If you’re dithering over whether or not to buy that felt mustache you’ve been eyeing, I highly recommend whipping out the Mastercard.

Villians, cads, and scoundrels.  

I had a small, informal housewarming party last week. Small because if I put on a full-blown bash, guests would have to come in shifts. Informal because I invited my friends over for dinner and told them to bring their own dinner. I’m classy like that.

I’ve since been pondering how to do my mustachioed housewarming justice. (And my lovely mustachioed compadres, who pulled out the dinner and the merriment in fine style.) Suffice it to say there was much hyena-like braying (mostly from me), goat cheese torte (and shrimp, and cherry crumble) scarfing, champagne guzzling, tale-telling, and mustache melodrama.

My new apartment has been thoroughly warmed. You can tell by the fine film of white wine still coating the floor.

Yes. Yes, I can. I’m shameless that way.

If you want to see the full photo set, it’s here. Come visit. I’ll bake you a pie.

As I walked out the door the morning we broke up, I deleted his numbers from my cell phone. A day later, I adjusted my blog so there was no mention of a relationship on my about page and the category devoted to the dog was gone. Last night, I erased my entire text message inbox, just in case there was something from him.

When you split up with someone, you can avoid their street, the entire neighborhood where you lived together – at least until you feel confident you can run into them without it wrecking your day or your week. But in this age of devices, a person can digitally haunt you long after they’re gone.

Imagine taking all evidence of one of the most important people in your life and systematically deleting it. It’s wrenching, like you’re destroying the good things along with the bad. It’s also strangely freeing. Because the last thing you want as you move on with your life is to casually open up iphoto to download pictures of a rhubarb pie and be confronted with you and your lost love smiling together under the Tuscan sun. There’s enough heartache I can’t dodge, so why subject myself to memories of a time when our future was bright? When it held babies and Italian farmhouses, rather than stilted emails about who’s in possession of the nice green bath towel.

A few months after we broke up three years ago – yes, this has happened before, I’m almost getting good at it – the guy I was dating was fiddling with my computer when he noticed my ex’s name pop up as an administrator. He looked at me and said, “Let’s lose him, shall we?” A few keystrokes and his name disappeared.

But I never got around to filing away those photos the first time. This time I have to. Pull out the birthday parties, the trips to the snow and foreign countries, and transfer them all onto a zip drive. Put the zip drive in a cardboard box and put the cardboard box in the back of a storage unit. He belongs in memory, not on something that’s a part of my everyday life. But I keep putting it off, telling myself it’s more important to hunt down a job, spend time with friends in the park, finally set up my living room. And it is. Moving forward is more important than looking back - even if in looking back, I can put the past away.

If only pain could be erased as easily as a series of photos.

I’m sitting here in my very own apartment, posting from my very own internet connection. After three weeks of my computer connecting to nothing but the power outlet, which is a blessed invention but entirely lacking in photos of ferrets wearing purple top hats, I can’t even begin to tell you how good this feels.

I spent the morning washing my wood floors with Murphy’s oil and waiting for the Comcast guy, who appeared in the last three minutes of his four hour window. I’m not sure how they manage to do that for each and every appointment, but it must require some kind of intensive training. After he left, I walked up the hill a few blocks to amble around the park and toss pine cones in hopes of inciting the dogs to riot. (It didn’t work.) As I walked home again, I passed a large black woman in a wheelchair wearing a hairstyle that can only be described as bouffant. She was sitting on the corner with a friend, her diction rising and falling with an ebullience that somehow defies exclamation points.

“I got this nice place on Noe now and it’s so clean and fancy.” She pauses for effect. “I even got internet. In my very own house.” Her friend bounces a little with enthusiasm, and the seated woman’s hair bounces right along with her. “I am so grateful.”

I hear that, my new neighbor. I hear that.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ve decided to leverage my break-up into a new apartment and a new job. I’m all about life renovation over here. I might even start eating broccoli.

With job interviews come probing questions. Like “Are you in the habit of roasting your coworkers with olive oil and fresh rosemary if they finish all the onion bagels?” “You don’t LOOK insane, but we’d like your social security number so we can check for ourselves.” And my favorite question of all, “How much do you think you’re worth?”

Blink. Blink. How much am I worth? According to the answer I gave a few days ago, I’m worth about as much as a swingline stapler. On sale.

This, apparently, is my salary calculator: Take what you think of as poverty, divide it in half, add three dollars and a handful of peanuts. Be sure to note that you can go lower if necessary.  

When the urge to bang my head soundly against the nearest concrete wall became overwhelming, I reminded myself that I spent most of my 20s at a nonprofit, and we were all paid about half the market rate. “We got pay cuts instead of raises,” I muttered. “How was I supposed to know?” The comforting balm of this excuse halted abruptly during dinner with a nonprofit compadre when I mentioned the (possibly rounded up) number and even she looked horrified.

Next time I’m asked the dreaded question, I’ve decided to tap the pads of my fingers together and croon, “One MILLION dollars.” Then I’ll turn my head to the side and whisper, “What’s that? Inflation, you say?” I’ll turn back to the interviewer and say, “One BILLION dollars.”

(Bonus: If I don’t get the job, I can blame it on my abominable Mike Meyers impression.)

(Does anyone have a hairless cat I can borrow?)

Despite my best intentions, I’m generally too lazy to explore a neighborhood until I move into it and realize I need groceries. I never found any food, because I was too distracted by this house, cleverly disguised as an atomic banana.

Here is the household cat. I think she resents me. Or merely wants to devour my soul with mustard.

I can’t wait to introduce both new ‘hood and aggravated cat to the felt mustache (sent by the excellent Kerrianne). I think the cat needs another reason to hate life. And the only thing better than an atomic banana disguise is a mustachioed atomic banana disguise.

I don’t particularly believe in love at first sight. But just because I don’t believe in it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Several times. I’m not sure what this means for the rest of my belief systems, but that is a pondering for another day. A day when my neurons are firing briskly and my blood sugar is spiking from donuts rather than crashing thanks to a hearty breakfast of three spoonfuls of plain yogurt. (Plain yogurt. For breakfast. WHEN THERE IS BACON IN MY FRIDGE! What was I thinking?)

When I first walked into my new apartment, I fell. Hard. And not just because the door frame is a bit raised off the floor, causing the unwary to stumble upon entry. It was a chill gray day and I was still reeling from the suddenness of Life Change, a mere five days before. But I walked (stumbled) in and realized “I could be happy here.” Also, that I wanted to wrap the original 1918 kitchen up in my arms and smooch its glassfront cabinets until it pushed me away and ran for some vinegar to wipe my lip prints off its pristine surface.  

The landlady pointed out the salient points: That was indeed a bit of a step, and, um, be careful. A pie cooling cupboard that opens to the outdoors. (So cherry pies can cool in their natural environment? Do cherry pies really need that much nurturing? Or do they just need to be eaten faster so we can’t hear the complaining about musty interiors and how they long, OH HOW THEY LONG, for a fresh breeze?)

Walking on the dark soft wood floors, I checked the closet (big enough for the shoes) and the living room (small enough that if you stand in the middle with your arms extended and sway drunkenly back and forth, you can touch both walls). In the back is a garden laden with blooming flowers and ample opportunity to filch lemons from the neighbor’s tree. There’s even a washing machine.  

You know the story. Girl meets apartment, girl tosses her number on top of 30 other people’s numbers, girl waits breathlessly for a call, while assuming the apartment isn’t interested because that other woman had better shoes and a cell phone that didn’t drop its antenna on the apartment’s glossy floor.

Call comes, girl gets giddy, and immediately envisions a future involving pie and dinner parties where guests come in shifts. Girl hastily packs up stuff - somewhat aghast at the number of books she’s acquired, no wonder she’s always broke - moves in, and declares love in a rather embarrassing fashion. Girl cooks apartment tater tots and proceeds to eat them all herself.

Now, a few weeks later, I’m hitting the phase all new love must weather: Flaws, Finding Of. Faucets run cold for a good five minutes before grudgingly spitting forth lukewarm water. Sloping plaster above the floor forces furniture to wobble a good six inches from the walls, making the already doll-size space even smaller. Stuffing in my big red chair was such an ordeal that when I move again I will have to: 1) leave it in the apartment where it will languish for decades, 2) chop it into bite-size pieces with a sledge hammer or 3) set it on fire. Did I mention the lack of internet? THERE IS NO INTERNET. That sound you hear is my spleen scrabbling up my throat to escape and find a friendlier host, one with a larger stove and wifi.

But the crowning flaw - the one where, if my apartment was a man, I would be having worried conversations with my friends about his viability - is the fire alarm. Specifically, the pitch at which it shrieks. Not because I’ve filled the house with scorched fish sauce - the way I usually set off the fire alarm - but because I’M TAKING A SHOWER. Yes, my showers set off the fire alarm. Forcing me to dash out of the bathroom, wet and shivering, and leap onto the bed to frantically wave my towel in hopes of quieting such unholy decibels at 6:30 in the glorious a.m. My upstairs neighbor adores me and will soon demonstrate that adoration by lobbing a hand grenade through my window.

But I’m a firm believer in embracing a loved one’s flaws, even when they make you want to rip off your eyelashes with duct tape. A dripping dash down the hall in my birthday suit? So invigorating! Furniture doesn’t touch the walls? Guess I don’t have to buy any more furniture! Hand grenades lobbed through my window? I need more exercise anyway!

The internet thing, though; that’s just mean. Someone better pony up with an extra pie cooling cabinet for that.

(P.S. Pictures coming. I’m being squirrelly about taking photos before all the boxes are unpacked. No, I’m not unpacked yet. Yes, I’m embarrassed for me too.)

(Edit: In my rush to post something, anything, before this blog poofs out of existence, I may have ended on a sour note. I love my apartment. It’s perfect for me right now and I’m very happy with it. But I do reserve the right to rip the batteries out of the fire alarm so I can shower in peace.) (Was that another sour note? Blast!)

(Edit no. 2: Internet clarification - yes, I can get internet. Once I get my act together and have it hooked up, something I’ve been too busy to take care of because I’ve been racing around the city with my laptop searching for rogue internet so I can get my work done. Yes, I do realize this approach makes no sense at all. I admit I was hoping I could (ahem) borrow someone’s unsecured wireless for awhile. (Tendency Toward Sloth: Patent Pending.) Alas, the thick Edwardian floors deny me. As does everyone’s apparent foresight into my slothful leeching ways, because all 17 networks that pop up on my computer are secured.)

I planned to spend my weekend lovingly polishing my new kitchen cupboards with an environmentally-friendly mixture of olive oil and warm water before toddling off to Bed Bath and Beyond with the stack of coupons my mother left for me, many dating from 2005. So naturally I spent most of the weekend calling people up and asking them to help me procrastinate. People are remarkably obliging.

Proposed Weekend List:

1. Unpack all boxes.

2. Prepare taxes, while rocking back and forth trying to convince myself that my money goes only to public libraries and hot firemen who lift small kittens out of large trees.  

3. Scrub bathroom grout while reciting multiplication tables.

Actual Weekend List:

1. Learn that my apartment bounces laughter about in a rather unfortunate manner, unfortunate because I scored said apartment by claiming to be “quiet” and, in fact, might even have signed papers declaring noiseless existence. Decide I don’t care because friends are important, especially when they arrive with three different kinds of Cowgirl Creamery cheese.

2. Obtain just enough kitchen supplies to make tater tots. (Needs: Baking sheet, ketchup. Done and done.)

3. Eat best biscuits this side of anywhere. (Blue Jay Cafe, how I adore you. And your biscuity breakfast sandwich.)

4. Find and test neighborhood beer garden. Deem it far superior to former neighborhood beer garden. (Fewer boozy hipsters, more bike supplies.) (It’s also a bike store!)

5. Discover new longing for a pink Schwinn with basket.

6. Help Captain Queso test bike helmets by running head-first into a wooden support beam.

This post was brought to you by a grant from the Shameless Procrastinators Foundation and the Wasn’t That So Much More Fun Than What You Had Planned? Now Why Don’t You Go Home and Rip Up the Rest of Your To-Do Lists Corporation.

Please forgive me for collapsing in an exhausted heap on your computer monitor. Events in the week since the Great Relationship Dissolution of 2008 have left me analyzing the pile of the industrial-grade carpet in my cube for napping comfort. Verdict: thin, scratchy cloth over cement is quite satisfactory when one’s eyelids need to be peeled back and held with scotch tape in order to stay awake.

I have many stories for you. Such as:

How I pulled the moving van into a driveway that didn’t precisely match my new address and spent five minutes trying to fit my key into the wrong door. 

How my big chair got wedged and my dad had to remove the very old, very heavy front door from its hinges while mom and I cowered in the kitchen clutching our hair and visions of the $1500 security deposit danced in my head.

How utter exhaustion made my IQ, social graces, and spatial distinction abilities to disintigrate, causing me to 1. Drip french onion soup down the front of my jacket and wear it that way for two days, 2. Almost set Jemima’s house on fire by putting bread in the broiler and forgetting about it, 3. Rudely eat all the mashed potatoes. When someone puts warm, creamy spuds dotted with butter and truffle salt in front of me, how can I possibly be expected NOT to shove my head into the pot?

But all must wait until I’m rested and have the brain capacity of a plump legume (rather than a wizened pea). For now, I need to fall face down on the first available horizontal surface. Or even a vertical one. I’m not picky.