Remember when I wrote this? How I thought I’d conquered my paper clutter?
I just found THREE SHOPPING BAGS FULL OF MAIL in one of my closets. With mail from 2005.
Fucking hell. I’ll have to just bring it in to work and dump it in the shredder bin. It’s too much for my little shredder to handle.
Been packing all weekend. Well, I shouldn’t say *all* weekend, since I fucked off on Saturday and am, of course, paying for my laziness now.
The closing is Wednesday; the buyer’s coming in for a final walk-through tomorrow morning. Of course, the place is a wreck, and I have to disguise the new chips in the tub finish and vacuum and sweep the mountains of cat hair.
Fortunately, I don’t have to vacate the day of the closing because my attorney wrote in a post-closing occupancy clause. I have seven business days to move out. And I’ll need them, because I don’t yet have a place to go. The real estate agent who was supposed to call me this weekend to look at properties in Astoria never called, and an apparently promising sublet fell apart because I got to the location and found out that the guy had neglected to mention that it was a sixth-floor walkup. Um, no. I’m meeting someone for a four-month sublet in East Harlem Wednesday evening, and I saw a couple of ads for Williamsburg that might work. If worse comes to worst, I’ll just put my stuff in storage and go to a hotel for a bit.
As part of my effort to de-crappify, I’m getting rid of shitloads of books, at least 150. I have to figure out what to do with them; if I can get a used bookstore to take them and give me credit, I’ll be happy. If not, into the laundry room they go.
I really, really need to get myself a library card so I’m not in the position of *having* 150 books to get rid of. Mind you, I’m keeping a bunch, too, but far less than that.
I’m actually kind of glad I haven’t had time to post this weekend, because I’ve almost reached a point, with the ginned-up outrage over Clinton’s RFK comments (see here for something of a mea culpa from Politico; they ran with the story (with a “bellow of excitement,” no less) after Obama’s spokesman gave them the NY Post interpretation of the remarks; after publication, they got hold of the video of the interview and realized that there wasn’t any there there. Of course, by then, the damage was done, and the Obama campaign insured that the Sunday news shows would be all about Clinton’s gaffe and Obama’s maganimous “taking her at her word” business. While, of course, his campaign continued to shop the story around, adding Keith Olbermann’s self-righteous (and un-self-aware) “special comment,” in which he splutters in outrage that Clinton dares mention RFK’s assassination even though she wasn’t talking about Obama but about her own campaign, apparently conveniently forgetting that he advocated for Clinton’s murder or at least beating into submission not one month ago), that I just want to wash my hands of the whole country.
I’ve known for some time that liberal white doodz are pretty damn misogynist (don’t think so? Just ask, for shits ‘n’ giggles, that they stop referring to women they don’t like as “cunts” sometime), but I don’t think I really appreciated the depths of the hatred. At least I *know* the Republicans hate me and aren’t going to advance any causes that are important to me. Liberals, as I discovered, hate me too, but they have enough liberal guilt to pretend that they don’t, and that they care about my issues — and when they’re threatening you with loss of your rights (ROE V. WADE! ROE V. WADE!) if you don’t do what they want, even as they’re offering you absolutely nothing in return other than the status quo, it’s hard not to think that you’d be better off rolling the dice with the Republicans.
Well, now that I know the photo editor works (seems to fit the image into the frame regardless of the original file size, which is nice), let’s try a video. I just discovered that my camera takes short video clips, so I took a few of Junebug, on the theory that she might not freak out so much if there weren’t a flash involved. This is one of my first attempts, so forgive the lousy camera work:
Aaaaand, I don’t know how to make the viewer appear. But it’s still a cute clip. I’ll figure out how to upload the clips to YouTube or something.
Yep, haven’t had any photos of the pets up lately. And now that I have the new computer (and new photo software), I’m not sure how this will work. I may wind up downloading Irfanview again, unless anyone’s got better suggestions.
Here goes:
And yeah, that’s pretty much what they do all day.
I have a long history of footwear with murderous intentions.
In the ’70s, I had a pair of clogs that I loved. Unfortunately, when you wear your wooden-soled clogs with cable-knit tights and you have unstable ankles, bad things can happen. My mother eventually took the clogs away.
In college, I had two pairs of shoes that tried to kill me. One was a pair of black sneakers that would send me skittering down the stairs, the soles slipping along the edges of the steps, until my foot would catch a horizontal surface. The other was a pair of knockoff LL Bean boots. The boots, like the sneakers, tried to do me in on the stairs. Oh, they were tricky, holding onto snow and ice in their treads, releasing the slush when I was on the stairs in the Student Union or Monteith Hall. I narrowly missed being thrown over the big marble staircase over the info booth at the Student Union, but they got me on the stairs in Monteith, sending me face-first down a flight of stairs.
I managed to catch myself by putting my hands out in front of me, but I still have damage to my right shoulder from that little episode.
I managed to avoid angry shoes for many years, until I started working as a lawyer. Fortunately, the shoes that tried to get me shortly after I moved to New York were somewhat inept, doing nothing more than causing me some embarrassment and a scraped knee after they made me wipe out in the middle of Rockefeller Center one spring day.
Today, though — another attempt, by a different pair of shoes. I was crossing Houston to change trains, navigating through road resurfacing and trying to beat the light, when my left shoe took a half step ahead of me. I landed half out of the shoe and my ankle rolled, causing me to scrape my foot against the asphalt and nearly sending me into oncoming traffic.
Wonder which pair will come for me next?
I miss you.
Can I ever find you again?
Love,
Zuzu
P.S. Send my love to Delete. Oh, sure, there’s someone here named Delete, but it’s really Backspace in disguise.
I’m leaving Feministe, and will be joining Shakesville as a contributor.
This place will remain in business. Where else can I examine the contents of my navel?
What does it say about me that when I loaded up all my CDs onto iTunes, I noticed that the two artists I had more of than anyone else were Concrete Blonde and Esquivel?
Just watched the Kentucky Derby.
Big Brown won, with great life story of the trainer (whose girlfriend was murdered in the next room from their daughter, who was with him at the Derby) and the jockey (seems he’s got a hearing-impaired son).
Really a great pull-away win.
But.
Eight Belles, the first filly in the race in 9 years, who took second place by more than the same margin that Big Brown beat her, broke down after the race and was euthanized because she broke both front ankles.
I was at Belmont Park for the Belmont Stakes in 1999, when Charismatic was supposed to take the Triple Crown, but he broke down at the end. It was a gorgeous fucking day in Queens, perfect temperature, no discernable humidity. My friends Rosalyn and Kevin were in town from Chicago; Roz was on business and Kevin was along for the ride (though he was from Kearney, where the pork store on The Sopranos is (sometime, remind me to tell you about my (very) peripheral involvement in the North Jersey and Connecticut mobs) and had moved to Chicago to get away from the mob thing).
Kevin lent me $50 to bet, because I had been misled by the Visa Triple Crown ads that they’d accept my debit card there. I bet on Charismatic and a couple of other horses; Kevin wound up betting on the eventual winner, Lemon Drop Kid, because of a throwaway comment I made about him while I was looking at the race guide, that he was out of Seattle Slew.
In the end, Lemon Drop Kid won, Charismatic broke down at the finish, and Kevin won about $4000 on his bet based on my throwaway comment about Lemon Drop Kid’s parentage. He also sprung for dinner that night.
The creepiest bit is that I’m fairly certain that the breeders will work hard to extract usable eggs from the corpse of Eight Belles.
I just got word that my buyer was approved on Tuesday, and the closing will be scheduled within the next few weeks.
Whee!
Of course, I have no idea where I’m going to live next. I can’t do any serious apartment-hunting until I have the proceeds in hand, and of course I won’t have those until the actual closing. I’ll have seven days to move out after the closing, but that’s cutting it close. I’m hoping to either get something last-minute, or put my stuff in storage and get into a sublet for a month or two while I figure out where to go next.
The pets will be an issue, of course. I definitely have a place to stash the dog, but the cats might be a problem. OTOH, it’ll be easier to get a sublet with just them while I look for a dog-friendly building.
Apartments around here are pretty cheap, especially on the other side of Coney Island Avenue closer to Flatbush (which is also closer to a much more convenient subway line). And there’s Astoria, which is very close to where I work, and also fairly cheap.
I’m kicking myself a little for getting the computer now, but it’s not like I could move in anywhere with $1300, even in Flatbush.
Eh. It’ll all work out in the end.
Recent Comments