A week ago, I woke up a little depressed. This is because I opened my eyes, sighed with happiness at our beautiful bedroom windows, and then I remembered that but ten hours before, our cheerful downstairs neighbor came up to cheerfully inform us that water was leaking into his bathroom from ours.
I’m sorry. Let me place you in the scene by using the capitals and talking with my hands: WATER WAS LEAKING INTO HIS BATHROOM FROM OURS. Hello, homeownership! Let’s start this out with a bang! A plumbing bang!
This was why I woke up depressed. And puffy. Puffy from all the crying and wailing and gnashing and rending.
All of which, of course, were unnecessary. The seller’s husband had been the contractor to gut-renovate our beautiful kitchen and bathroom, and when we informed him that hello! WATER! (I was talking with my hands but he couldn’t see it over the phone), he was more than willing to come over with his plumber and crawl around behind the fridge until the problem was sussed and solved. They also WD-40′d our front door while we were there and brought us magical unicorns of peace and harmony. We all sang Kumbaya. The end!
I’m telling you all this by way of saying it’s been the only real glitch in the past week and a half of Home! Ownership! which has otherwise been an awesome, enlightening, and exciting adventure. Everything about this new apartment brings me fuzzy joy and aforementioned unicorns. I have also learned a lot, which proves my sixth grade teacher right when she said education can be fun and I rolled my eyes, sorry Mrs. Lacy.
One thing I learned is that living in Brooklyn is teh AWESOME if only because practically all of our friends live here. We’ve been more social in the past week than we’ve been in months because look! We live in Brooklyn! Who wants to make last-minute spontaneous plans? I do!
I’ve also learned that Stuart has impeccably good taste and judgement. You could say this was a refresher course since he married me (badum-ching!) and also, we’ve done the whole renovating a room thing before, but seeing him really get excited and involved about where that ONE chair should go, and whether that bookshelf will crowd the room, it’s all felt very much like I’m not alone in my aesthetic mania. Until it comes to organizing the books by height and spine colors. Then he abandons me to my compulsion. But he’ll bring me tea on the battlefield, I’m sure.
Another lesson has been stairs. STAIRS! It’s four flights up. There are fifty-six of them, steps that is. If you can’t bounce a quarter off my ass after two months of this, I want my money back. From the stairs. Apparently the lesson I have yet to learn is I’ve got to stop making “I want my money back!” jokes about homeownership.
Which leads me to, perhaps, the only real lesson embedded in this wandering monologue. Although I woke up puffy-eyed and depressed on Tuesday, by Wednesday when the plumber and the contractor were due to arrive, I’d spent an hour looking online at diagrams of drainage pipes and tub stoppers and overflow drains (aided by a CAD-designed diagram made by Stuart because he, like the apartment, is TEH AWESOME). I had finally given up on the pipedream of running back to my lovely landlord in Astoria begging for shelter, SHELTER, PLEASE. I was ready to face two Brooklyn Dudes and their plumbing expertise, brandish my Feminism Stick, and know the the hell they were talking about.
And I did. Much as having a landlord is the loveliest blanket of hand-holding support when it comes to New York apartments, I wouldn’t trade all the puffy-eyed panic in the world now. I’m excited about owning our own little corner of New York, even if it’s a constant exercise in learning stuff I didn’t need to know before.
Like how to drill into granite. And how to fix a window ballast. And install a new lock. And whether I’ll ever have the balls to take a bathtub bath again to test that pesky overflow. It’s all, as Stuart constantly reminds me, an adventure.
Stuart and I drove up to Astoria yesterday afternoon, to pick up the last tidbits and turn over the apartment to our landlord. I navigated the car down shady streets past places we knew and loved, places we knew and hated, places we’d never tried, places we’d made fun of for years.
We emptied the apartment and hung around the echoing living room, where Stuart first told me he’d move to New York. And the dining room, where we ate and played trivial pursuit and sat to make the offer on on this new apartment. And the bathroom, where we’d scratch the door like cats when the other was in there, because we have no boundaries. And the office, which we painted bright red to deter Jen from calling it the nursery. And the bedroom, where Stuart proposed. And the hallway, where we culminated many battles of tortilla-flinging.
Leaving Astoria is very emotionally fraught. I lived there for five years. I’ve grown (a little) into an adult in that apartment. I’ve learned to love a neighborhood that looks a little rough around the edges, that isn’t particularly hip but that’s welcoming and laid-back and full of surprises.
When we were done at the apartment, we stopped by the Greek bakery and picked up some savory pastries. We stopped by the Mexican deli and got some Mexicokes. And we took them to Athens Park for one last time, to watch the crazy tramps drink hooch and argue, to watch the skateboarders make the old Greek guys insane, to watch people talk with their hands like they do in Astoria.
I’m going to tell you all about what it’s like here, in Brooklyn. I’ve got years to tell you that. But yesterday, I really left Astoria, which I’ve loved and adored for years. I figured the place that brought me so much change, and so much joy, deserved its own little goodbye.
Krissa: We seriously have TWELVE boxes of books alone. It’s ridiculous.
Conrad: You’re proud of that.
Krissa: I am. You’re right.
* * * *
Krissa: Man, I’ll need a binder clip to close the coffee bag! Where’s the one that was on the floor in the living room? It’s packed, isn’t it.
Dad, running to office and back: No! It’s HERE!
Krissa: Wow. Aw crap, but first I need scissors to open the coffee bag. Bet those are packed, too.
Dad, running to living room: Nope, here they are.
Krissa: And you said we were finished.
* * * * *
Krissa: We have to clean under the bed.
Stuart: Let’s give the dust bunnies a chance to pack their stuff, too.
I’ve got a gag order firmly in place, still, against talking too much about the new place until we’ve got keys in hand (soon. V. V. SOON.) but I can tell you about today: we have started PACKING.
Walls are becoming bare, books are getting commandeered off the shelves to pack amongst brick-a-brack. My dad is here, my trusty right-hand packing man who only complains about the music a little bit every 15 minutes as is his paternal right. The boxes, they’re being numerically entered into a CLIPBOARD (you know I’m loving it), and at the end of each day, the box log and its contents will be entered into the computer and printed up. Packing! You can do it! Computers can help!
There’s something glorious about the first day of packing where everything seems possible and flowcharts are positive and estimates are glowing for completion on time. Ahead of time, even! We’ll be waltzing around neatly stacked boxes by Wednesday! Ha ha hee hee ho ho!
Of course the reality is going to get more back-breaking and less organized every day and I fully expect all involved parties to seriously contemplate deflection and/or the window-expulsion technique of packing. Here, movers! CATCH!
But for now, it’s all rosy possibilities and easy book-packing. Anything you can do, I can do better! Tra la la! And other songs as well.
It seems we have a resolution in the standoff hereafter referred to as Krissa Vs. Her Engorged, Enraged Tonsils. Since mid-day yesterday I’ve been distinctly aware that the Physician’s Assistant who summarily prodded me at the ER had let the tanning fluid leak into her brain and had basically ignored my swollen glands. I don’t mean to deride her and her somewhat demeaning job title but the doctor I saw today was stunned she didn’t do any sort of throat swab. Youngsters again, be ye warned! Get a real GP already and never use the ER as a doctor’s office. Lesson, verily you are learned.
All day yesterday, I took the ineffective pain killing drugs. All day, I suffered. My pain started to concentrate almost exclusively in the right side of my neck and Stuart, looking down my throat, declared it the tiniest throat opening he’d ever seen. Ladies, we all like being referred to as tiny but a tiny THROAT is not optimal for things like eating. And swallowing. And enjoying life.
Today, thanks to a timely mention of a good doctor and his clinic’s willing accomodations by the saintly Jen, I dragged my swollen neck along to the city and deposited myself in the patchouli-scented care of these good people. The waiting room had couches and brochures about zen meditation. Most of the doctors there are also certified in acupuncture. My own shiny new GP is apparently skilled at Mayan Uterine Massage! I don’t care. I have fully embraced the touchy feely hippies and their alternative ingrative holistic ways.
[Just don't ask me to embrace holistic gynecology. Seriously, dudes.]
My wonderful adorable and well-dressed doctor took ONE look at my neck and couldn’t believe I’d been carrying this grenade around for three days. Even though the basic strep culture came back negative, she was so assured that it’s a bacterial infection that she went ahead and dropped a blessed scrip for zithromax in my lap. And then she checked my chakras. JUST KIDDING! But she did ask me all kinds of things about my health history and listened to my tale of woe and movie theatre ickiness. AND she believed me.
I’m going to send her a plate of cookies. Organic, no-cruelty-to-chickens-or-bees cookies. Consider me a full convert to hippiedom. Kumbayas on me, people, all round. My boss will be very glad to hear this, too, as I’ve missed four (!!) days of work and he’s been totally understanding. Also probably because he is sort of a hippie as well. The moral here is that hippies are the way to go.
Yay hippies! Yay antibiotics! Yay kicking the golfball out of my throat for good! Here’s hoping.
P.S. All your lemon and ginger and saltwater and lozenge and otter fat (?!) suggestions have been wonderful. I have tried most of them. Not the otter fat though. That’s almost as freaky as holistic evaluations of my vah-jay-jay.
I guess I’m going to have to stop bragging about what a cast-iron immune system I have. I’m on day four of an ever-worsening virus, party of four, in my throat.
Yesterday, at 5:30AM, I completely wimped out from my earlier resolve to head to a walk-in clinic at 8AM and wait for a doctor to see me, opting instead to drag Stuart out of bed and to my local – and very fast – ER. Be ye warned, youngsters, this is what happens when your beloved GP skips town and you forget to find yourself a new one. At the ER, the nice lady with the tan probably thought I was insane, complaining this much over a sore throat, but she prescribed motrin (basically, mega-advil) and vicodin (basically, mega-acetometaphin with a dash of hydrocodone). She told me it was viral, and on all accounts made me feel like the biggest wuss alive.
The thing is, normally, I’d agree with her, but I’ve never had a sore throat like this before. It’s like golf ball day on the putting green of my larynx. When the pain killers wear off (not that they do much when they wear ON), I can barely swallow. Everything from my ears down to my clavicle feels swollen and tender. Thinking about how terrible I feel and how never-ending the pain is, I tend to start crying and guys, I cry about a lot of things but I rarely cry about being sick. I have to feel pretty desperately ill to start up the waterworks machine.
Yesterday was this day that felt six days long – waiting to take more medicine, trying to swallow food, trying to rest, trying to swallow. The bright points in my day were when my dad came over (he was here dropping furniture into our storage unit) and for a whole hour, parent-magic took effect and I felt so much better I even laughed a few times, and when Stuart put me to bed and read stories to me. Two little bright spots amid so much persistent irritating pain.
I usually exaggerate a lot, I know. But the pain really is pretty severe here, no need for embellishment. And yet, no fever, no other symptoms, no white bumps in my throat – nothing to indicate anything more serious than “viral pharangytis”, which, trust me, translates directly to SORE THROAT, YOU BIG PANSY.
So I just keep drinking water and taking the pain killers and testing my temperature and calling in sick to work, hoping that it’s just a virus, and I just need to give my body a chance to get over it, to heal. If it’s not better by Friday, I’m performing an outpatient throatectomy.
It’s okay! I’m Red Cross trained.
Surely, it should be either tea with lemon, or tea with honey, to soothe the raging swollen throat? Am I entirely in the wrong adding both?
I’ve got this damned throat inflammation, I might add, by way of Spider-Man. We sat in the second row from the front on Saturday night, directly adjacent a leaky ceiling tile and a puddle of standing water. I know! Legionnaire’s! Cholera! The Blacke Humores! Who knows. Wouldn’t you know it, I had a sore throat not 20 minutes after leaving. So did Stuart, Beth and Josh, but their sore throats have all receded into regular throats.
I’m a staunch critic of the “get cold, catch a cold” school of oldwivery but it was also incredibly cold and maybe a little damp (thanks to leaky ceilings!) in the theatre. I had the previous week kicked a cold I’d earned alongside my Red Cross certification, that one being more of an achy/stuffy cold varietal.
So maybe there is something to all this take your vitamins nonsense – I’m betting my immune system was much weaker than everyone else’s when the recycling damp air threw some nasty little virus at us? Anyone else picturing that scene in Outbreak? Who knows. The science here gets wonky. Alls I know is, 20 minutes out of the movies, I had a scratchy throat, and now my glands feel like golfballs. Such are my lymphatic adventures.
Anyone got an opinion about the tea/lemon vs. tea/honey question? Or their own sore throat remedies? Mine so far has involved a lot of saltwater gargling and vats of tea. And back-to-back episodes of Jeeves and Wooster.
[Good thing there was a lot of this on Saturday before the Cursed Movie Theatre of Damp Illness. Nothing like spring in New York, right?]
