Unidentified crazy cat.

I sometimes leave my door open in a usually futile attempt to get some airflow and this wide-eyed-possibly-escaped-from-the-mental-ward feline waltzed into my apartment and made himself at home. By jumping on my kitchen table and knocking over the coffee pot. I shooed him off and apparently did it wrong because he ran not out the door but straight into my living room where he jumped onto my bookshelf. Then he helpfully tested my mattress springs for firmness and sniffed my bedside lamp for any stray rodents I might have missed.

This was the third time he took it upon himself to apply his wet kitty nose to everything I own. When I’m in a good mood, it’s amusing; when I’m in not such a good mood, I huff and say things like “YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY CAT, WHY ARE YOU HERE?” He probably senses an easy mark in the milk department, but I’ve managed not to cave. Yet. If my mother’s treatment of Her Royal Fuzzy Highness is anything to go by, cat spoiling runs in the family. So we’ll see.

This post was going to be longer and maybe even have a point, but I have to leave for dinner. Dinner I will not be sharing, no matter how many beseeching looks I get from Unidentified Crazy Cat up there. YOU HEAR THAT, CAT? NO DELICIOUS STEAK BURRITO FOR YOU.

1. I can’t resist a bargain.

2. Carrying a six-foot tree twelve city blocks by yourself is a bold and rather sap-covered move.

3. Maybe I should, on certain occasions, resist a bargain.

4. Trees look much smaller in the great outdoors. They also look lighter.

My love of Christmas has betrayed me.

I was planning to get one of those weeny trees, the kind you can easily get in the door and then plunk on a table somewhere. But all the weeny trees looked a bit crisp, like they’d been popped in the oven and roasted at 375 degrees until their edges browned. I must have worn a dismayed expression because someone offered to show me the Christmas tree bargain bin, where they store the trees that are undeniably crooked or home to a family of refugee rodents. A big, fresh – if occasionally limbless – tree was $5 cheaper than a lightly braised mini-tree. As I pondered the mechanics of stuffing one of these big trees into my hallway-size apartment, someone else came up to me, saying that he’d give me one of the perfect, organically-produced and raised in the Waldorf trees for the bargain price. Which is how I ended up with a fresh, fragrant, six-foot tall tree.

Since my car was parked a neighborhood away and they don’t lend little red wagons to the unprepared, I assured them that I didn’t live far and hefted my perfect tree into my spindly little arms. The first block was easy, and I admit to a certain smugness. Block 2 was slower. At block 3 my biceps started to hurt. By block 4, I had to set the tree down to check the branches for spontaneously grown bricks. Block 7 felt like a heavy, tormented trudge through purgatory. Block 9 would have surgically removed the stuffing from Jillian Michaels. By the time I staggered onto my block, I felt nauseated. When I got to my door, I thought that the tree might just look better on my stoop – or maybe on fire – than actually in the apartment.

Please note the lack of leaping flame.

It looks quite happy in my apartment, if slightly peeved at the number of times I removed and restrung the lights (4). See how it takes up more than half the width of the room and looks ever-so-slightly ridiculous? It’s simply the physical manifestation of my fresh, piney Christmas spirit.

Perfect peaches, perfect sunsets, and mysterious water balloons – yes, a pretty good weekend. I also realized I’d much rather read about Puritans than go out and flirt. Which explains a lot. I planned to make myself go out Saturday night, for reasons that seemed sound – avoid becoming hardened lone wolf, admit value of familial advice, etc. – but crumbled in the face of putting on pants. My aunt recently instructed me to get out there, because men can’t find me in my basement den, no matter how nice the hardwood floors are. To which I say, why not? Surely some admirable specimen will be knocking on my door with a bottle of bourbon any day now. RIGHT?

Since I like to limit my rampant self-delusion for Tuesdays and alternate Fridays, I have been considering other avenues for finding love. Like, say, leaving my apartment. But my vow to abandon internet dating sites puts something of a crimp in my style, as I’m so much better at sending email than smiling at strangers. Which implies I go around scowling darkly at anyone who hasn’t invited me over for dinner, and I hope that’s not so. (Is it?) (Really?) (Oh, dear.)

I am a fan of action, all evidence to the contrary, so rather than bemoaning the lack of men on my front stoop, I prefer to jump into the fray, but that requires leaving my house and so we come full circle. I do sometimes take my book OUT of the house, on a nice little field trip with some sort of steaming beverage and carefree human interaction (I have to order that steaming beverage, after all). But I suspect that doesn’t really count.

Living alone, much as I love it, encourages my hermit-like tendencies, is what I’m saying. I imagine I’ll get sick of it eventually – maybe when I present my library card and the librarian says, “Sorry, miss. YOU’VE READ EVERYTHING WE HAVE” – but until then, I’ll enjoy my red chair and the blissful knowledge that the dishes in the sink can sit until large shoe buckles come back in style and it won’t annoy anyone but me.

Furniture was moved, floors were scrubbed, and spiders were offered the Paper Towel Express to the great outdoors. Well, the first two spiders were – after I found numbers 3, 4, and 5, I stopped trying to coax their reluctant hindquarters onto a sheet of Brawny and let them roam free among my books as they were meant to do. I named a few of them, as we’re sharing living quarters and their shiftless asses don’t pay rent. Next time I forget to go to the ATM, I plan to yell, “Hey, Roy! Fork over 20 bucks, you lazy arachnid!” I’ll let you know how that works out.

My mom drove up to the city on Saturday to take me out to lunch for my birthday (hello, 31!) and she was perplexed by my project. “You mean you moved your bed and cleaned UNDER it? Where did you learn to do that? Certainly not from me.” It’s true, spring cleaning is a concept I developed independent of any familial training. (This compulsion may have originated with Little House on the Prairie, come to think of it. They were always beating carpets with sticks and boiling lye and shivering pitifully through Minnesota winters in those books.) We determined that the clean gene must skip a generation, because I’m apparently channeling my grandmother Margaret.

So OOTLS is officially done. Well, it’s not DONE. I didn’t accomplish nearly what I originally planned, but let’s be honest, most of my to-do lists are crazy talk. As in, certifiably insane. No wonder I feel overwhelmed when I put in writing my Wednesday evening expectation that I will do laundry, defrost my freezer, write thank you notes to all my elementary school teachers, and de-worm Somalian orphans before doing some gentle yoga and a little light reading before bed. But for the most part, everything I own is clean and organized and DEAR GOD, I AM SO READY TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE NOW.

Three cheers for everyone who participated! You helped me get my indolent behind in motion, and I thank you all. Hope your accomplishments were worth the many emails from me.

Before:

After:

What we’ve learned tonight:

1. It can take the equivalent of a full work day to clean an apartment the size of a tube sock.

2. I am stubborn.

3. Also FULL OF CHRISTMAS CHEER, DAMN IT.

4. Spending nine hours on a Friday night scrubbing floors makes me oddly smug.

5. Therefore:

6. I may be the dullest person currently in existence.

7. I’m definitely the dullest person still awake.

8. But my apartment smells like fresh pine.

9. And CHRISTMAS CHEER, DAMN IT.

10. I’m going to bed now.

If I haven’t posted two drastically different (and by “different” I mean “clean”) photos by the end of the night, please come over and pummel me. I’ll consider it a kindness.

Movie heroines who gasp weakly and sink into a graceful faint make my eyes roll involuntarily into the back of my head. But I gasped like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, which it patently hadn’t because I was still able to yell, “EEK! A MOUSE!” If you ever wonder about your originality of thought, wait until something startles you and listen to what comes out of your mouth. I restrained myself from fainting only because falling off the toilet and knocking myself unconscious would give the mouse free reign to snack on my nose.

By diving back into its lair, the mouse demonstrated that he had previously been outside his lair, also known as RUNNING FREELY THROUGH MY APARTMENT. Which raises a swarm of disturbing questions. Where did he go? What did he do? Has he been nibbling on my apples? Or worse, drinking my beer? Also: Is he a renegade mouse? Or does he have hundreds of mouse compadres who will be dancing the lambada at a kegger (with my beer) on my floor tonight after I fall asleep.

Can I even fall asleep knowing there’s a slimy gray tail in the vicinity?

When I was moving, my sole requirement in a new place was AVAILABLE YESTERDAY. For three rather depressing days, I thought this would require living with pot smoking 23-year-olds who didn’t know which end of the toilet brush was up. But now that I’m comfortably settled and the GET ME OUT OF HERE impetus isn’t a factor, I have time to reflect on what I want in my next place. Namely, lots of sunshine and room for a dog. My current apartment is just too small for anything but a fat hamster or a skinny cat. I have nothing against rodents or underfed kitties, but what I really want is a pup to lick my face at 5:30 a.m. until I drag my pushover carcass out into the morning chill to let my ungrateful hound sniff at tree
roots.

Replacing Meeka is simply impossible – you’ve never met such a sweet dog with such a penchant for climbing trees JUST IN CASE THERE’S A SQUIRREL UP THERE – but having a dog of my very own might be even better.

In the meantime, I think Paco needs to fetch me another strawberry daquiri.

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.

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.