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My exodus from apartment hell has been delayed until Thursday because my mother wanted to wait until Papa Chris came home from a family trip, so here I still am. I wish I wasn't. I'm ready to be gone. I'm tired of the constant anticipatory adrenaline buzz, and of living the bizarre half-life of the U-Haul People. Most of my favorite things were packed days ago, when the move was supposed to be over by now, and so, I've been watching Court TV for want of something more entertaining. I would clean or sort or pack, but my mother swore up and down that I didn't need to buy more storage bins because she had plenty. Well, yes. But she is there. I am here. Unless she's mastered Star Trek technology, her plenitude of storage bins is of no use to me. But I can't bring more than one giant bin home on the bus, and even that earns Roomie the bus driver stinkface, and thus, I'm half-packed and unable to make headway because I have no boxes. And Son of Himmler could be here for his inspection any time between tomorrow and Friday.
I hope it's Friday. I want to see him try to intimidate my hardass mother with his middle-aged building-inspector wang. She's remodeled dozens of houses during her lifetime and knows exactly what it costs to maintain and repair a residence. She can also tell the difference between reasonable wear and tear from ten years of use and gross negligence. Let him try to overcharge me for "damages" I incurred.
Speaking of Son of Himmler, the building crew will be here tomorrow to repaint the wall cut open by the gas company, which means I will have to vacate the apartment from eight until four. Mind you, I'm on a ten-day deadline to clean up the apartment or else. I had to vacate today so they could patch the wall. I lost three days last week to the actual gas line retrofit. I will lose tomorrow to the paint job. That has left me five days to return the apartment to its pre-lease splendor. As if. Five weeks, maybe, but five days is a goal that would make Jesus pull a hamstring.
And my mother, bless and damn her, is shifting the goalposts. For two years, she's enticed me to move to the North Carolina Mayberry by promising that the three-bedroom, two-bath home would be "just right" for me, a handicap-accessible nirvana where I could live out my days rent-free. This is the same home into which I was told I would be moving at the beginning of the week.
Last night, she begins her all-too-familiar bait-and-switch dance. The home that was formerly so "perfect for me" suddenly has corridors that are too narrow. Maybe I'd like to live in HUD-sponsored limper housing instead. In an apartment commensurate in size to the abode in which I currently reside. Since I'm so impoverished, it would only cost me $180-400 a month, depending on their income-based accounting voodoo. Plus, it would be right in the "center of town", right next to the Subway and across the street from the hospital. She informed me of this last with the hysterical cheer of an L.A. realtor trying to close on a roach-infested condo just ten miles from the beach, as if the hospital were limper code for swinging singles bar.
I don't want to live in HUD housing. I'm tired of listening to my upstairs neighbors fart and snore and fuck, and of being awakened at the buttcrack of dawn because maintenance just had to see if the weedeater could be powered by the engine from a garbage truck. I wanted space and privacy and goddamn quiet. It's not the rent that bothers me; I offered to pay her up to $500 a month for the three-bedroom. I agreed to move there because she promised me I could have what I've always wanted: a permanent sanctuary from the world. Now, she's waffling, and it's raising red flags and my blood pressure. If she never thought the house was right for me, she never should have used it as an inducement to lure me to North Carolina. I feel like Charlie Brown lining up to kick the football.
Not only that, but I've discovered that AOL doesn't have an access number for my area. Hence, I'm faced with the potential loss of my online identity as well. My mother swears on a stack of Bibles that she'll make sure I have high-speed Internet ASAP, but how can that be when I'm no longer certain of where I'll be living? ISPs require an address before they can hook a sister up. Hell, I can't even change my government paperwork until I have a fixed address. I'm unsurprised, but angry. She asked me to trust her and uproot my entire life, and when I did, she changed the agreed-upon gameplan. Just like always.
I don't know when I'll be back because I'll be living in her basement for the next few weeks while she wastes a desperate realtor's time and drags me all over town in pursuit of "the perfect place" for me. On top of that, she's unilaterally declared that I'm applying for food stamps and SSI and Medicaid and having a physical and wheelchair evaluation and going to the dentist and opening multiple bank accounts, all before August 6th, which is when she must return to her job as a school custodian.
It's too much to tackle at once, and I know it. I know that I'm going to crack under the pressure at the most inopportune moment--in the middle of the bank, like as not--and end up a sobbing, snot-faced embarrassment because my nervous system has reached its limit. I need time to adjust gradually and breathe and decompress. I need the security of knowing that my mother will listen if I say I need to stop for a minute or an hour, but I don't have that. She's so excited, so caught up in "taking care" of me that she's not listening anymore. It's the same old same old, and I'm bitterly disappointed.
In an effort to end on a proactive note, I'd like my flist to chime in with their thoughts on broadband versus wireless. Since I've so rudely discovered that AOL will no longer be my ISP, I've been eyeing the AT&T laptop connect cards and the like. Which is better for reliability--wireless or broadband? Is wireless really as simple as plugging in the connect card and surfing the Web? Is wireless secure?
I have the technological dumb. Please, won't you help me find the cure?
I hope it's Friday. I want to see him try to intimidate my hardass mother with his middle-aged building-inspector wang. She's remodeled dozens of houses during her lifetime and knows exactly what it costs to maintain and repair a residence. She can also tell the difference between reasonable wear and tear from ten years of use and gross negligence. Let him try to overcharge me for "damages" I incurred.
Speaking of Son of Himmler, the building crew will be here tomorrow to repaint the wall cut open by the gas company, which means I will have to vacate the apartment from eight until four. Mind you, I'm on a ten-day deadline to clean up the apartment or else. I had to vacate today so they could patch the wall. I lost three days last week to the actual gas line retrofit. I will lose tomorrow to the paint job. That has left me five days to return the apartment to its pre-lease splendor. As if. Five weeks, maybe, but five days is a goal that would make Jesus pull a hamstring.
And my mother, bless and damn her, is shifting the goalposts. For two years, she's enticed me to move to the North Carolina Mayberry by promising that the three-bedroom, two-bath home would be "just right" for me, a handicap-accessible nirvana where I could live out my days rent-free. This is the same home into which I was told I would be moving at the beginning of the week.
Last night, she begins her all-too-familiar bait-and-switch dance. The home that was formerly so "perfect for me" suddenly has corridors that are too narrow. Maybe I'd like to live in HUD-sponsored limper housing instead. In an apartment commensurate in size to the abode in which I currently reside. Since I'm so impoverished, it would only cost me $180-400 a month, depending on their income-based accounting voodoo. Plus, it would be right in the "center of town", right next to the Subway and across the street from the hospital. She informed me of this last with the hysterical cheer of an L.A. realtor trying to close on a roach-infested condo just ten miles from the beach, as if the hospital were limper code for swinging singles bar.
I don't want to live in HUD housing. I'm tired of listening to my upstairs neighbors fart and snore and fuck, and of being awakened at the buttcrack of dawn because maintenance just had to see if the weedeater could be powered by the engine from a garbage truck. I wanted space and privacy and goddamn quiet. It's not the rent that bothers me; I offered to pay her up to $500 a month for the three-bedroom. I agreed to move there because she promised me I could have what I've always wanted: a permanent sanctuary from the world. Now, she's waffling, and it's raising red flags and my blood pressure. If she never thought the house was right for me, she never should have used it as an inducement to lure me to North Carolina. I feel like Charlie Brown lining up to kick the football.
Not only that, but I've discovered that AOL doesn't have an access number for my area. Hence, I'm faced with the potential loss of my online identity as well. My mother swears on a stack of Bibles that she'll make sure I have high-speed Internet ASAP, but how can that be when I'm no longer certain of where I'll be living? ISPs require an address before they can hook a sister up. Hell, I can't even change my government paperwork until I have a fixed address. I'm unsurprised, but angry. She asked me to trust her and uproot my entire life, and when I did, she changed the agreed-upon gameplan. Just like always.
I don't know when I'll be back because I'll be living in her basement for the next few weeks while she wastes a desperate realtor's time and drags me all over town in pursuit of "the perfect place" for me. On top of that, she's unilaterally declared that I'm applying for food stamps and SSI and Medicaid and having a physical and wheelchair evaluation and going to the dentist and opening multiple bank accounts, all before August 6th, which is when she must return to her job as a school custodian.
It's too much to tackle at once, and I know it. I know that I'm going to crack under the pressure at the most inopportune moment--in the middle of the bank, like as not--and end up a sobbing, snot-faced embarrassment because my nervous system has reached its limit. I need time to adjust gradually and breathe and decompress. I need the security of knowing that my mother will listen if I say I need to stop for a minute or an hour, but I don't have that. She's so excited, so caught up in "taking care" of me that she's not listening anymore. It's the same old same old, and I'm bitterly disappointed.
In an effort to end on a proactive note, I'd like my flist to chime in with their thoughts on broadband versus wireless. Since I've so rudely discovered that AOL will no longer be my ISP, I've been eyeing the AT&T laptop connect cards and the like. Which is better for reliability--wireless or broadband? Is wireless really as simple as plugging in the connect card and surfing the Web? Is wireless secure?
I have the technological dumb. Please, won't you help me find the cure?
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