Mumbling Madly

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!

This will be my last entry until the move is over. The computer is being packed away this afternoon. I’m really bleery this morning, no coffee so I’m going to have to be bad and buy it at Dejavu Coffee House next to my work. Last night Josh painted over this terrific bright green wall in our living room. The wall was painted green by Josh while I was visiting my parents…I came home and it was green. This was at the time I was doing all this research on home decorating, interior design, color analysis, etc. According to my knowledge the green wall was an extremely bold choice. This was concurrent with Josh painting one wall in the kitchen dark, ketchup, red. I managed to talk him into painting over it because the dark color figuratively shrunk the kitchen to the size of a closet.
I asked permission from our landlord to paint over the heinous wood paneling covering an entire wall in our new living room. We’ve done the wood paneling once before and I’m DONE with it…never again, it’s really such an awful former trend, and I’m sure painting over it will be a nightmare, but I don’t care.
Last night we took a break and went to the drive-in. We watched Bourne Supremacy but it was seriously ruined for me because: 1. Josh’s truck has to sit in the back row, causing serious vision strain. 2. Dark screen does not do well with dark sky behind the screen. It was difficult to see what was going on during a lot of the great chase scenes because they were at night or in dark rooms. 3. High School Party Car parked next to us. I could hear the movie’s potential (well, and the 16 yr old party going on next door), I just couldn’t see the movie all that well.

I feel like this move will be different. After all, most of our wall hangings are down and the little (or sometimes not so little) pinholes have been filled up. I cancelled our milk service (Yes, we have milk delievered to our house, which I’m sure Jeff will claim is very colonial of me). The funny thing is we still don’t know what our new address is. We know what the street is and whether we’re north or south and we know we’re literally attached to the Colorado Artists Co-Op building but that’s it. We have a sinking suspicion we’re something and 1/2. I’ve always thought that whole half thing was so ghetto sounding: Yeah I live on 604 1/2 West. It invokes images of a shack behind someone’s mansion or literally half of a house propped up against a telephone pole. Fort Collins is big on their 1/2 addresses because they like to squeeze students in old carriage houses and guest cottages. (Yes, we live in a turn of the century neighborhood). Now Josh and I will join the ranks of halves and having to repeat our address multiple times: “No, it’s not just 604 it’s 604 and a HALF.”

I’m going through a Poor Phase. It’s kind of like money dieting, every now and than I’ll cut way back on spending in order to catch up on everything. The move (this Sunday is already the first of August, Dear God) has provoked this phase as well as my upcoming trip to Portland in several weeks. Basically I go back to my frugal, penny-pitching, cut-a-burrito-in-half-and-eat-one-half-for-lunch-one-half-for-dinner days back when I was a Drama student at the University of Washington. Those were sad, lonely, hungry days but man, I came out of college NOT OWING A CENT. I have zero debt (but don’t get excited, I inherited Josh’s debt mysteriously by way of marriage).
In fact, I wasn’t issued a credit card until last year because up until my Dad co-signed on a car loan I had NO credit which almost equals Bad Credit. No one would give me a credit card! They would offer me stupid traning wheel credit cards, the kind where you put 300 away and use THAT as a credit card to prove that you can charge money. What the hell? Isn’t that like me using a debit card all these years? The tragedy is that I would visit Josh on campus and there would be swarms of tables set up with various credit card companies soliciting the students with frisbees and plastic footballs and other incentives to sign up. This trap actually led to some of Josh’s debt (WHY give starving college students a HUGE opening balance, do they WANT them to fail?)
When we moved to Fort Collins, McLeod wouldn’t let me open up a phone line with them because I had no credit. I screamed: “I had a phone line in my name for four years in Seattle with Qwest, what’s wrong with you people?!” Unfortunantly a lot of stuff is in Josh’s name just because he has the credit to establish it. (But not the Honda, waahaahaa!)
Anyway, cutting back basically means any lunches I may buy during work hours have to be under four dollars (yes, this IS possible it just means limiting myself to soup and/or cream cheese bagels), coffee needs to be made at home and brought to work, soggy sandwiches are stuffed into ancient tupperware and dragged around with me in my dance bag (God, I’m just like my MOM), and no new clothes and no new shoes. Of course bills will be paid and groceries are acceptable, the occasional (and this is hard) restaurant is ok (but we have to use coupons), and the occasional movie rental and/or cinema experience is all right. Another way to do this is to take 20 dollars out in cash as an allowance for the week and another 20 dollars for the weekend and that’s it.
This is how I’ve lived for years, and I’ll be frank: The ONLY thing Josh and I fight about is money. This is why, after five years we are completely financially separate. Our radically different styles of spending has caused greater clashes than say, the typical scuffles over who’s going to do the dishes. Now I’ve heard that money is the number one reason why people divorce in this country. And I’m firm about the fact that we’ll get passed it and unify ourselves eventually. Because, let’s face it: At this time in our young lives there will never be enough money. As long as there’s a roof and food and solid transportation I can forget the new sandals.
So I’m on a money diet until my Portland trip…and than I’m going to take advantage of their no tax and buy clothes…and food at Trader Joe’s.

I’m certain we are breaking a record here in Ft. Collins. It’s late July and we’ve had 24 hours of rain and temperatures below 59.
Josh has fallen ill because of it. He’s been banished to the futon in the spare room. Hobbes attempted to visit him during the night but was chased away after much snorting and wheezing.
We are slowly trying to pack…any packing tips?
I am teaching a Movement and Action Workshop in three hours. Whee. It was a tough call: Either follow through and teach a workshop with only four students or ditch and accept the position of Ice Skating Judge at the Epic Center. I did the honerable thing and kept my first commitment. But man, I really wanted to be an Ice Skating Judge!

Remember when you were a kid and you made a HUGE stink over something? Typically it was when you hit about 9 or 10 and you were developing opinions tied in with an attitude (how else were you suppose to be heard?) And you were really vocal and loud and crazy adimant about whatever it was, (for me it was usually about how short was too short, why I should wear make-up before the set age of 15, and winning). This resulted in full on wars with my siblings or parents, because no one likes to be told what to think. And than after the big stink (and I may or may not have gotten my way) I secretly questioned myself: Was it really worth the hassle? Did I put people through “all that” for nothing? That’s how I feel right now about moving: Is it really that big of a deal? Is it really worth stuffing my belongings into boxes? Sure…but what if the new place is worse? This, my friends, is the result of being an eternal pessimist. It’s seriously a fault of mine. I need to knock it off. I need to stop worrying.

So, I’m not huge on change. I actually prefer a comfortable rut. I have no idea if this is based on growing up in a fairly stable family that never moved out of the house we moved into when I was five. Or perhaps I like familiarity and being an internal pessimist, change equals bad.
Pros and Cons of New Place:
Pro: It’s huge. Twice the size of what we’re living in currently. Two stories, dining room, sunporch, etc.
Con: It’s, well, it’s ugly on the outside. Cinderblock, 70’s, fantastico. The attached garage is connected to an art co-op and a laundry mat. So it’s behind a store front which is facing a busy one-way street.
Pro: There are no neighbors. Not really. It’s downtown, non-residential, behind the fenced-in backyard is a parking lot.
Con: You have to walk a few blocks before you hit paved sidewalks, front lawns, sprinklers, etc. It’s next to a gas station (that closes at 10pm thankfully) and train tracks run merrily in front of the store front. The train runs mostly during the day, but it is a full on choo choo with whistle.
Pro: Fenced in backyard, perfect for a lone cat to stroll about.
Con: No view but a fence on the ground level. View of busy road and F.C. high rise behind us.
I’ve never lived urbanly in Fort Collins. But I’m thinking the days of living in a college suburb are over. Am I prepared to trade in drunken next door parties, bass, and sunny sidewalks for the sounds of cars passing by and the occasional train? Am I just being really picky? Has my 3 years in F.C. softened me?

Okay, I’m losing my mind.
As some of you may know, last summer we were plauged by who we fondly refer to as The Choads: A pair of rich white kids who trashed the place behind ours, leaving dog feces, beer bottles, and a legal paper trail ranging from trespassing to 3 charges of noise violations and 2 charges of assault. It was a wild, upsetting, ride. One that we regale people with at parties but secretly have never recovered from.
So now we have new neighbors, one year later, and even though they’re not as bad as The Choads they’re nothing to write home about. Josh and I are perplexed: They Never Leave The House. We know The Girl is a student and has to commute to Denver…but we haven’t seen any commuting or any signs of studying. The Guy occasionally delievers pizza and is suppose to fix up the yard in order to earn his rent break. The yard was ripped up last week and remains that way: Grassless, dusty, two large piles of dirt remain that will allegedly be constructed into raised flower beds, and now we have a gravel driveway in the middle of the yard. Whee. Because they never leave, their music is always pounding during the day. Josh and I have varied schedules, so we’re in and out throughout the day. We can’t even venture into the west part of the house–the side that shares a common wall. They used to be quieter at night…until recently.
Two nights ago I was jarred out of quasi-sleep by a strange sound: an engine starting over and over again. But it wasn’t a normal sounding engine, this noise had a deep bass to it. Every minute or so it would start, and than a bass beat would begin for a moment before stopping entirely for 30 seconds. Than the cycle would repeat. Holy Shit. Anyone who has known or lived with me knows that I can’t stand that kind of noise. Give me a loud party before bass, at least voices can be blocked out with earplugs. I went on a rampage, trying to locate the source of the noise. I prowled around the house, around the block, trying to find out who was plauging me so I could rip their head off. I didn’t find the source, but I did hear our next door neighbors having sex. It was 1 in the morning, and I had to get up at 8. The noise disappeared and I lay back down again. As soon as it started up I decided to wake up Josh and have him join me in the crusade. (Not fair, admittedly, but I’m a brat). He too, donned flipflops and padded around outside. Right around the time the noise stopped, our neighbors went to bed. Our bedrooms share a wall (I know, that in itself is wierd), and we were entertained by giggles and bed jiggling for about 10 minutes before all was quiet.
The following night, we heard the same noises. It was earlier this time, about 11 and Josh went on a quiet mission around the house. That’s when he found them: Our neighbors playing an old race car game on the TV with the sound hooked up to their ghetto blaster. We were hearing reverb from their video game.
OK, so that’s not so bad. But I was exhaused from the previous night and I went into a rage: “I’m too old for this shit! I can’t be expected to go to sleep at 2 in the morning every night just so they can get their rocks of Speed Racer or whatever the hell their playing. I hate this place, I hate Ft. Collins! What the hell is wrong with these people? Why don’t they have jobs?” So we called the landlord and we’re probably moving. He has another property that’s actually downtown. It’s not ideal, but considering how pissed and disturbed we’ve been it’s better than sticking around here and sharing a wall. The option is to have a frank, upfront, talk with them. Although they’re not really doing anything wrong…just because most people start to shut down at 10pm doesn’t mean they have to (I mean, when you don’t work why would you have to get up early?). Perhaps they don’t know how noisy they really are, or maybe they don’t care. Maybe I’m overreacting, but even Josh is burned out and he’s the level-headed one in our duo. I’m the one that lashes out at strangers and will probably get Josh beat up one day because I don’t know when to shut my trap.
And that’s the thing too, I lived in Seattle for 5 years and I never had these kinds of problems. People just sort of understand that when you live in close quarters you observe certain levels of privacy and quiet. Here, in F.C, nobody has every lived outside of this town. Maybe it’s true: Ft Collins is one gigantic, rich, white, suburb. And with that comes ignorance, Republicans, SUV’s that vibrate with souped up bass at all hours of the night, and a general dim-wittedness that is slowly driving me insane. With so many days of damn sunshine in a row here, and the longest spring and summer that I’ve ever endured, the daylight hours are plauged with non stop noise. See, in the NW we didn’t really have a summer–it only last two months before the rain came back. People went back into their caves and drank their lattes in dark coffee shops and quietly puttered around. HERE? Oh, HERE people have croquet games until midnight, and everyone has a barking dog in a small yard, and no one understands that voices travel.
Whew…I’m sorry. I’m just really tired.