Saturday, July 23, 2005

The Jenga-Tetris Rent Stabilized Monster

"Are you throwing anything away?"

" Mom, I've been living the past five years in a ahoebox. If it's still here, it deserves a chance to survive in DC"

Yesterday I moved out an end table. I could feel the eyes boring into me from the third floor acrss the street. Back up in my apartment, peering from my window, I saw one of the firebugs from the halfway house across the street lugging it back into her building.

Today, my broken printer and the other end table went outside to enjoy the weather. 15 minutes later I lugged down a few bags of my 'Who am I kidding, like I'll ever have a job where I need to wear a silk shell" clothes and brought them to the church across the street. The printer was still there ( probably doesn't make good kindling). The end table wasn't.

"I got your tables!" I hear coming from above me. The firebug is leaning out her window waving.
I squint against the sun and look up. " I'm gonna be moving out the matching coffee table in a few weeks. I'll yell at your window when I do. She grins, displaying her three prettiest teeth, and dissapears back inside.

I've got three seperate box piles going now, and have reached the stage where you want to cry, burn it all down, or take a shower every 15 minutes. Each round of box paccking require me to carefully dislodge items from the patented "Big City Shoebox Apartment Organization Disguised as Decorating" and with that, new plumes of dust and tufts of pug hair are dislodged and float about. This ticks me off. I've vaccumed three times in the past two days, and am very tempted to use all those rolls of plastic sheeting and duct tape purchased a few years ago to make myself a "Moving/Packing Suit."

As incredibly painful as it was..it was time to get rid of Girl Pugs throne. I need that wall for storing packed boxes.

The throne is a blue and white checked Queene Anne armchair, gotten at an auction for 7.50 six years ago in my old midwestern town. I was living on the top floor of a hundred year old house then, and while waiting for my dad to come help me lug it up the stairs, Girl Pug plunked her butt in it and claimed it as her own. I put a dog cushion and a red chenille throw on it, and this is where she lounges, laying on all the toys she's chosen to hide from her blind brother.

To prevent uneccesary drama, I put her and Blind Boy Pug in the bedroom while I huffed and puffed and threw the throne down three flights of steps. Once on the street I look up at the apartment slowly being redecorated with my stuff. She leans out the window.
"You want it?" I yell.
"Too big!" She yells back.
Too big for what? It's got plenty of cotton ticking coming out the bottom. Maybe it would catch fire too quickly. I dunno.

So now I've showered again and have set up the fluffy parts of the former throne on the floor. Of course Girl Pug is looking terribly distraught and sitting in my clean laundry instead.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Queen Packing Slug Supreme

August 15th

But I have 5 boxes packed! I do. I packed a jillion cookbooks, my culinary school binders, my petite four pans and my offset spatula, my back issues of "Food Arts" and "pastry Art and design", my ancient Kitchenaid, my ice cream maker, my microplane grater, and my Series Of Unfortunate Events books.

Thats some progress, right?