I’m exhausted. Of course, moving always sucks…but this move was exeptionably hard. The place was once inhabited by bachelors and their grime and goo was left behind. Allegedly our landlord hired a cleaning crew…this concerns me because I’m not sure what they really did. The windows were clouded with dust, dirt, and a suspcious black residue. The kitchen shelves are decaying, years of shelf paper stripped down to reveal congealed food that nobody every cleaned up. Several kitchen drawers were still filled with the past owners’ belongings: lighters, sticky, pennies, a Halloween mask. Unusually large nail holes were everywhere in all the walls. A Fry Daddy was found in a drawer. The bathroom walls were covered with a thin layer of hairspray and human hair.
But all this is minor: Before we moved in, the landlord told us he smelled something rank in the garage. On further inspection he found a red cooler filled 3/4 of the way with animal blood…and a few plastic baggies. He called someone to confirm that it was not human remains, just leftovers of the kill…one of these guys was some sort of novice hunter. I wish our landlord had not described the terrible smell of unrefrigerated carcas nor do I wish I had heard about the flies. This story has haunted me.
In fact, the day we moved in the train roared by when I was in the garage and it was so loud I had to plug my ears…I sort of lost it. I excused myself to the Conoco next door to use the bathroom…when in reality I bawled my eyes out. How can I live here? What the hell was I thinking? I miss living in a neighborhood…I’m such an idiot.
You know what helped? My dear friend, Angela, came over last night and we painted this gigantic wood panelled wall in the living room. Suddenly I could see clearly again, the white light reflecting off the freshly painted wall made a significant difference. I no longer felt like I was living in a hole, a slum, a crap house. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep: Maybe there’s a chance this place might work out. It was the first time in three days that I felt positive about this move. It’s amazing what a little paint can do!