Saturday, May 31, 2008

Movin' on up

Today was the culmination of about three days of nerves and paralysis. Whenever I get overwhelmed, I turn into a sort of vegetable. In this guess, I blew off some schoolwork because I was too numbed to think about anything but packing and cleaning. This morning I called a cab to take me to my new apartment (at 23 rue Dauphine in the 6th, for those interested), dropped off my magnanimous bags and the kitty, then took the metro straight back to Mouffetard. Before heading back to the studio for the daunting task of cleaning, I got an egg, cheese, and chicken crepe and it was fucking incredible. I've only eaten a handful of crepes in the last 9 months and while that seems strange, I actually don't regret it.
Anyway, I returned to my almost-not-anymore home to eat my crepe and fire up the laptop for a Queer as Folk/heavy-duty cleaning marathon. After about 4 hours of scrubbing, sweeping, and lint-rolling, I was all done. At one point I sat in my foyer with my doormat and a roll of packing tape, practically waxing the thing to get all of the cat hair off of it. I had to do the same thing to the desk chair and the bedroll. Ironically, you wouldn't even know I had a cat right now, because he hid himself under the sink in the new studio this morning and I haven't seen him since. The only reason I know he's still down there is because I reached down and accidentally pulled his ear when I was looking for him. This is his way of punishing me for jostling him so much. Oh and making him ride in the car.
Anyway, I called myself cab #2 of the day around 4:30 and took the rest of my shit to my new place, stopping at my property manager's office on the way to shove my keys in the mail slot. She called me earlier and I just flat out refused to speak French in my frazzled state. I also called the English-speaking cab company. Sometimes you have to punk out. I did speak to the cab drivers in French though, so there.
Anyway, here I am in an even smaller apartment in a much chicer neighborhood. As much as I hate moving, I'm almost glad that I ended up having to sublet my last two weeks here. It would've been impossible to thoroughly clean my apartment with my stuff still in it, and I am determined to get all of my deposit back. This is feasible as long as the property manager doesn't notice the corner of the bed that my cat destroyed (whoops!). Also, moving is such an exorcism of any affection you once had for a place. Once you've spent days packing up all of your belongings, and then worked your ass off scrubbing and sweeping the place, you are just done with it. It's like being in a relationship and inciting a fight so that everyone will be angry instead of sad when you decide to break up. It's easier to let go of somewhere when the last feeling you had there was frustration and exhaustion.

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