I've been in my new place for about two weeks now, otherwise known as 'long enough to decompensate'. Despite taking apart all my standing racks and piling all my shit up in the living room, neither of the other roommates noticed I was leaving until the night before, when the Useless Narcissist asked if I was moving.
"Yes."
"Oh, when?"
"Tomorrow."
Stunned look. "Why?"
"Because neither of you pay your rent on time."
(Note that I had been telling them for the past two months that I could not continue fronting the rent for everyone indefinitely. The landlord insisted on having the check by the first but didn't cash it until some random time between the 15th and the 25th of the month. Both roommates had gotten around to giving me the money later and later -- for June, the Useless Narcissist paid me just over a week late, and the other one was two weeks late.)
Indignant look. "Oh come on! I paid you back every time!"
"That's not really the same thing."
Appalled look. "What are we going to do about this month?"
"Beats me."
(I might have had a more sympathetic response had he not asked me this on the second of July, having apparently assumed that I had just gone ahead and paid everyone's rent for them, so as not to bother him with piddly things like deadlines.)
I used the same movers I called the last time, because I'll be damned if I carry the heavy shit myself ever again. They were pretty surprised when they showed up. Apparently by moving company standards, I was almost psychotically prepared. What do I do when I know I'm about to move? The same thing we do every night, Pinky! Try to take over the world Buy more giant plastic bins and start heaving shit into them. It's not a complex plan. The Useless Narcissist had been unsuccessfully "moving" for like the past two and a half months and had had all of his crap heaped up in our living room the whole time; I considered asking him to shift some of it out of the way, but decided I didn't feel like dealing with the temper tantrum. The path of least resistance was buying colored duct tape for all the bins and boxes and hanging big tags on all my luggage, so that's what I did. They're green. The movers were almost confused when they brought up the giant roll of plastic wrap and realized they didn't need it, because I don't really own furniture that doesn't come apart for transport, and I'd just packed all the rat's worldly possessions into his cage and then zip tied it shut.
Predictably, the landlord messaged me a few days later to say he hadn't gotten the rent check that month. I said I was sorry to hear that, but I didn't live there anymore, and gave him the phone numbers of the two remaining deadbeats so he could pester them for money. I have no idea if they've paid him or not, because this is no longer my problem.
The new place is back in the same area where I landed when I first moved to Boston, in a sprawling field of Edwardian houses where nothing is plumb or level. The hardwood floors are flat as a funhouse mirror. I'm a reasonable walk or bus ride from all my old haunts, and I am pleased to note that a sushi place I used to patronize is actually still around. Not that I'll be eating there anytime soon -- I bought the last couple of things I had grant money earmarked for, and I'm back to pretending I'm flat broke, just now with 2-3 months rent in savings. The groceries list is back up on Amazon now that I have a stable address again. If it lands on my porch, great; if not, I know where the supermarket is.
Cheese, it turns out, does not travel well. At all. Getting him out here was a ten minute walk to the T, three stops on the train, and a ten minute walk to the new house, and he spent all of it trying to beat his way out of the carrier with his wee little skull. Fortunately, I'd already replaced the plastic mesh in that thing with metal window screen he couldn't chew through as easily, or the Green Line might have acquired an extra rat. He also did not enjoy going to the vet that weekend to see if she had any better ideas on how to stop him going hnorp all the time, which she didn't. A lot of his discomfort was probably because outside is hot and muggy and full of grass pollen. (To be fair, a lot of my discomfort is also because outside is hot and muggy and full of grass pollen. I just have access to allergy meds on demand.) He still has a continuous sniffle, but inside a climate-controlled room it's more 'kind of an annoying snoof' than 'terrifying shortness of breath'. At this point, I've just concluded that it is what it is, he's probably going to make a hnorp noise for the rest of his life, it's probably fine.
We moved in on the afternoon of the 3rd and Cheese spent the night hiding in a box, mostly because he had thrown himself around his carrier so hard he hurt one of his feet. I tried to keep him from climbing too much, but when I opened the door on the 4th for breakfast, he scaled me and decamped on the roof of the cage, refusing to come down for love or money pudding. I don't so much care if he wants to be on the roof of his house as I want him to not throw himself off the roof of his house, and since he shows no signs of wanting to jump, I've just given up. I opened the top door and hung a strategic hammock so he could get up and down without my help. He can be tall if it makes him feel better.
The Fourth was stormy here. I spent most of the day unpacking with a migraine so catastrophic I didn't realize that was what it was until it was over, despite having to stop and lay face-down on the floor several times to keep myself from throwing up. Fun thing about migraines, they subject the part of your brain that solves problems to rolling brownouts, which makes dealing with them difficult. I just kept running through the food-water/electrolytes-caffeine-meds checklist over and over, hoping that one of those things would fix the problem. None of them did, although my attempt at dinner did teach me that there's a really good fried chicken place nearby, and Cheese appreciated the bones.
(Cheese has regained most of the weight he dropped when he went off his food during the first round of Baytril. He ate almost an entire pudding cup by himself while I was unpacking. That's 70 calories of pudding, according to the package. I don't know that he needs 70 calories total, per day. I am impressed by both his determination and his stomach capacity.
He has decided that his favorite kind, by a country mile, is butterscotch. This is a bit of a problem, because that flavor is currently unobtanium. It's been out of stock everywhere for weeks. Is the world's only source of cheap artificial butterscotch flavoring located deep in Ukraine? I do not know. The only way to get him more of it was to order a case on Amazon, so $20 of my grant money went to buying pudding for my incredibly picky free rat.)
I divested myself of surprisingly little when I moved this time. I went through the same thing I did when I moved to Boston originally, where I looked sadly at all my "fun" clothes and makeup before tossing them, and then realized that I couldn't -- I actually used that for work. I still have the nagging feeling that anything I enjoy is expendable. That's what being an adult is, isn't it? Having to choose between things you enjoy and things you need, and understanding that your happiness is less important than everything else. But I like my bins of makeup and costumes and props and electronics, and I use all of them to make money one way or another. The lack of conflict is frankly destabilizing.
The last tenant still had a king-size mattress here when I came to look at the room. They offered to get a TaskRabbit to haul it to the curb, but I was like no, no -- I don't want to move a bed either, just leave it. The most convenient solution was to just make Amazon magic a new frame onto the porch. The bed is so big. The biggest futon I ever bothered buying was a Full. I spent a whole three-tenths of a second trying to figure out which way the bed should face before realizing it didn't matter, because a King is basically square. I shoved it into a corner, put some sheets on, and built a nest. Being an adult is also getting to decide that making the bed is for chumps, and I can sleep in a pile of miscellaneous pillows and chenille blankets just fine. I'm so used to being on a Twin that it took me about a week to stop sleeping curled up on the edge.
I bought an 18" frame and it's lifted on 8" risers. Mostly I did it so I could store a bunch of luggage under there, but it also gives me almost enough space to sit upright next to all the suitcases. Which sounds like I'm trying a little too hard to be quirky until you realize I've just started a project that will eventually require me to record a voiceover, and the quietest spot in my room is almost certainly going to be underneath the giant cushion.
I have the rest of July to do pretty much whatever I want. I'm not not looking for work, but I'm aware that there isn't likely to be a lot of it until the fall season starts. Someone asked me to work a private event at the end of the month, and I actually got to sit and think about if I felt like taking the gig, rather than taking everything I'm offered and figuring out how to make it work. I'm absolutely terrified that now that I've committed to paying the higher rent, the work will all suddenly vanish. I have no idea why I think that. As soon as people realized I could run things in the tech booth, they all trampled over each other to book me. My calendar says I worked on 15 events in 16 weeks, in capacities ranging from "show up with camera" to "perform multi-hour live set" to "camp in booth and run literally everything except the lights". And I don't run the lights mainly because I don't own the widget that talks to them via USB, and I'm not really comfortable trying to work a manual board and QLab at the same time. (I was told that the software license for the USB doodad was $1000+, but I'm seeing open source hardware/software combos on Amazon for about $300ish? I don't know what the difference is, and I'm not prepared to buy one until I do.)
Whenever I have a long stretch of time to do "whatever I want" that almost always translates to "have the breakdown I've been putting off the whole time I was required to do things whether I wanted to or not". I'm really good at just gritting my teeth and surviving/ignoring stressful situations until I can extricate myself -- see: my entire childhood -- but the downside is that when it's over I get to feel all the horrible consequences at once. It's a lot like pumping yourself full of stimulants to power through a difficult day. It works by borrowing resources from future!you to keep present!you functional. I start panicking over really random, non-sensical things, tiny problems that can be easily fixed if any of them even exist in the first place. I hate this and the only way I can really deal with it is keep it tightly locked up whenever I have to talk to people, then go home and hide until I can human again. It's not fun, but at least now I can do it in the air conditioning.
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