside for three days, she started no problem. One little cough, the engine turned over, good to go. We had a pretty good year, she and I, and she made it to Canada and back on three tanks, and for a Jersey girl…not having a car gives us phantom limb pain, kind of. So let us now praise famous Black Betsy. Go with God, you beater, you.

Okay. Moved house, sold the car. Computer? Still busted. Where is that mysterious box in which Dell wants me to return my aching machine? Well, it’s not here…because Bon in customer service sent it to a different address entirely. So someone at 555 Not My Street Exactly thought they got a computer, opened it, and found…a box, and I didn’t get the box I needed until a week later, and then when it did arrive I had no tape left with which to seal it, and argh. Happily, an angel in the form of Dell Spy JD hustled up my order, and when I got back from L.A., the computer followed me in just a few hours later. Thank you so much, Dell Spy JD. If you don’t have an Amazon wish list, you might want to get on that.

And what to say about L.A.? Pamie and Stee put on a fine wedding, is what. I felt bad that the weather didn’t treat them better, but we were all having too much fun to mind a little rain. I’ll let them tell you all about it because it’s their story, but here’s the short form: a beautiful and hilarious ceremony joining two beautiful and hilarious people. Oh, wait, I do want to talk about the food, because it rocked, and vegetarians never say that about wedding food. I mean, not that you go to weddings for the food, but seriously — so good. The two of them have such wonderful friends, too, with such lovely singing voices. The next time they get married you should totally go. Heh.

I’d also like to thank the transportation gods for making L.A. to NYC just about the only trouble-free route going over the holiday. However.

The people seated next to me on the flight home…dear Lord no. Okay, for starters, I noticed them in the boarding lounge, primarily because the guy had a wig on that…you know, you like to think as a writer that nothing is going to defy your powers of description if you expend the proper effort, but…dude. I think I’m out. It’s been two days and the best I can do is “the polyester-fiber love child of a gopher and an Orange Julius.” You know that orange lipstick that every woman on every soap opera wore in the eighties? That color. But paler. And it sat up too high on his head as well. And he had on this Tony Soprano Magic Eye shirt…and beige slacks. Not pants. Slacks. And beige socks, and beige shoes. And it kind of made no sense, because he wasn’t old; he looked maybe in his forties, and if you got rid of the wig and indied up his wardrobe, he’d be okay, not fighting them off with a stick but not bad.

But I tried not to think too many mean thoughts, because maybe he had chemo and his head is really bumpy, people have problems, whatever. Then we all troop onto the plane, and I’ve got a middle seat, ew, but then this Scandinavian model couple asks if I’d mind switching because they both have aisle seats and they want to sit together. No problem. I switch seats to the aisle, and I’m sharing a row with none other than Wigwam and his Lady Friend Of Indeterminate European Descent. They seem nice, I get to stretch my legs, no problem. I’ll just read my book and not look at the wig.

I have read exactly four words when I hear it: “[Prrrrccch!]” Aw, that’s nice. Wigwam and Lady Friend are sharing a smooch. I don’t think I understand why Lady Friend hasn’t advised Wigwam to lose the rug if she’s that fond of him, but…good for him. And for her, because her pants…a lot of buckles, maybe more than you need if you aren’t in an aerial ballet troupe, and when mules became the go-to transcontinental-flight footwear I don’t recall, but…aw. Good for them.

“[Prrrrccch!]” …Aw.

“[Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!]” …Okay, “aw,” but…that’ll probably do it.

“[Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!]”

You know, I’m not against love, folks; I traded seats so that Scandinavian Model Couple could sit toge–

“[Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!]”

See, the thing is, I can hear that over the engine, which means it’s maybe a little on the loud si–

“[Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!]”

Look, I —

“[Prrrrccch!] [Prrrrccch!]”

Yo.

“[Prrrrccch!]”

After the dinner service, during which they fed each other what passes for carrot cake on United Airlines, I had to go to the bathroom to giggle hysterically to myself, because every time I thought they had exhausted their enthusiasm for smacky kissing…”[Prrrrccch!]” It seriously did. Not. Stop. I didn’t think it was going to go any further than the smacky kissing or anything, and you’d better believe if they’d snuggled up under the same blanket I’d have demanded hands where I could see them, but — if your kisses are knocking your boyfriend’s wig askew, you need to tone it down. You need to tone it down anyway, because…you just do. Light your string of love firecrackers in your own back yard.

January 5, 2005

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