I’ve been feeling really dumb the last few days.

Okay, maybe not dumb so much as insecure. It seems like everybody around me (which, most of the time, is a pretty fair statement) has a higher degree.  Should I go back to school? I ask myself nearly every day now. I always answer the same thing: yes, of course. The sooner the better.

But another equally loud voice says back, with the tone and disgust of Draco Malfoy, just how are you supposed to do that? and more correctly, just what the hell are you going to study?

And the resounding answer to this question is… I have no idea. For now I feel stuck. With nothing to say, no stories boiling in the back of my brain anymore, I don’t feel right about going to school and wasting my time on a creative writing degree. I’d manage to scrape by, I’m sure, but I’d feel like I’d cheated someone out of a spot they deserved.

Part of me wonders how many days, weeks, months it will take me to finally pluck up the courage to sit down every night and write and write until I produce something. To cull the discipline inside me again to produce fiction that I haven’t already written down somewhere, to find something new. With NaNo about … seventy days away (YIKES), it would be nice if I could do this soon.

And I wonder how long I will continue to sit idly by, while the rest of you move on to higher education. I feel peer pressured into doing something. This may not be a bad thing, though. I’d been telling myself that it’s the small things I’m after, the tiny experiences that make up the whole. That I’d always be able to return to those small things if I ever felt like my life wasn’t going right. To appreciate them would be the way to return to happiness.

And so somehow, ironically, marking the holes in the walls and measuring with the level make me feel a little smarter. Even though I have to start over once the shelf is actually in place because the little air bubble in the dandelion yellow liquid in the level began drifting to the left, and thus having drilled three gigantic, gaping holes about an inch above where the shelf actually ended up, I still feel accomplished. Despite the mahogany scuffs on the primer, despite the pile of white dust that drifted off onto my clothes and the floor.  A task that had seemed so murky before is suddenly simple and almost easy. Much less of a hassle than I thought it would be after I acquired the right tools and just went ahead and did it.

It’s like I keep telling one of my friends. Once you start really living for yourself, you’ll be amazed at all that you do not know. But even more incredible is that your proverbial plate–the one loaded with things to do every day, with the pressures of work and keeping a social life, bills, and burdens–it just keeps getting larger and larger. Pretty soon the simple days of grade school seem like cakewalks, even though at the time you thought you wouldn’t be able to handle anymore or you’d explode. I try to tell myself this sometimes too, but I don’t always listen.

So for tonight, I’m happy with knowing how to put an anchor in the wall. It’s a small something, but it makes me feel capable. Like if I can figure out how to correctly install this thing into some drywall without catching the house on fire, destroying the entire wall, or cutting off a finger, maybe I really can do anything.

Friday, the assistant manager at my store keeps me standing outside for about ten minutes as he rants about how little power he has. I shift from foot to foot with the new, automatic smile on my face. Yeah, I sympathize for him, that really sucks. You shouldn’t be treated this way. Inwardly I’m thinking that maybe the reason why nobody takes him seriously is that he’s a diva and has not yet earned the right to wield authority in the store. Just maybe. Finally, after one last discreet glance at my phone, which tells me that it’s just about ten o’clock, he gives an unceremonious wave and leaves.

I go home and watch a movie, and it’s the first time in a while that I have almost an entire weekend ahead of me, unadulterated, free. It feels strangely good staying up late and making some simple dinner and stretching out on the bed to watch the movie before finishing a few chapters in my book and then falling asleep.

Saturday, after having totally forgotten that I had planned to finish going through the old house and gathering the rest of my stuff, I rush back from the gym and see that the guys have chosen this day to move. It’s bright and early and a huge U-haul. I suppose it is fortunate that I have shown up; I do what I need to and clean up. Together we throw out bagsful of trash, setting it out on the curb for pickup the following week.

Aw, this is sad, my cousin says at some point. I give him a look.

You’re not sad, I said. You hate this place, and you made sure we all knew it.

He looks passive for a moment as we continue hauling trash out of the house. Well, you know, he says. It is kind of sad. We’re all moving.

I wonder if it’s that he means to say that he and I are going in different directions, since he and our other roommate are moving in together. So it’s not all that different for them. The only difference is that I’ll be living on my own from now on. Either way, I don’t say anything, only continue cleaning and moving things.

When the house stands empty, we part ways with vague allusions to making plans in the future. Really all I want to do is sit by the pool the rest of the day. I end up out there for only an hour since I forgot something to drink and don’t want to walk back to the apartment then back again, but during that time I read a bit of my book and watch a cute French couple with their adorable daughter splashing about in the end closest to me. The sky is blue and clear and the sun warm but not too hot for July.

I clean up, cook some food, put in some movies, and generally relax and have a good time basking in the solitude of my place.

Sunday I go out to the pool early and there is a man who, without my glasses, reminds me of Daniel Craig from the first James Bond movie. He wears the same Speedo shorts and has roughly the same build, but as I look closer (with my glasses on), I realize he really looks nothing like this person and is in fact old, slightly overweight, and has a pronounced limp. I smile and make conversation with a few people there before leaving to get ready for work.

I’m still not used to doing what I feel like when I get home. It’s easy to take for granted. Already the long year of living with roommates I’d started to dislike so early on is wearing off, the excitement and peace of having my own space making my life absolutely amazing right now. I feel relaxed, rejuvenated, and can’t wait to start the week.

The new apartment is cozy, tucked away on the bottom level of my complex.

Immediately upon walking in is the kitchen on the left, the rest of the living room opening to the right. There is a fireplace and a door to the porch. The bedroom has a nice walk-in closet, and the bathroom is right next door.

Like I said, it’s cozy. Living there with someone would be difficult and cramped, but for a solitary person it is nice. Quiet and peaceful, the only noises an occasional thump from the neighbors upstairs, the hum of the refrigerator, the gurgling of the fish tank.

Right now it’s a mess. All the objects in my life, everything I own, is scattered about here, packed away in boxes, shoved unceremoniously into containers and bags and wrapped up. I can see the value right now of owning less. In fact, it feels good throwing old things away, things I know I will not be using again, things that have done nothing but weigh me down since dragging them here to Georgia.

Well, I’m happy. I had a pretty decent birthday, full of friends and laughter.  I also have three cakes sitting on my counter. Two angel food cakes (my favorite) and one chocolate cake, which I still haven’t dug into yet. I’ll post some pictures of the place when I get it cleaned up though!

Today I felt this tightness in my chest after we’d signed the lease and I’d gone to work, because I want so much for it not to be a mistake.

It was a beautiful day but all I could think was that maybe we did rush into it, that since the house wasn’t even ready for us that it was a sign that we should have kept looking, should have held out for something else, something more.

It’s the cutest little house, a squat little grey cottage set in a strange little slice of suburbia within the city itself. Just south of the golf course (the very expensive golf course), and only a few miles away from work. Further from the gym than I’d like, but only going three or four times a week is all right with me, especially since we live close to the highways anyhow.

It has black shutters and hardwood floors, and right now is so intensely dirty that I can’t shake the disappointment leaking into my thoughts. I keep telling myself that I expect too much, that when we clean it all up things will be wonderful, but I can’t help but be suspicious now that it won’t turn out that way, that we will just have another repeat of this apartment, which I liked so much in the beginning but which has slowly spiraled downwards, until it has become depressing for me to return to, to live in.

I also can’t help but think that it is partially because of the inhabitants that this place has so much negativity. Not only my across-the-hall neighbors, but my roommate too, I feel like have been slowly poisoning the energy here with their complaining, their constant yelling and conflict and general unhappiness.

And the place right now is so small I can’t even close my door to all of the bitching, the meanness that’s in this place, especially when my cousin is at home.

Luckily, this new place is about double the size of this apartment, and so we’ll all have room to breathe (I hope). My room is the entire upstairs, although that’s still small, but the floor space is more than I’ve ever had and I simply love it, love the possibilities it brings.

And even while I was happy about this at first, already the phone calls have started with the complaining, the rejection of a place that isn’t pristine. Complaints that there is some strange plant growth in the cabinet, some fruit flies around it, cobwebs everywhere, debris and junk left out.

While yes, I do think it’s a bit odd that the place wasn’t cleaned out before we got ahold of it, we also seemed to catch the landlord off guard in moving in on it so quickly. I asked my new roommate if he could sell any of her medicine that she left (jokingly…), and then told him to put it all in a giant pile so we could give it back to her later if she wants it. I told him not to worry about the root thing and the bugs, that they’d go away if we just tossed the whole growth or whatever in the garbage and bleached the drawer.

These things seem so rudimentary to me–that we should have to clean some when we come to a new place–that I almost can’t believe I have to give instructions on how to deal with them. It is almost as if I must now mother both of my roommates, when that is the last thing I want to do.

I want to be left alone, is all. No, better, I would much rather live alone than with lots of people, especially people I don’t know well. I have come to need space over the last few years, space in which I can retreat into myself and my surroundings and just be, without having to be everything else that they have come to expect of me.

So still, I do secretly enjoy the moments in the apartment when things have just been cleaned (by me), straightened (by me), and washed (by me). It’s those moments when I’m alone that I can truly relax, smile, do what I want. Lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling and drift off imagining that I’m somewhere else, somewhere fun, or dive backwards into myself and my memories and hash things over. It’s those nights when there’s nobody here, and it’s Saturday and I can watch three movies in a row and write in my journal, nights like that I enjoy.

I have no doubt that I will enjoy this new place, however much cleaning up I have to do in order to get to that point. Part of the charm in an old house, I told them, is that it’s old. It’ll have cobwebs, it’ll have creaks and dents and small holes in the walls. It will be grey on the outside, and on the inside yellow and blue and green. It will maybe have that strange depression in the tub where water seems to pool if you let it. And yes, it may have the occasional horrifying root growth where the previous owner forgot some kind of legume in the drawer. Big deal. It will also have the chestnut piano, the odd little window at waist level in the hallway that looks out at the refrigerator, the grate in the floor, the stairs that lead up into the master bedroom, and the yard next to the dog that pees on you. It’ll have the warped shutter, the perpetually open screen door, and yes, the little tiny hole in glass in the living room. And the three heart lamps the land lord left you because she didn’t want them. Yes, all of these things and more.

I still find myself hoping desperately that it is not a mistake, and knowing somewhere in my mind that it can’t be. It won’t be. It’ll only be a mistake if my roommates manage to convince me of it. And they’re not around much, so I don’t think that will be an issue, see?

Whoo, what a week. It’s only now slowing down and I’m enjoying the relative quiet of my apartment, relishing the solitude of the weekend.

I’m not sure what the housing situation is yet, still. I think we may go for that house provided everything goes through. I had a mini-melt down over it yesterday, was unbelievably angry at my cousin (who seems to have changed his mind several times now, but has settled on ‘yes’ so as to appease everybody), and went home tired, haggard, and looking for someone to push me over the edge so I could explode.

I played a game for a while and when my cousin came home, everything must have been in my head (that or he realized that he shouldn’t push me on the topic anymore??), because we started laughing and joking about the game. He wanted to play as well, and relocated to the living room so he could use the Xbox (his Xbox), but yelled for me to help him pick a character name and then navigate through the prison and then around the main map. The scene reminded me of childhood, when I’d spend long summers at his house. During the day I would watch him play the games (I remember specifically Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega). He wouldn’t let me play until our grandfather came and yelled at him to get some summer reading done–and suddenly the games would have lost their appeal.

So we played games most of the night; our third roommate called at some point and we more or less resolved to apply for this house.

I am happy about it, but scared that I may be committing financial suicide if something happens and my cousin needs to back totally out. So scared that may be the case. And while I could float him for a month, maybe two… after that I would be ruined.

But I think as far as the house itself and the neighborhood goes… I am making a good choice. There are better, sure. But there are far, far worse. The matriarchs of the little strip have lived on either side of this new place for years though, so this brings me comfort. I’ll be able to jog outside again. It’s closer to suburbia than this place is, and suburbia is what at least my cousin and I are used to. It’s a house. It won’t have roaches from hundreds of people living around it. We’ll have a little yard, some place for my third roommate to build his bed. And I’ll be closer to my friends, who live in town, and closer to work. Further from LA Fitness, but I’ll cope with that (”further” by only six miles straight up the highway).

I suppose my reservations come from the fact that this is all happening soon, very soon. As in August 1, if all goes well, we’ll have a key and a new lease soon. As in… I can move out of this dump and start living a life without these terrible annoyances soon.

At least, that is what I hope.

These things have been on my mind lately:

• Money, which I never have enough of nor will I have enough of until I am fifty, or dead, or until I win the lottery
• This cute house I saw yesterday. The owner and I met and clicked. Frankly, it was quite odd since we began to uncover similarities in our tastes and interests almost immediately, beginning with one another’s meager and self-taught piano skills, to our respective 14 years of flute playing… A sign?
• The logistics of moving into another/out of our apartment, getting utilities switched over, opening new accounts, getting a moving van, fumigating all of our things, making sure we’re all around to sign a lease lsdkjfapwoeiajpsldfkja;slkj3rpaowiagha;lfkv!!!
• My writing, which has never been all that great, I feel has declined a lot over the last year as I become busier, with less time on my hands as the months go by
• My car’s registration, which will now be even later than it is already in being switched over to the state of GA, mostly due to a gross error they made in telling me what I needed for all of this to happen. Of course, it is not their faults though. It’s mine. Of course. Despite what physical proof I have of what I was told I needed, it’s still all on me
• The impending rumored furlough at Comair, which means a variety of things that upset me and my life
• Money, which I have none of
• My fish, which continue to die. I think it’s the store-bought fish dying. I have five little babies left but I don’t dare put them in the big tank with Puffer, who will certainly eat them. They won’t be big enough for at least another month, but I’m getting tired of not being able to make coffee when I want to on weekends
• Time. I have no personal time because there are so many things going on and it seems this summer will be busy perpetually and forever and forever. I go to work, get home late, do something prescribed or planned, and go to sleep right after. In the morning I’m crabby, don’t get to read, don’t get to write, and rush off to work, to start the cycle again. Ugh
• This awful project at work that won’t go away
• My absence at the gym this week, albeit a much needed and scheduled one. Still, I feel somewhat guilty as I’ve just started to make friends and feel disgustingly inactive (although I suppose not eating dinner for two straight nights because I’ve been so busy has at least prevented me from gorging too much on unhealthy food)

Don’t worry. I believe this is a lot of stress and PMS colliding into one gigantic explosion (which will occur, I predict, on Friday). Hopefully it’ll get better, and my lifesaver necklace will bring me luck and we will get the house, move all right, make some money, and be happy. Hopefully.

Now, off to play a game to get my mind off things, and eat pizza. Then be a dork install my new RAM. An ideal evening.

Dear colony of Periplaneta americana that lives in this building,

I officially give up. You may have this apartment beginning on September 1, 2008. My roommate and I will be out by then.

Please note that there is a perpetual smell of paint, that sometimes when you turn on the exhaust fan over the stove the circuit trips and turns off power to half the apartment, and that the apartment comes with annoying, unfriendly, and possibly illegal neighbors.

But then again, you are roaches, and you probably don’t care that they’re that way. In fact the more fiestas they throw and the messier they are, the better, right? And if they annoy you then you can have all of your distant relations over to annoy them.

I wish you every happiness in this place. Hopefully it will suit you better in the coming months than it has us. Don’t worry; it is a nice place. We must simply move on, see?

Sincerely,

Katherine

Tonight I’ve been more productive than I have been for a while. I vacuumed, took out the trash, and Chloroxed the counters, but it was only because earlier my cousin seemed angry with me. Actually, the conversation went like this:

Kath: Last night I killed a roach half the size of my pinky.
Andrew: That’s it, I’m moving out in August. I can’t live like this.
K: Like what? It was just one. I just hadn’t been keeping up with the poison.
A: It’s fucking disgusting.
K: Whatever. It’s not that bad.
A: Sorry if I have higher standards of sanitation than you.
[long pause]
A: Anyway, you can move with me in August if I don’t HATE you.

Hate me? This bugged me. I asked him why he would hate me, and apparently I’ve been making fun of his single-dom too much. Well, I thought I only made fun of him when he brought it up, which is often. And other than that, I thought I’d been being as supportive as possible given how miserable he chooses to be.

Don’t get me wrong. I am almost inexpressibly grateful that he wanted to live in this apartment with me, and share everything. I was and am still so excited that we get to hang out together once in a while, that he still finds it okay talking to me, and that we have seemed to fall back into touch so easily.

But I’ve also noticed from not having contact with him for the last ten years or so, he’s grown very bitter and grumpy. So grumpy. It’s one complaint after another, and rarely the positive comment. The food’s never good enough. It’s too cold, it’s too hot, the Mexicans next door are too loud or their kid is screaming, or it’s too quiet and boring and there’s nothing to do.

I wish he would just be content. And his comment upset me a bit today; I try to be nothing other than a good roommate, quiet and reserved or offering to do things with him when he’s home and free.

But while I sulked, I began to think about his unhappiness. You know what? It’s really not my problem. I think I have enough things to think about without him harping on me, too, and without concerning myself with his well-being. And to comments about the sanitation, you know what? The roaches aren’t that big a deal. I spray, they die, and sometimes they come back. We’ve only been here three weeks? And roaches probably move from building to building, and like to live crowded in with people who are messy and drop food, bits of trash, and pieces of skin. So whatever. They will outlive us all, and if he can’t live with some bugs now and again, well he might have some serious issues down the road. Or issues with every place he chooses to live from now until he dies.

And same with his being single. I won’t say anything further to him about it, but try to be supportive. Give me strength to do that. Secretly to myself, after he told me that it bothered him when I made fun of him too much, I thought that perhaps it would just be easier to accept being single, for him, than to find someone to date.

Yet he won’t choose to see anything good about his situation, so instead he sits at home, miserable. Happiness is part choice… I told him the first day we moved in and he started complaining, but he hasn’t listened since. Sometimes I just want to shake him and tell him that he’s lucky he has a roof. Or would he rather live with his mom fifty miles away? Would he rather have a shitty roommate, who’s a lot messier, doesn’t like him, and never hangs out with him or invites him places? Would he rather live in his shit hole of a crash pad, miserable and really by himself?

Maybe.

But I certainly don’t want that for myself, and I like where I am. I think I’m doing pretty well. I wake up in the mornings and watch the sun grow brighter through the shades. My room is flooded with light. The few close friends I have grow closer through letters and conversations during the day. I am thankful for the time they give me while I sit in exile at work. And I’m even thankful for that job, although sometimes it’s terribly boring. And when I get to leave work, I smile at the thought of going to the gym and doing something for myself, and even smile at the solitude of the apartment. Because sometimes everyone needs solitude.

I just wish my cousin would realize on occasion, take a deep breath, hold it in, and be concerned only with the moment.

I wish.

I keep cycling between varying degrees of complete contentment and despair. Granted, the periods of happiness are getting longer but their sometimes rapid disappearance is always followed by the low greyness that I often have a hard time breaking out of.

I was in one of those lulls last night even during the gym. We had a sub and this irritated me even though the class turned out pretty good and I walked out tired and sweating. I’d had a good chat with some of the girls there and had promised to come to dance class the next day, something I rarely do (since I’m a terrible dancer. I suppose I’ll just grin and bear it).

But this morning seems to be bringing a better day with it; I was surprised by the appearance of my cousin/roommate, who threw open his door at seven-thirty and growled, “Why the fuck is it four degrees in here?”

The ludicrous circumstances in which he’d appeared–he had of course left no evidence that he was home, except for the low murmur of his voice (talking in his sleep?) that I’d heard but which I’d been convinced was the neighbors across the way–made me laugh and drop the toothpaste on the floor.

“Want to go to Cancun today?” he asked a few minutes later. Hands over his head, he wandered around the apartment while talking, pacing, looking out the window and then jumping up and down. It is cold, and I do suspect they’ll have to replace the furnace, but I’d been getting along all weekend curled up in bed, or out and about in the city.

“You’d have to take off work,” he said, “but we could do it. It’s eighty degrees there today.”

Tempting, I told him, but no. Unfortunately. Although I felt an itch as I drove into the city, the pang of missed opportunity and wondered if I should have just called in sick and gone, flown down and out of the country for the day to sleep on a beach and drink fruity cocktails.

Cancun or not, I guess, like I’ve always said it’s the little things that make the day better. Like accompanying a co-worker to get coffee (although I’d secretly promised myself I would abstain for the day thanks to how I felt yesterday, all jacked up on Chai and feeling as though I’d just been running. The whole day) and chatting about relationships, what we like. Do you like to be the big spoon or little spoon? I said, and laughed at the inappropriate context of the statement. Giggling, we stood in line at Starbucks. I didn’t care who stared.  It should be like that more often.

When I get back from possibly the most ideal date ever, it’s cold and late. Ten o’clock. I’ve been driving while chatting on the phone. Still warm from the residual heat in the car and the night I’ve had and the quiet voice chatting in my ear, I walk upstairs and open the door.

The apartment is dark and cold, quiet. For a change there are no roaches when I flip on the light and inspect the kitchen floor. I nod, hang up the phone, and then lay down on my bed.

Too soon though, the heat has left my body and even under two comforters, a knit blanket, two shirts, pants, and socks, I shiver. All I can think about is the cold in the place, which apparently has no heat. I should have caught it sooner I know, even as I walk to the thermostat, but I sometimes overlook small things like this.

Instead of calling Emergency Maintenance like I should have (because not having heat when it is less than fifty degrees outside qualifies as an ‘emergency’), I pull on shoes and go down to my car. Sit there for a while until the engine warms up and is blasting heat into my hands, and then pull out onto the road.

It’s dark. It’s late. The lights from the grocery store are dimmed, closed. Everything is closed. I go into the grocery store and look around desperately. I settle on several candles and some lighters, hoping for anything.  I end up driving by the hospital, and there is a 24-hour CVS. I go in and am one of the few people. I wander the aisles looking, searching, but there’s nothing. Some fans. The man behind the counter tries to help me, but we come up empty-handed. He asks where my boyfriend is, the one who’s supposed to be keeping me warm?

You’d think, right? I tell him. Well, he does not exist any longer. The man smiles. His teeth have wide spaces between them, like a white fence, and he scratches his nose with an index finger. I grab my electric heat pad (for injuries more than keeping a person warm), Butterfinger bar, and new Burt’s Bees chapstick off the counter, but he grabs my wrist.

Hold on! he says. I’m going to give you something.

He then palms me a piece of crumpled register tape with his number. Call me if you need someone to keep you warm, he says.

I smile sickly. All right, I mumble, and walk quickly out into the cold. It’s a pathetically short drive back to my freezing apartment, but I see no roaches (the cold has driven them out, since being inside provides no relief?), and I lay on the heating pad with blankets gathered around me, warmer at last. Quite an evening.  Tomorrow, I think while feeling the heat creeping back into my skin,  will be even better. Tomorrow, another visitor, and then the weekend stretching out ahead of me, slow but productive days. A lost weekend, a free weekend.