CHIN UP!

Anyone who know me can attest to the fact that when my home is organized, I am a much happier person. Though, since moving to San Francisco, I've been poorer than ever. But as I've told my friends (and continue to tell myself), I'd rather be poor in an awesome city than go out every night (like I was in Richmond, VA) in a mediocre one.

Shortly after moving into my apartment, I was lucky enough to find the exact shel I wanted from IKEA for free (FREE!) on Craigslist. Fortunately for me, I have an overly polite and considerate roommate with a station wagon who drove me across town to pick it up. The stupid thing fit perfectly into the back of his wagon. Since then I've been keeping my eye on Craigslist for the same shelf, though not necessarily for free - just you know, cheapish.

That hasn't happened and I haven't bought a second one because for the first time in my life I'm only spending money on food and transportation. I don't go out much, except recently on OkCupid dates where I silently pray to myself that he will pick up the check because I really need to buy bread tomorrow. (Aside: I don't agree to go on dates if I can't afford them. I always offer to pay for myself.)

I've been on break for about three weeks and classes start next week and I've had this pile of stuff on the floor in my room for three months. I hate it. But I haven't known what to do with it because I haven't had anywhere to put it. I've just kept it all in old department store bags the former tenant left behind.

But last night after my attempt to get all the girls in my quarter together fell through, I decided to treat myself to a movie. I only did this because I knew that if a certain dude was working he would give me a discount. AMC doesn't offer student or military discounts here, but if you ask him, and show him your ID, he'll let you in at the children's rate. Four bucks a pop adds up. Yay! Bread!

On my walk home I found a shelf in the middle of my block. It wasn't next to any trash bins, and it kind of looked like it might have been meant for someone else to pick up, or like someone may have been in the process of taking things inside and that was the last one. I loitered for a bit to see, but no one was around, so I took it home. It's also from IKEA and in the same veneer as my other shelf.

It may seem silly, but I haven't been so grateful, or happy about anything in awhile. These little things are so huge to me. And, I mean, it was so random, and it matched.

The previous night I was crying to my friend on the phone and he told me, "Chin up, kid." And then the Universe did something nice and was all, "CHIN UP. CHIN UP. CHIN UP."

Over It

I'm sitting in the common room in my hostel. This is the same hostel I stayed in when I visited San Francisco last November, but there's a big difference in staying for a few days on vacation, and staying for two weeks looking for and then waiting to move into an apartment. 

I thought spending two months living with my parents was bad, and then I came here. I've been sharing a room with five other people here, five. FIVE. And at least two of them change every other day. I think I've shared my room with at least thirteen different people in the past twelve days. 

People are terrible. They are the worst. They are loud, and they don't flush toilets, or wash their hands, and they take up so much space and don't seem to understand that by, "excuse me," I mean, "get the fuck out of the way." Isn't "excuse me" one of the first phrases everyone learns whenever they learn a new language? Perhaps I should try "excusez-moi" or "entschuldigung" instead. 

Then there are the people that live and work here. I know one of them as she and I shared a room when I was here before. And I don't mind them, it's just that I like having my shared room to myself when everyone else is out being a tourist, so I stay in it in the mornings only to be interrupted by the person who cleans the mirrors, and then the person who vacuums, and the person who cleans the sinks and then the person who comes round to check that those things have been done. 

This is no way to live. 

I'm amazed at my tolerance so far. 

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy being around people, when I have my own place to go home to. I'll talk to anyone, and I like most people when given the opportunity to talk to them individually. I hate having to introduce myself to someone new all the time. The other day someone called me "Judith" and I knew they were talking to me, but I didn't bother correcting them because why does is matter? I figured I'd never see them again. 

Wait, I take that back. I don't mind introducing myself to new people that are potential new friends - people who actually live here, too. That is something that I do like about San Francisco overall, the people are friendly and most aren't from here either. In that way it reminds me a lot of DC - but I won't go on about how much I miss DC. 

A friend reminded me this week that you suffer for the things you want. That's true, this is what I've wanted for the past two years, and I have it now. I may be living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and oranges, but it'll be worth it, right? Right?

"There" is now "Here"

I haven't stopped moving since my last post two months ago. My brother and his family flew in from Basque for a couple weeks. I got my official acceptance letter to advertising school, and had to scurry to find loans to get me to San Francisco. I called my friend with whom I had thrown around the idea of a cross-country road trip together with, he was available, and bought a trailer. Christmas happened. I left, and now I'm writing this from a hostel in the "Tendernob" - the area on the border between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill districts of San Francisco.

Whew!

I live here now. 

In San Francisco. On the other side of the country, and basically the other side of the world. 

The first day here I had orientation, followed by moving my life out of a trailer and into a storage unit, followed by an interview, followed by class. I slept better that night than I had in weeks. Since then I've sent out numerous emails of desperation in response to Craigslist ads looking for roommates. 

I've done this before, I've lived with strangers, and it's turned out alright. But that was in a city that I was familiar with. Though, I did start getting responses, probably one for every four I wrote, and finally saw several places this weekend.

Before I arrived here, I had done some research as to where I figured I would end up living, based on cost and proximity to my school. One area, Ingleside, proved to be much farther, and depressing than I thought it would be. There really isn't anything there, save for the occasional corner store and BART station. I saw two rooms there. The first was in a house that was shared with three gay men - all of my dreams about living with gay men were crushed upon seeing this house. It was messy, and dirty, and there was a craft project taking over the kitchen table, and while the room I would have been living in was okay, I wouldn't have been able to deal with the rest. The second house was shared with two chicks of ambiguous sexual orientation. This house, like the first was also messy and cluttered, and the girls were far too laid back.

I am not laid back. I like things to be done, and in an orderly fashion. Thing have places, and they should be in their places. 

Another room was in an apartment in The Mission, a neighborhood I like, a lot, and have stayed in on a previous trip. I saw this room with two other people, one of which left at the same time I did. As we were walking down the stairs he turned to me and said, "that place was a shithole. I can't live somewhere like that!" Indeed.

There are a few other students in my very situation. All of us are new in town and many are new to this country. One had mentioned that he and a friend of his were looking and invited me to potentially live with them. The apartment they had chosen was in The Haight, right on Haight Street across from a park. It was a corner unit, and all the windows had decorative stained glass along the top. It was small, but sunny, and so beautiful, and so expensive. Part of me wishes I hadn't looked at it at all, just because now I know exactly what I'm missing. But I'm sure they'll find someone to rent it with them.

The room I've settled for isn't in a beautiful art-deco building, but it is quaint, and clean, and tidy. AND it's not full of clutter. I may collect books and records, but do you know how easy it is to dust around those things compared to nicknacks? And do you know how much I hate dust? I hate it, a lot. This apartment will be easy clean! Above all else though is the location, it's in the Inner-Richmond (of course I'll be living in Richmond, I just can't escape it) and close to the Presidio and Golden Gate parks, and just a short bus ride from downtown. 

I'm so excited. I'll have a real place to live in a week!

Going Home

I have moved...back in with my parents...

That is how much I wanted to get out of Richmond. That, and I'm planning on moving to San Francisco to finish school, and because it's awesome. Have you ever met someone from San Francisco  who you didn't like? I haven't. No one ever says, "Ugh, San Francisco, I never want to go back there."It's not Mississippi. 

It's certainly been a transition, one that I've been avoiding by not being home as much as possible. I moved Halloween weekend, in the sleet, with a migraine, so it more terrible than moving usually is -- never mind all the little things, the miscommunications, the lack of communication. It got done, and we all sat down for beef stew my mother made for everyone else because I don't eat beef, she had prepared the freezer and packed it with vegetarian lasagna.

The next 48 hours were spent mostly moping and reconsidering all of my life choices. 

Fortunately I had made plans to be in San Francisco the first week of November, my birthday is the 3rd and I really needed to be relax. Though my idea of relaxing usually just means avoiding people I don't want to talk to and keeping myself busy elsewhere, which is exactly what I did.

I'd arranged to meet with the admissions advisor at the school I will hopefully be attending, and let the few people I know there know I would be in town, but mostly I just wanted to explore. I had visited in the Spring of last year as well and I wanted to do the things I didn't get to do last time on this trip.

Anton, Karin, Me and Timon after lunch in Golden Gate Park.

After a very long and unnerving taxi ride into the city with a dead cell phone and a cabbie who didn't know how to use his GPS or speak English, I finally got to my hostel, cried, and fell asleep. The morning was much happier and after meeting a couple of my roommates and a couple of dudes at breakfast, four of us decided to rent bikes and make our way across the Golden Gate Bridge. I had not packed anything for this type of activity, and biking 22 miles in skinny black cotton pants was not my favorite thing, but it was well worth while. Now, the city is famously seven miles by seven miles, we had figured we had gone maybe 15 miles, and then we pulled up Google Maps and marked the multiple circles we had made on accident.

I had set up an appointment with the Admissions Advisor (AA) for the next morning and managed to find it without getting lost and made decent time walking. AA and I talked for almost two hours. TWO HOURS. I like to think that this is a good thing, though perhaps I totally blew it. She invited me to sit in on a class the next day, so I'm guessing I didn't blow it. The class was small maybe ten students, and everyone was actively engaged and supportive in offering constructive criticism of each others' work. I fell in love, as I knew I would, with everything -- the students, the teachers, the smallness of it all within such a large city -- it was perfect. The community created there was shat I should have looked for when applying to schools four years ago. If only I had been somewhere, or been exposed to anything. My parents wanted me close, and I have found close to be a miserable place. 

It was my birthday and I had spent most of it wandering around Chinatown after the class. I don't particularly like Chinatown, most of the things there creep me out, but some of the things are also entertaining. My favorite was definitely the "erotic art" that had been etched into various surfaces and shapes and molded into what I can only guess were bookmarks and paperweights. Though, I am no scholar of erotic artwork, so I'm probably wrong. However, shop keepers do not enjoy loiterers snapping photos of their wares to tweet. Erotic art is serious business. 

That evening I had dinner by myself at a tiny, dirty burger place that offered veggie options (I may not eat meat, but I eat veggie burgers all the time) before heading to The Mission to meet my one friend that was in town. He was out with two of his coworkers, and between the three of them my glass didn't get empty. We ended up hopping around until we went to a particularly terrible bar that was having some sort of electronic dance night, I think, I'm not completely sure, BUT there was dancing and I got to dance and my friend is an excellent dancer, and I could not have asked for a better birthday. (Thanks, guys!)

My last day was spent between bed and getting lost on the Embarcadero followed by wandering around downtown in a haze in an effort to make myself do anything aside from sleep.

The idea that I will be living there is one that I still haven't quite wrapped my head around. It's beautiful, and the urgency and support shared by everyone there is unlike anywhere I've been. I keep waking up and missing my studio in Richmond, and then I remind myself that I gave it up because I want so much more, and I'm going to have it, soon(ish).

Dodge City

The more I talk to people in Richmond, the more I want to pack up my car and drive away. I don't hate Richmond. I used to, but I've come to be content here. Content is a dirty word though, it's one step up from settling. I have no intention on settling for anything because it's comfortable or easy. Richmond is comfortable, and cheap, and yeah, easy.

I left Northern Virginia for a reason. In the past few weeks I have run into more people from my home town than I do when I'm home. I'm not into it. I didn't like them there, and I certainly don't like them here.

When I talk to people that grew up here, went to college elsewhere and then came back, I just don't get it. Perhaps I'm not southern enough, or not easily satisfied, but I have no desire to stay in one place. I grew up in the same house for the first eighteen years of my life and was never the new person. Richmond hasn't been much different. People are content to stay here forever, I just can't do it.

I know people my age that live with their parents because they're saving up to buy a house, which I guess is great for them? The only purpose I see for owning property is to eventually fill it with a family, and that freaks me out. That's just where my head goes, house equates "would be happy to make babies and stay here forever." I understand that "rent is a waste of money blahblahblah..." but is it? Having a house comes with it's own problems.

I get to live in a shoebox and have people clean the foyer for me and I don't have a yard to mow or maintain, and when something breaks, I don't have to pay someone to fix it. It's a pretty sweet deal. And I can buy my way out of me lease whenever, or ride it out, and leave and not have to deal with finding tenants to rent to or someone to buy it. Ideally I'd like to move every three to four years from now until I get knocked up or resign myself to being a spinster - which, by the way, does not sound that bad.

That's another thing about Richmond. Everyone here seems to knock up or get knocked up between 27 and 34 and then they're stuck. Sure, kids are great, I like most, but when there's another parent involved you can't exactly get up and go. All of this is to say, nothing scares me more than the idea of doing exactly what I'm doing now in two to five years from now or beyond.

It's so easy. It would be so easy, but I would regret it and then drink myself into a stupor and try to convince myself that this is the life that I wanted. It's not. Not now, not ever. Complacency to me, would be giving up. I hope to always be yearing for something more.

I really need to put up and pay for the internet

So, the abridged version of the past three weeks.

1. Signed the lease for my new place and moved. I'm now living in a studio, by myself, without roommates - WITHOUT ROOMMATES, in Shockoe Bottom. Sure I live above a really shitty bar/club combo thing that plays really terrible Top 40 music three nights a week, but I live alone, and it is clean, and I'm usually out those nights anyway. My neighbors are alright, no one is particularly loud and I'm pretty sure there aren't any hookers that live in my building - I'm moving up in this world.

2. Turned 21 - this may or may not have led to me standing outside of someone's house in the rain and crying after they slept through my birthday. Happy Birthday to me! And then I may or may not have continued to get drunk and/or stoned elsewhere. Yay! for healthy decisions!

3. I didn't go to Pittsburgh as I had planned. Christina's grandfather died and then she had to work, and I had a series of money issues and it was generally just a bad weekend. So I'll probably go after the new year, and I'm really hoping that she and her boytoy come to Richmond over the holidays.

4. I joined a dating site, because you know, I want to go on dates and have some semblance of a normal dating life that doesn't include men twenty years my senior. I'm not sure what the problem is, but meeting people in Richmond is one of the hardest things. Making friends is difficult enough, but dating is near impossible. I've been out with friends and not met anyone, I've been out by myself and not met anyone - though the last time I went out by myself was to a post-punk dance night and I was that girl dancing by herself - a couple of dudes talked to me after and said that they had seen me dancing/that I was a good dancer, etc. but they waited until everyone was leaving. WTF? Anyway, I was annoyed, so this whole online thing is something I'm giving a shot. So far it's been pretty entertaining, I have learned to delete messages from dudes who don't wear shirts in their profile pictures, and some dudes think that liking "blockbuster movies and lemonade" makes them a catch. It doesn't. I've only been on it a week and I've already been on a couple dates with normal dudes, or seemingly normal dudes.


Seriously, the past three weeks have been insane. And I still don't have the internet at my new place because I'm poor, so I'm writing this from a cafe down the street from me. I'm really embracing the poor writer/student cliche.

As a result of being 21, I've been going out more, in Richmond which has been nice. I've only spent like one day in DC in the last month and that was to see La Roux. I finally feel like a Richmond kid, it's terrible, but probably healthy.

Completely unrelated and I'll probably post about this later, but don't fall asleep at your friend's house when they're doing mushrooms.

I'm moving, again, and not to DC.

When I moved in with Adam in June, I had been in a hurry to find some reasonable human being to live with in a very short period of time. I basically had three weeks to find somewhere to live.

Adam is straight-edge, and vegan. Which isn't a problem. We don't share food, with the exception of his candy. His diet is made up primarily of fried potato products and candy - he doesn't like the banana flavored laffytaffy, so he puts it in a bowl for me. I think this is gross. But that's just fine because he thinks that all the dairy products I consume are gross.

He is also not in any way type-A. I am. And this is where I have driven every roommate I've had insane. I like the areas that we share to be clean, but not your version of clean, my version of clean. And then I start to resent the person I live with for not having the same standards that I have and I start doing passive aggressive things, like not taking the trash out when it starts to smell, or not doing dishes - just to see how long it takes them to notice.

When I moved in I liked that Adam was a DJ, had a great music collection, small label and is just generally a music person. I didn't realize that he had so much stuff. And I really don't like stuff. I am a minimalist. I like my books and records, but I like them stored in a non-obtrusive way. I like linear things and I like stacks and defined angles. And I really don't like dog hair.

Adam has two dogs, two pugs. And I grew up with dogs, I love dogs and generally prefer them to cats. But I don't think I've ever been around two dogs that shed as much as these two do, or maybe it's just because there are two of them. And nevermind the older dog's bowel issues - I bought a plastic rug for the living room specifically because of this problem.

So, Adam and I had it out the other night. I've wanted to move out for awhile, but wasn't really sure how to go about asking out of my lease. And I didn't mean for it to happen the way that it did, but basically he told me I was mean and I told him he was dirty, and then we talked about our fucked up families. It actually felt a lot like a lot of the conversations I've had with my family members growing up - things almost always started with an argument, then turned to tears, then eventually a rational discussion was born. Age-wise he would fit perfectly into my family, snugly between Steven and April.

So, now I'm on the hunt for another home. One where I live by myself. As much as all of my roommates have annoyed me, I can honestly say that I love them. But as a favor to the rest of the world, I really need to live alone. Well, as a favor, and for my sanity. The only issue with this is that it will be slightly more expensive. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will A) be living in the ghetto or B) be living in not the greatest conditions. I prefer the former.

I looked at a tiny one-bedroom earlier this week and it was kind of perfect except for the location. The leasing agent even warned me of the proximity to one of Richmond's most dangerous developments. This doesn't bother me as much as it will bother my parents. The place is in a quadraplex and the other tenants are mostly nursing students that attend classes on the nearby MCV campus.

I'm looking at a studio today that's in the noisy Shockoe area. I'd be living above a bar, which again doesn't really bother me because it means that I could be as loud as I wanted to. And I have an appointment to look at another one bedroom later today that's in my current neighborhood - it's more expensive, but all inclusive.

I am using one of my old roommates as a reference so that she can attest to my cleanliness and orderliness. I'm not a bad tenant, I'm just a bitch to live with.

The Abridged Version

HI!HI!HI!HI!HI!HI!HI!HI!

I have been away for much too long. Mostly because the past thirty days popped my bubble and then shook the bubble batter and then spilled it all over my favorite dress.

Perhaps a simpler way of saying this would be that the universe took a giant shit on me.

Or, it just kept throwing punches at me and each time I got up, I was right back down.

You get the point (and probably got it after the first metaphor).

In the past month my leasing company terminated my lease which then left me to find a new place to live in a matter of three weeks to avoid paying rent for the month of June. Then classes started. And I had to work. And I went to San Francisco because I had planned that trip well before any of this happened (I had a great time and will write about it later). Oh, and while I was in San Francisco the left side of my head started hurting as a result of an infection in one of wisdom teeth. Then when I got back I missed my first day of classes due to my dentist appointment, and then had my wisdom teeth out and had to move the following weekend - Memorial day weekend, the weekend that NO ONE was in town to help. And amidst the move I lost my computer because someone (Dad!) told someone else to put it under the seat of the Uhaul, but no one thought to tell me and I thought it was in my Dad's mini-van and then well, whatever, I got it back. And then the week after living in my new apartment and getting relatively settled, I dropped a box of stuff off at a thrift store and thought I'd look around for a new couch. I was in for twenty minutes and when I came out someone had left a huge dent in my rear bumper and broken the left side's lights, but there wasn't any plastic on the ground, weird. Like, they cleaned it up or something and didn't leave a note. My car was already shitty, but I liked that it didn't have any defining features. Ugh.

Anyway, all of that happened. And now I am driving my new roommate nuts with all my organizing and rearranging and insisting that our apartment look like two adults live here. Though, I do recognize the fact that most people, regardless of their age, do not care about cleanliness and neatness and orderliness as much as I do. I keep moving things to logical locations that allow all the space to be used as efficiently as I know how, and he keeps asking me where it went. His laffy taffy? On the top shelf of the pantry with all his other junk food - but really that makes up at least half of his diet. It's bizarre. And he is Vegan. And he does not cook or really eat vegetables, unless french fries and potato chips count. His diet aside, he is wonderful, mostly because he is putting up with my neuroses better than most. And he has a full-time job, and responsibility and dogs, and these are things that do not frustrate me, because it means he has a real life, with little free time, unlike my roommates of past. I love both of those girls, but it's kind of irritating living with someone who is unemployed and perfectly content with that because they're full-time students. How anyone is okay with being jobless is beyond me. How anyone has so much unstructured time and doesn't feel compelled to fill it with cooking and cleaning and organizing is also beyond me.

I would make an incredible assistant or secretary or lifecoach. Also, I pull of the hot-secretary look very well.

Also, yes, I live with a boy. My parents are understandably upset and have yet to meet him. He is straight-edge though, and that is something I had to explain to them, and after understanding that he does not drink alcohol they approved, sort of. Still, what are they supposed to tell people!? Nothing, because it isn't anyone's business. And by anyone, I mean everyone at their church that I can't stand - i.e. a lot of stay-at-home-moms who talk too much. HI, CHURCHLADIES!

My apartment will hopefully be done with all the rearranging and storing of excess things in the attic by the end of this week. I hope.