Monthly Archives: April 2005

The House And Associated Promises

Thumbnail: Outside front of my house

So this is where I live now: an attached con­do­mini­um town­house. My unit is sec­ond from the right, and goes under­ground. The white win­dows fac­ing out on the main floor are part of the break­fast nook. There are still box­es every­where though, and it’ll take at least half a month to get every­thing cleared out.

It feels good to wake up in my own house, and as such, I now have to ful­fill all the promis­es I made to myself on the sat­is­fac­tion of such a con­di­tion.

  • I promise to floss every day.
  • I promise to vac­u­um more often than I did before (how non-com­mit­tal of me).
  • I promise to smoke less weed.
  • I promise to stop pour­ing cook­ing grease down the drain.
  • I promise to film Dolly run­ning her fat ass up the stairs (she nev­er expe­ri­enced stairs until I moved).
  • I promise to walk more often than I ride the bus.
  • I promise to get my finances in order, which involves enter­ing all my incomes and expens­es into Quicken XG then set­ting up (vir­tu­al) sav­ings accounts for retirement/emergency/pleasure spend­ing.
  • I promise to keep my room spot­less.
  • I promise to read more than I watch movies.

Running Down

I left work about halfway through the day. A sharp pain was start­ing to devel­op on the sides of my head, and I was gen­er­al­ly sore all over. Even while chew­ing or swal­low­ing, there was a tremen­dous pres­sure from the head of my mandibu­lar condyle to the inner ear. Most like­ly, I was start­ing to run myself down; the last time I felt like this was after an all-night shift at the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, and I end­ed up run­ning a fever and miss­ing two days of work there. Shirley con­vinced me to take an extra strength Tylenol (with codeine), which is some­thing I rarely do. I’ve always believed in pay­ing atten­tion to the pain sig­nals that the body gives off.

Trolley and I, with the assis­tance of Aaron, moved a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of chat­tel through the week, trans­lat­ing into late nights and mis­er­able days. Every pre­vi­ous night, I’d ver­bal­ly con­sid­er sleep­ing in the next day know­ing how hard it would be, and as Trolley not­ed, I’d nev­er end up doing so. Even this morn­ing I could­n’t sleep, so I got to work at ten past sev­en, more than half an hour ear­ly. It’s good to know that I was able to be stronger men­tal­ly than phys­i­cal­ly, some­thing that has always been dif­fi­cult for me to bal­ance. Usually it feels like my body is giv­ing out first, but after­wards, I real­ize that I could have han­dled more. This time, my body is actu­al­ly telling me that I’m over­worked. I think the key is con­vinc­ing myself that phys­i­cal dis­com­fort is just a tem­po­rary feel­ing that can be ignored.

It’ll all be worth it once I’m set­tled down, which will most like­ly not be until I get my clos­et doors installed. I’m replac­ing my white ones with mir­rors, and since the clos­et runs the entire width of the wall, they all need to be cus­tom sized. It’s the last thing that’ll be done before I real­ly feel like I’m in my own home. The mir­rors should make the room look twice as big and appro­pri­ate­ly dark­er. I got the quote today, and it’s just under two grand, tax in, includ­ing instal­la­tion. I decid­ed to go ahead with it, since it’s actu­al­ly cheap­er than I expect­ed, so they should be arriv­ing in 6 to 14 days.

Next week is hair­cut, get­ting cus­tom-fit­ted venet­ian blinds, Christine’s birth­day din­ner, and a lot of unpack­ing.