So: moving. Not a lot of fun. I’d lived in my happy little apartment on the Upper West Side for five years and a month before packing up my life and heading a few blocks uptown. It didn’t come without the expected stress and pain, the former owing to my poor decision not to take any time off from work and the latter to the OH SWEET MOTHER OF OUCHIE BAD BAD BAD meeting of my forearm and the second-floor staircase rail. My utter lack of coordination is commemorated with a lump and a silver-dollar-sized black-and-blue mark. If you see me, feel free to offer condolences and ice.
Shedding a sizable percentage of my possessions was a trip. I’m somewhat lacking in the taste and functional-design departments, so my apartmentmate-to-be and I mutually decided to ditch every iota of my crap: the sofa, the desk, the filing cabinet, the bed and its sweet sweet pillowy mattress, two air conditioners, the bookcases and the entertainment-center dealie. I figured I’d sell most of it online and give the nicer items - two of the above qualified - to Housing Works.
Well, unsurprisingly to everyone except me, nobody wanted my junk. Disinclined to carry any item weighing more than eight pounds down two flights of stairs, I put the furniture up for grabs on Craig’s List’s freebie page.
Do you have any idea how much people like free stuff, gently worn or otherwise? The parade of dealseekers up and down my hallways might’ve been mistaken for a Black Friday mob. Partly as a social experiment and partly due to laziness, I posted my circa-1998 but still functional microwave for claimin’. The catch? It was caked with a three-inch-thick layer of filth, or maybe tomato sauce. I made this very, very clear in the listing. It was out the door within 45 minutes.
Now that I’m here and 67.5 percent settled, I’m the happiest fella in the world. I love my roommate. I love my functional blinds. And get this - there’s this modern contrivance called a “dishwasher.” What you do is put your dirty cups and plates and whatnot in it, and then push a button. Forty minutes later, they’re clean! Magic! How I subsisted without one for the last 12 years, I’ll never know. I expect a pointed comment from mom tomorrow about how there is no glory in choosing to live within one’s means.
Anyway, FReedy FRiday went by the wayside last week for the first time since last June. He wrote a song that has “moving” in the title, so that’s the obvious choice. Buy Moving On A Holiday here or here.
