Oh, the joy of the move. I moved recently. Recently means like, 2 days ago. Let me recount for you some of the glorious things that happened. Just now, I built a bookshelf. A five-shelf motherfucker that we purchased at Target that was on sale for $26 because, as luck would have it, it is a piece of crap. Shocker. I built that bookshelf and it stood up, then promptly looked like the leaning tower of Broome Street. So then I dismantled it. And now it's fucked. And our books are scattered haphazardly all over the floor now. Literacy exploded in my living room. I am disgusted.
Earlier this week, back at the old apartment, G texted me when she was coming home from Indiana that I had better be ready to move by the time we set. I asked her what we should start packing with, and she said trash bags. Trash bags. I started laughing, and G went, "the amount you're laughing now is directly proportional to the amount of anger I'm going to have in about 5 hours when I get home." Inversely. She meant inversely proportional, because I was laughing a lot and she was real serious.
I began cleaning my room, something that has not really happened, like REALLY happened, in about 2 years. This is not because I am not clean, but merely because a vacuum cleaner, I don't think, would've fit in my last room. That would definitely have been pushing it. Just so no one thinks I'm disgusting, I want to point out that the rest of my room was clean, and I am clean; it's just that under my bed was stupidly not clean. I don't understand how. It was completely inexplicable to me. Exploring underneath my bed was something comparable to maneuvering the jungles of ‘nam.
So, that being said, of note is the fact that underneath all this crap I found $1013 underneath my bed. Not in change. Not a joke. I found a check for $1013 and a copy of The Paris Review underneath my bed. I almost threw away that envelope. Sure glad I didn't. Incidentally, I had already written a strongly-worded letter to the company that issued said check to me proclaiming that I had not received said check and that I was highly upset. So imagine my delight when I got to come out of my room exclaiming, "Hey! I just found $1000!" and the moving man who didn't speak English all of a sudden lit up like I’d shown him a golden baby.
The moving men were very enthusiastic, especially after I found the $1000. I think they thought we were going to tip them with it. But we didn't. Mostly because the poor guys took like a bajillion hours.
G shared with me that her experience in watching me move has really elucidated to her my knack for saving things. She was amazed at the amount of stuff I have but also at how I store it all away and have a method to my madness. My packing style is nonexistant, kind of like my money-managing, and my style is the homey variety..I call it “cozy.” Some might call it “cluttered,” but I think it boils down to a space issue. I am no packrat. But let’s be real, I have a LOT of shit.
If you've ever read the popular early reading series, The Boxcar Children, you might understand me a little more. That is because I don't just save crap; I save fucking survival crap. I could live in the wild. I save things that, if forced to live off of my own guts and courage and wit, would save me. Things like spare bobby pins that I keep on the floor. If a bobby pin falls, I let it sit there, because who knows when you'll need it again? Who knows when you’ll have a stray hair, or a lock to pick? G commented on that in particular when we found about 239408 bobby pins on my floor as we covered the area in our hazmat suits. "It's like, that's the thing. Anyone can accumulate dust. But you let things just...sit there. I bet you watched that pin fall, and you were like, 'Oh. There it goes.' and you let it fall. Knowing that, somewhere down the line, you were gonna need a bobby pin and you were gonna pick that shit up." Let the records show that G is totally and completely on the ball. True to form, this morning, when I needed a bobby pin, I immediately looked down at the ground, forgetting my new clean start. I have a dish now of pins on my windowsill. I'm not used to it. It's not gritty enough for me.
I bet that if you threw me out on the street I could make a bed of pine needles and eat bread and milk like those kids. I would fucking dominate. G and I debated for awhile about what the boxcar children actually did besides live in boxcars of old trains. They were orphans, for sure. Did they solve mysteries? I think they solved mysteries. I was so inspired by the boxcar children that, I swear, survival games were the only things I played as a kid. I don't know if it was an only child thing, but I knocked that game out of the park. My parents would call me in for dinner and I'd be stalking in the bushes and the ferns in my backyard, just hanging out, waiting for my next door neighbor to come out onto his porch so I could spy on him, living in his house, not surviving in the wild like me. Secretly, I knew he was jealous of my survival skills, even though he had no clue that I was just lingering out in the foliage. I used to steal food from my pantry and hide it in tree holes in the oak in our backyard and retrieve it later. My dad would go up there to cut branches and call out, "L! Someone's hiding shit in our tree again! I told you I didn't eat the Snackwell's!"
I also made all my friends growing up playing survivor games with me so that they too would be able to survive in the wild should natural disaster or immediate orphanage happen to them. This served the sole purpose of ensuring that I wouldn't be alone (the boxcar children were never alone). Upon arriving at my house for a playdate in the third grade, you could typically expect to camp out in the azalea bush for about 4 hours and pretend to be stranded there, watching my mom through the glass door. "We'll probably have to eat this monkey grass to survive," I'd remark, noting the dark green grass sprouting around me. "It's not poisonous or contaminated with pesticides. Or better yet, we can use that to make our sleeping area, and eat the wild onions growing in the northern corner."
"Why does B spend so much time outside?" my mom would question sometimes.
"It's healthy for a kid to want to be outside." my dad would explain.
"But she's out there all day. It's freezing outside. She refused to wear a jacket. She said she was going to see how long she'd last."
That was when I tested my resistance to hypothermia.
The only book I ever plagiarized was a lavender installment of The Boxcar Children series. I did it in the second grade. The teacher said to write a summary of a book we'd read, and then she didn't demonstrate how, and I remember looking around at all those fools writing things from their heads and thinking, shit. I'm going to just copy this convenient summary on the back of this here book. And so I did. And I remember my teacher, well, it wasn't really MY teacher it was the OTHER second grade teacher, Ms. K, who pulled me aside quietly before lunch and shared with me that should I ever do such a thing again I would promptly go to jail, second grade or not. She did not explain why but used many enthusiastic hand gestures and terrifying expressions like "copyright law" and "infringement" and other nasty words. I was too scared to eat that day and instead cried on the jungle gym. That was the day I decided I would fend for myself. I became a boxcar child as homage to the [imaginary] kids I'd ripped off.
SONGS to DIZ:
"drive" cover - deftones (it's a cars cover which means it will move in steeeereo)
"surf wax america"- weezer (remember that from high school?)
"your legs grow" AND "popular" - nada surf (ditto)
"stillness is the move" - the dirty projectors
"the end of medicine" - new pornographers
"ducks" - built by animals
you only live once - the strokes
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