Although I'm really, really loving Seattle I think I'm more of a New Yorker at heart. Maybe because I left the city before I'd burned out on it, I will always remember it as a magical time. That being said, at this point in my life I think Seattle is the perfect city for me. Seattle is like New York Lite - New York with half the stress. Here are a few differences I've noted so far:
Seattle bus drivers: "Good morning!"
New York bus drivers: "Are you getting on or what?"
Seattleites wear thongs to work - the kind that go on your feet.
New Yorkers wear thongs to work - the kind that ride up your butt.
New Yorkers like to go to good restaurants to see and been seen.
Seattleites like to go to good restaurants to eat food.
New York bums smell.
Seattle bums smell too.
Seattle is far more laid-back than New York but New York is like nowhere else. One of my favorite websites is www.overheardinny.com but I don't go there too often because it always makes me homesick. My all-time favorite overheard conversation:
Man on street: "Yo, where'd you get those pants?"
2nd Man on street: "Mother-fuckin' ebay, motherfucker!"
And one last note, officially making this a seriously random and blog-like entry: please check out the updated eyeoftheowl site. There have been some mind-blowing photos and graphics added. You'll see the link on the right-hand side of this page, under "blogrolls." And, no, I'm not biased. And, yes, I was completely nude in that photo.
Why is it you are so anxious to leave a place until it's time to leave and suddenly you realize how wonderful it is, and particularly how many lovely friends you have that you will not get to see very often anymore? That blows.
Appletinis+packing=lots of broken things.
Bubble pack is EXPENSIVE. When we get to the other end I think I will construct a bubble-pack couch. It will cost more than an actual couch but it will be much more cushiony. Handy feature: if you pop a bubble when you sit down, you know it's time to go on a diet. Or trim the dog's nails.
Yes, you can have too much stuff.
As many boxes as you think you need, triple that number.
Um... has anybody seen the dog lately?
Appletinis+blogging=very little sense.
Stay tuned for Episode III by which time I might be sober. I haven't decided yet. Depends on how far we get with the packing.
So we've hired the movers and we're packing boxes but there's one catch - we don't actually have any place to move TO. I mean, not specifically. We know we're targeting Seattle generally. This week's focus: Find A Place to Live That Doesn't Cost a Fortune or, more accurately, How I Made Myself Literally Sick.
The first part was so not my fault. Please indulge me by revisiting my blog titled "
Cancun bust." Remember the warm fuzzy relationship I have with Delta? Well, they've managed to solidify those ties. We were supposed to take a
Seattle that day was if we got to the airport in an hour to catch an earlier flight. So we rushed around like crazy people, had to dig up somebody to come get the dog, scrambled to the airport, and were the last people to board the flight. Whew! Made it! I was chomping on my fingertips in my anxiety, drawing blood, while Tom batted at my hands and said, "Relax! We made it! Smooth sailing from here." Just then the flight attendants went past us - with their luggage. "Haha," said Tom, "they're probably getting off the plane just before the pilot announces the flight is cancelled so we don't kill them. Haha." Yeah, so guess what? About two minutes later the pilot came on and announced the flight was cancelled.
We waited in line at the Delta counter for 2 hours only to find that there is no way we were getting to
Seattle that night. Went back home. Dog was delighted.
Started over again on Tuesday. Flights went fairly smoothly, in that they both took off and landed, and not just that, but they took off and landed where they were supposed to. We were delighted.
Got up bright and early Wed morning and started the Great Search for an Affordable Apartment. The first place we went to had been rented just the day before - while we were fighting with Delta, I'd like to point out. The next place was in the ghetto, literally surrounded by bums. The third place had a great view but was 750 square feet. Now I know I lived in a 400 square foot apt in NYC for 6 years but I've expanded with age, as has the amount of shit I can't live without, plus I've added a husband whose amount of shit he can't live without puts my amount to shame. Now 750 sq ft seems like a prison sentence.
We saw an absolutely adorable turn-of-the-century three-bedroom house... that had no heat. Also the landlord lectured that we had to weed the yard every two weeks. Yeah... homey don't play that. Homey hires other people to play that. Next.
Cute house just a block away from an awesome area of town with fantastic shops and restaurants. Bedrooms the size of postage stamps. Next.
Fabulous apartment building on the same block as aforementioned shops and restaurants. Rents start at $2100 a month. After we finished choking, we told the guy we'd go look in the couch cushions for more money and would be back. I hope he's not still sitting there waiting for us. He must be getting pretty hungry by now.
A smattering of adorable houses in the Queen Anne area which apparently used to be a very popular neighborhood for midgets and dwarfs at the turn of the century, when most of these houses were built, because they are all about 1/3 the size of a normal house. Very small people should note there are some FANTASTIC possibilities for you in this area. For me... not so much.
After two days of apartment-hunting I became steadily more distraught until Thursday afternoon found me sobbing on the streets of Freemont, with a sore throat, sore feet, and the sense of complete hopelessness. Anxiety had kept me up for three nights straight, and the cut-throat pace and pressure of finding a place to live in the three short days we had was too much. I caved. I bawled like a wee bairn.
But then things, as they always do (and as my husband consistently reminds me), perked up, when we discovered a lesser-known neighborhood that is sort of up-and-coming. It reminds me, for those of you familiar with NYC, of the meat-packing district in the 90's, when suddenly, interspersed with the warehouses, were these hoity-toity high-rises where wealthy hipsters were moving in, sloshing through cow blood in their Manohlos. Except without the cow blood, which is nice.
We signed a lease at
And this is how I literally made myself sick. And because I am sick, and in bed, this is also why this blog is a mile long. Stay tuned for Episode IV: The Carpet Cleaners. That's gonna be an edge-of-your-seat one, I can just feel it.
Everybody knows that when you move you are at the mercy of the movers. And the last thing you want to do is piss them off. If you didn't have all your kitchen equipment packed, you would have cooked a three-course meal for them which would be piping hot upon their arrival, and in order to avoid taxing them too much you try to load as much of your own furniture as possible. All this because as soon as they have all of your wordly posessions on their truck, they hold every single card.So when
Around
Tom, who understands but does not like or appreciate my medical need for coffee, offered to drive up to the local bagel shop and pick some up for me. This was extremely generous of him because attached to the car was a small trailer loaded with approximately (and for once I am not exaggerating) 1,500 pounds of the stuff we considered too valuable to let the movers handle.I continued to wallow like something sub-human on the couch until, a little after 11, I heard the distinct grumble of a very large truck. As the dog started to bark frantically from the bathroom, I lept up, summoned every ounce of reserve energy I had, and greeted Veektore like a long-lost friend.
Veektore turned out to be about a hundred feet tall. He was a big, solid man. So just in case there was any possible ire rising up at his three-hour tardiness, the desire to express it was now firmly squelched. Veektore had also apparently treated himself to a real Russian breakfast of straight Vodka, if one was to guess by his breath, and spoke as if he should be busy making "big trouble for Moose and Squirrel" rather than driving a truck in Alabama. (I stole this line from an old Murphy Brown episode when Murphy meets a rival Russian reporter. I couldn't help it; it's too good to pass up in regards to the Russian mover.)
After about forty-five minutes of paperwork, in which I signed away my rights to anything, including my own posessions, Veektore and his cohort, whose name I did not catch and whose English sucked worse than Veektore's, got down to work. By "got down to work" I mean, brought one or two boxes out onto the street at a time (where they remained in the burning noon sun, forming a giant pile of our stuff that the neighbors enjoyed perusing as they slowly drove by on their way home from church) in between answering their cell phones, which rang approximately every two minutes (again, this is not an exaggeration). Veektore caught up with all his distant relatives while our boxes remained sitting in the middle of the street for the next 6 hours.
Sometimes Veektore would hang up the phone to graciously wrap a piece of our furniture with forty-seven blankets and about a million yards of shrink-wrap, for which we were being charged by the foot. I watched in dismay, desperately trying to keep the cheerful, optimistic, "no problem Veektore!" expression on my face, as I ticked off the cost in my head. When Veektore was done wrapping our furniture - any one piece of which took approximately an hour - I swear you could drop it from the top of the
Empire
State
Building and it would remain intact. "For safety," Veektore explained helpfully, as he wound the tenth layer of shrink-wrap around our TV. He banged on it for good measure with his giant paw-like fist while Tom cringed and almost threw up in alarm.The afternoon found Tom and me lounging on the floor of the study, which by
St Louis by nighttime. That was no longer going to happen.We were about 20 minutes outside of town when Veektore called me on my cell phone. "I weigh truck," he grumbled. "Ees seven towsand pounds you haf." What Veektore seemed unaware of is that the price originally quoted, based on 4,500 pounds, had just doubled for us. But I didn't really care, because for the next ten to twenty one days it was Veektore's problem to lug it around, not mine.
After a pleasant evening of dinner on the balcony while watching the sun set behind the Space Needle and sharing a bottle of wine, Tom headed down to take Theo for her final pee before bedtime. We now live on the 5th floor of an apartment building in Seattle, so it has become his job to take Theo out during the sketchier hours.
After a few minutes I heard the front door rattling and went down the hall to see what was up. Tom couldn't get the latch open. He rattled some more, and then I rattled from my side, trying to help him, and we both saw very quickly that something was wrong. We turned the knob every way, we applied the credit card approach (has that really ever worked for anybody? anybody?) and then Tom instructed me to get his tools, which I thrust uselessly at every bit of metal that seemed to be associated with the doorknob, but nothing worked.
While Tom proceeded to take apart the knob from the hallway, I resorted to what I do best: dialing. I called the emergency maintenance number for our apartment building about 10 times, knowing that I was not ingratiating myself by disturbing someone at
Finally somebody responded. A youngish-sounding woman told me she'd be right over. Now, I have every faith in my sex and I know we can do amazing things like birth children, but I admit I immediately leapt to the conclusion that a woman would be useless in this situation. After all, Tom is pretty adept at taking things apart and fixing them, even if it takes him several hours to do so, and he couldn't figure out the door, which seemed to be completely stuck. I didn't see what use this woman would be, and frankly was concerned for her coming over to our apartment in the middle of the night.
After a few minutes I heard Tom speaking with the woman in the hallway, and then some more rattling. More mumbling and then silence. "What's going on?" I called to Tom on the other side of the door. (This whole scenario reminds me of the scene in Gremlins when the two mogwai are on either side of a cardboard box and bang on it to communicate. Anyway.)"She was trying to pry the lock with a butter knife," Tom said. I could hear the disdain in his voice. "She's gone to get a better tool or something."
I rolled my eyes. See, I told you. A woman was no good in this type of crisis. Lots of other kinds of crises, yes, but not a lock-related crisis.Sure enough, she returned to rattle at the door some more, presumably with a bigger and/or better tool, with no luck. I sat on the other side, waiting breathlessly. Theo scratched, wondering what odd new game we were playing.
"Have you tried pushing it?" I heard the woman ask Tom.
"Pushing it? The doorknob?" he asked."No, the door," the woman said."Um, no..." Tom answered. Thinking, of course, that the last thing we would want to do is explain to the police why he was caught trying to bust down our own door three days after moving in. And then he quickly said, "Karen, stand back!"
I leapt up and backwards as the first BAM resounded. The second BAM brought a large, stocky woman, complete with mullet, barrelling into my apartment, splinters of wood flying everywhere. I kid you not. The woman stopped herself short in the middle of the hallway, holding a large piece of what used to be our door. She was no taller than my shoulder.
"Holy SHIT," I said.
"That was IMPRESSIVE," Tom said.
"My name is Lori," the woman said.
I will never doubt again. And I will certainly do my very best NEVER to piss off Lori.
New, yes. Improved? Well, sort of. Writingbetweenthelines has morphed from an archive of mostly-previously-published columns to a blog. Why? For several reasons. One, nobody is publishing my columns anymore, which removes most of the drive I had to write them. Two, bloggers can get away without spell-checking, proper grammar or punctuation (although I will still strive to achieve the highest quality in all three areas). Three, apparently there is a chance I will get a bit more visibility this way. Like, maybe SIX or SEVEN people will read my crap.
I am still working out the kinks of this transformation in regards to the mailing list I had with the old set-up. I'll send out one email to the old mailing list to let you know of this new format and then it's up to you, if you really love me, to subscribe to my site via the link on the right. The mailing list thing was faultering anyway and if you signed up in the last six months or so you may not have made the list due to a way too high spam filter.
In addition, I would like to state that this new page was set up by my lovely friend Dan, who went with choices I selected after one Bahama Mamma, so if anything is wrong with it, I take full responsibility and also I don't care because my head hurts.
