Homeowners Once More

Dear Husband and I close on a house this Thursday.

I haven't been this stressed in a looooooooong time.

Add to the stress the fact that I've been terrible at eating Paleo - too much indulging in cheese via gluten-free pizza - and I'm having almost daily migraines. It's... rough.

And it's my own damned fault.

Once we've moved into the new house, however, I fully intend to get back to the super-Paleo lifestyle Dear Husband and I led when we first met and began dating. I'm not particularly looking forward to it - cheese is SO delicious! - but my body and my skin will thank me for it.

Particularly as the forehead of 13-year-old Ms. Strainedconsciousness is back in all it's unhappy, oily, bumpy glory.

Ugh.

I've been busy, lately, making purchases for the new house - because those wood floors aren't going to sprout rugs on their own (and I now have a new phobia that will probably haunt my dreams); lining up contractors to tune-up our current house's HVAC system, and doing the same at the new house; arranging for an appliance repairman to come look at our range in the new house (because it doesn't work); scheduling our new roof installation, fence demolition, and fence reconstruction; etcetera.

I feel like all I've done the last two weeks is make phone calls and take the dogs to the vet (Ginger's been a bit gimpy).

After 4 weeks - or possibly more - without a manicure or pedicure, and my feet still wearing the nail polish from that last appointment, I finally was able to do a little self-care, today, in the form of a mani/pedi. Because my doctor cancelled my appointment. Apparently, she was still in surgery, and couldn't leave her unconscious patient for a few minutes to come take care of me. Pshaw.

I'm joking, naturally.

It was fortunate, though, because as I told her scheduler, "This makes my day much less stressful." Despite the fact that I was already in the doctors' office parking lot when she called.

It meant I had time to shoehorn a little foot time into my day. Rescheduling for a month down the road was totally worth it.

Oh Blah Di, Oh Blah Da!

Life goes on!

Things are starting to take on some semblance of normalcy, around here.

And by "here" I mean my apartment in H-Town.

I have cooked a real meal on my stove, and discovered that its Level 4 setting is about what my old stove's Level 6 setting was. Fortunately, my 14 oz. sirloin didn't suffer too much in the searing!

I have unpacked more things, and put them away. Some are relegated to a cardboard box that will be unceremoniously shoved underneath a skirted table.

I have received a number of packages via UPS, so my UPS guy and I are now on smiling, "Hey, how's it going?" terms.

I will be sending back the contents of one package - wheeled ferrules for my sofa, to elevate it since it was made for wood floors, not carpet - because I only measured one of the six legs on the sofa, and four of them won't accommodate the ferrules. Other brass wheels will be exchanged for the ones I mistakenly purchased.

I've read a book, which I'd read once before but was absolutely certain that I had not read. It was Wilkie Collins' The Woman In White. I read the copy I already owned, so it's not in any way like my proliferating copies of The Count of Monte Cristo, which I misplace and then buy a duplicate of, only to find the original right where it should have been.

Besides, you can never have enough Counts of Monte Cristo lying around.

I received a shipment of shorts from The Gap, one of which will be returned because 1) they're too big; and 2) I look like I'm wearing baggy liederhosen. Not particularly flattering.

The last thing I want is to be mistaken for Kurt Von Trapp while traipsing across campus.

I'm still not 100% on board with the whole "wearing o the shorts" bit, mostly because I've spent the last ten years keeping my legs covered so they don't blind everyone in the vicinity. I don't do tanning. So I feel, I suppose, the way the young ladies of the 1920s felt when fashion dictated a raise in the hem-line: somewhat scandalous at all that bare skin - and with a 33 1/2" inseam, that's a lot of leg - but still condoned by society (to a degree).

I've spent 45 minutes on the phone with a surprisingly delightful and helpful young woman from AT&T who helped me re-register my wireless router/modem thingy after it inexplicably ceased to function, yesterday.

And now, I'm about to head to bed.

At 7:40 p.m.

Hopefully, I will finish the book I am currently reading (The 6th Lamentation) and begin reading another one, perhaps Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan or The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family's Legacy of Infidelities by one of the Warburg family's descendants, who apparently has made a career out of outing her family's little secrets.

I look forward to some scandalously delicious reading, to go along with my scandalous shorts.

Learning to Let Go

Of what, you may ask, are you learning to let go, Ms. Strainedconsciousness?

Because you are grammatically correct, you do not end your sentences with prepositions. Good for you!

I am finally letting go of books.

Or some of them, at any rate.

When I make my big move to Houston at the end of July (eep!) I will only be able to take 2 of my 3 stunning bookcases with me, and that means I must either A) rent a storage unit for my bookcase and its attendant books; or B) temporarily house my bookcase at my parents' home and cull the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

I really don't want to pay for storage, and seeing as I'm clearing a huge drafting table out of my parents' house, my mother and father have graciously offered to allow my bookcase to stay with them, rent free.

Major Tom Shadowmaker is looking forward to having a friend / bookcase with whom / which he can discuss the trauma of being abandoned by yours truly.

In case you have not noticed, dear reader, I am quite obsessive about books and reading. I began reading Shogun - all 1,210 trade paperback pages of it - for the second time on Sunday. I am on page 622, as of dinner-time tonight.

That's about 100 pages per night, give or take.

So going through my books... it's difficult. I have a few stacks on the floor that will definitely be carted to Half-Price Books, and there are a few sitting on an almost empty bookcase because I can not make up my mind.

It's infuriating.

They are books I have only read once. One - The Elegance of the Hedgehog - I am waffling about because it was so heart-wrenching that I do not know if I will be able to read it again. At the same time, it was beautiful, poetic, a masterpiece of writing - and more impressively of translating, as it was originally written in French.

The second book - Suite Francaise - was also disturbing, but beautiful. I'm not sure if I want to get rid of it because... well... I read about World War II a lot. I don't necessarily read about the actual battles, or the politics of them, but I do read a lot about tangential figures of the war, such as Unity Mitford (one of Hitler's close friends and an Englishwoman. Also the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire's sister).

I've read Maus, the graphic novel about WWII wherein the Jews are mice and the Nazis are cats.

And yes, I've read the two-part biography of Hitler available in every Barnes and Noble bookstore, the open possession of which once prompted a less literate friend to ask why I had read it.

I wanted to shake her, to shout: 'Why have you not? Why don't you want to know about the evil that can happen in this world? Why don't you want to understand it so that, maybe, we can help prevent it happening again?'

The books are part of my trying to come to grips with the ease with which a society can turn its back on one segment of the population, demonize them, and attempt their eradication. I don't understand the concept of hate, how people can turn their backs on a whole segment of society.

Back to Suite Francaise, a book written in the midst of the Nazi occupation of France, not published until it was discovered in a suitcase and made public sometime in the last decade (I want to say even the last five years). It tackles the more difficult issues, those not written about very often: the French who allowed their chateau to be turned into a sanitarium for ill children that was then occupied by the Nazis; the chaos of the French as they fled south from Paris, hoping to reach safety; the emotional and social turmoil of a Frenchwoman, her townhouse occupied by Nazi officers, when she falls in love with one of the Nazi officers and is ostracized by her neighbors.

I'm still not sure if Hedgehog will make the cut, because just the thought of it makes me want to cry, but I think I've decided about Suite Francaise: it's coming with me to Houston.

Nothing Much to Post About, But It's Habitual Now

I am currently sitting in the office, on hold with someone from AT&T, which might just become my new social routine: I'll call every evening, juke to the rockin' hold music, and have in-depth discussions with customer service about why my DSL account is not activated.

As for my REAL social life, it was a good 3 day run, but I'm definitely ready for a quieter week. After my late Saturday night - out past midnight, again, and you know nothing good happens after midnight, right Dad? - I slept in later than I've slept since I started working. I jumped out of bed at the crack of 2 p.m. got dressed and made a grocery list.

I was going to go to the Container Store, but then decided that I didn't really need the things I was going to buy, so I restrained my organizing hand and went to the Tom Thumb next door for a few non-perishable items (hellooooo Dr. Pepper!) and then on to Whole Foods, where I ran into one of my former bosses who dropped his yogurt container when I said, "Hello!" Granted, I might have said it a little loudly, but that's because my ears were still ringing from the bar noise from the night before.

I went home, unpacked my groceries - and may or may not have a spider in my house/shopping bag/purse and as a consequence may or may not have walked around the rest of the evening slapping at my neck and arms - and got down to tidying. I tidied my bathroom, I rearranged my bedside tables, I changed my sheets. In short, I was a one-woman tornado of productivity for the eight hours I was awake before retreating to bed once more.

And now, I learn from the nice man at AT&T - his name is Joel, and he has a kind of creepy voice, truth to tell - that my service has been activated after all, and that the customer service reps at AT&T just failed to call me to notify me, as was promised on Wednesday evening.

Joel mutters to himself and breathes heavily while he clacks away at the keyboard in the customer support center, which only enhances the creepiness of his voice when he does speak aloud.

So now, it's off to the dry cleaners to pick up my laundry, then back home to make dinner and connect my new wireless router to my phone line. Hooray!

My Faith in Corporations Has Been Restored! Maybe...

I spoke to two competent people at AT&T Wednesday - yes two! back to back! and both apologetic when I relayed my awful experience of the day prior! - and one of them told me why my package was delivered to Fort Worth: apparently, that's the dock from where it was shipped, and that's to where they return. But why was it sent back? I asked. My UPS man ALWAYS leaves a notification on my door if I'm not home: I know for a fact, because I've had multiple large packages delivered, rerouted, etc... in the past 3 weeks.

The Poor Operator had no idea, but she had my wireless modem re-shipped to me at my office, and it should be here by Friday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, which makes typing incredibly difficult, as you can imagine. TPO also told me that there is a problem with my DSL service that is not related to my lack of having the appropriate equipment with which to access it, and she sent a request for someone to see what the heck is going on so I can be up and running ASAP.

She also reassured me that I will not be billed for the DSL until it is active. So far, it's not active, it's just pending.

So I'm holding off on whether or not I'm happy with the service I've been given until my DSL is working properly. Until it is active.

Other than that, there is no big news. Except, possibly, that Lola's son has been in the office the past couple of days to hang out with his mom prior to going back to school next week, and he's caused countless distractions.

Where should he eat lunch turned into a 20 minute lecture from Pacman on the evils of corporate restaurants.

Where should he sight-see while this close to Downtown turned into a debate on whether or not the farmer's market is too far for him to walk (yes), whether or not he should take the DART train to the Nasher Sculpture Center (me: yes; kid: no), and then a frantic hunt for Oldsmobile's Nasher membership card (in Oldsmobile's pocket - he handed it over when he got back from lunch).

There's also been a considerable amount of standing around talking, recently, and not just by me. Everyone seems to be involved. Pacman, Scooter, Lola, and me sitting around in the "lobby" talking about... I have no idea what, 24 hours later. But it was important and interesting at the time.

Today, there was an on-line hunt for a fellow for whom I used to work at a large architecture firm in Dallas. I have no idea what the man's name is, I just know that he was the only person who was nice to me during my short (3 month) tenure in the firm from Hades. Pacman wanted to know who the kindly gent was, and I couldn't tell him, so he began scouring the firm's website for information about him. None to be found. The firm's probably laid off everyone but the principal's.

In short: I feel a bit unproductive, of late. Maybe it will pick up, later on. I think part of it is boredom, because millwork details aren't that exciting, and tagging them in drawings is definitely NOT exciting. I need to snap out of it.

Maybe turning off the interwebs for a day would help.

Ah, the Joys of Moving!

Particularly, the joys of setting up all those delightful yet necessary services to which modern life has accustomed us.

As I write, I am sitting on the phone in my office, listening to terrible muzak, courtesy of AT&T customer service. I highly doubt I am even being routed to the correct operator. Thus far, I have spoken to 4 - count em - 4 operators, none of whom were any help. The first one I spoke to checked my order status, informed me that he didn't have a tracking number for the wireless modem I should be receiving, and transferred me to another operator.

That operator (#2) never really answered his/her phone, although the line picked up, and I had the privilege to hear an operator discussing her boyfriend. Now the question is: Why is discussing boyfriends so pressing that I had to be kept ON HOLD for 10 minutes before I was allowed to eavesdrop?

After saying, "Hello?" increasingly louder and more impatiently for a couple of minutes - and freaking out the janitor, poor guy - I hung up the phone. I dialed another number for AT&T, and briefly explained my predicament to the operator (#3) that answered. She transferred my call to another department: payments and billing.

Why, may I ask, would I wish to speak to payments and billing when I need a tracking number for an order I've already placed? I even told Operator #3 the department to which I needed to speak.

Operator #4 (Billing) informed me that I was speaking to the wrong department, which I knew as soon as she answered the phone. In an exasperated tone of voice, she informed me that she would transfer me. Obviously, it was my fault that I had been mistranferred.

A lovely woman named Donna answered the phone next - after a further 15 minutes of waiting on hold. I explained to her my predicament, gave her my telephone number, and asked for her help.

My wireless modem was delivered on July 31. A person by the name of Brennan supposedly signed for it.

Nobody lived in my apartment on July 31. I didn't move in until August 1. When I informed Donna of this, she seemed confused. She was even more confused by the fact that - although I can place calls from and receive calls to my telephone number - my telephone/DSL account is not "active." She also provided me with the tracking number for my UPS package.

My UPS package was signed for at a "dock" in Fort Worth, Texas. Why the hell did it end up in Fort Worth?!?!? So now, I apparently have to call UPS to find out why my package was signed for by this person named Brennan in Fort Worth.

It has been an hour since I placed my first call to AT&T, and nothing has been resolved. After Donna, I spoke to another fellow, who told me he'd have to look something up on my account. Another person picked up after I'd been on hold for another bazillion minutes, and he asked me for the number of my "Trouble Ticket." I informed him that I didn't have one. He asked me to please hold on while he got one for me, and then...

I was rerouted to the initial customer support telephone menu. Because it is a high-traffic time of day, I am on hold, yet again, awaiting someone who will doubtlessly shuttle me around again until I have an aneurysm or attempt to throw myself out the window of my 4th floor office.

Of course, I would never throw myself from the 4th floor window because I'm afraid of heights.

A young woman finally answered the phone after a further 10 minutes of being on hold, and she informed me that she couldn't help me. She transferred me to another department, automated of course. At the end of a barely intelligible menu (people with lisps should not do the voice for automated menus), I received a busy signal and was forced to hang up. When I tried to call back the number I'd just called to get through all the hub-bub, I was informed by a lovely automated message that their office is closed, and will open again tomorrow.

I am so incredibly angry right now that I can't see straight. I think I will go home, now, as there's really nothing more to do.

Where in Hades Did I Get That?!?!

I didn't blog yesterday because I've been tired and busy. I'm feeling somewhat better. Thanks for asking.

I've been packing stuff in preparation for moving, buying stuff - because the apartment complex requires area rugs or floor pads under all furniture on the hardwood parquet flooring - and trying not to overdo it.

I resumed sorting through all the stuff I've acquired in the past 7 months or so, as well as some stuff that travelled with me from Dallas to my parents' house. I wanted to make sure it really needed to go back to Dallas.

Not all of it does.

What have I uncovered in the past two hours? A million coaxial cables, despite the fact that I rarely watch TV. A 12-foot ethernet cord - bright green - that I received as a freebie from the dorm I lived in my first year of college. A 3-foot ethernet cord - bright blue - that I picked up somewhere else along the way. Approximately 30-feet total of telephone cord, and a Polaroid camera.

A Polaroid camera. That still works, even though the last time I used it was 5 years ago. Apparently, the battery/film cartridge was still "good" battery-wise, although all the pictures I've taken this evening with it turned out red.

"Hey, Mom! Turn around!" Ka-chik-wu-eeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr. Presto! Mom en rouge!

I also uncovered a traditional film camera that has a decidedly dead battery, the warranty information for my old laptop, as well as all the set-up CDs that go along with it, my old Motorola Razr telephone, and multiple notebooks with job-hunting tips desperately scrawled inside.

None of the tips did me any good, however, because they didn't include Go drinking with colleagues regularly.

I threw out the job-hunting tips, but kept the notebooks, most of the cords (the CPU power cord won't do me a whole bunch of good, since I no longer have a desktop computer, so that went on the garage sale pile), and all of the cameras.

You never know when you'll need a distorted red picture of your dog.

Ephemera, Etc...

I've been sorting through the piles of paper that tend to accumulate wherever I go, and have thrown wads of it into the recycling bin at my parents' house. Among the ephemera I've encountered are concert tickets from a couple of years ago (Martin Sexton at the House of Blues), hand-written notes from my sister and brother-in-law, and house plans I've squirreled away in the unlikeliest places.

The accordion folder housing my electronics warranties was the best place to store the plans for a minimalist glass and stone house. I do a lot of design-work at night, after the Benadryl/Tylenol PM cocktail has kicked in but before I fall asleep.

Granted, not all of the flotsam and jetsam from the past few months has been tossed in the rubbish bin. The handwritten notes are squirreled away once more, this time with the others I keep in various old stationary boxes that were too retro-cool to throw away (gold and black-lacquer finish paper!) and I saved the concert tickets for potential integration into a collage in the future.

I've put a couple of pairs of shoes on the Garage Sale Pile O Doom in the family room. I intend to box up all that detritus with the boxes left from the last time I moved. I've discovered a whole trove of cleaning products in our garage that once belonged to me (but were used by my former house-keeper almost exclusively), and my mom informs me that there are spices and food-stuffs in the cabinets and pantry here, donated to the communal living space after I moved in.

I failed to cook with them, while here, however.

I have sorted through the pens in my two writing-utensil holders and discarded those that no longer have ink, lead, or erasers, or that write poorly, because I'm obsessed with how pens feel against the paper when I write. If there's too much snagging of the paper fibers, the deal's off.

I also tossed the black-market imitation Sharpie markers I unwittingly bought at a midnight street fair. They probably took 10 years off my life.

Don't buy permanent markers at midnight street fairs. Or DVDs.

The books I bought during my tenure as the resident unemployed offspring in the house filled one box, and I have yet to find something in which to put the other 11 remaining.

I made a list today of things I need to purchase before my move, and it's not that long, but it won't be cheap. The Container Store should fall to its knees in worship at the mere thought of my imminent arrival.

I get to pick up the keys to the apartment Friday at lunch. I'll go back Friday night to measure the windows in the living room and bedroom so I can buy the appropriate curtain rods. Curtains are something I don't have to worry about: I have them in spades.

The curtains in my room at my parents' house are left from my college apartment. My mom offered to let me take them with me, since they technically belong to me. They're attractive curtains, don't get me wrong, they're just not what I want in my apartment. The curtains that will hang in my apartment in Dallas are higher quality, and longer to boot! I need to buy some fringe to go along the bottom of the curtains in my living room, though.

Either that or new curtains.

We'll see which option wins out for the O.C.D.esigner.