I'm getting the lease AND the keys tonight!

huzzah.

Ok, i feel better. I realize I've been uber post-tastic today, so I apologize.

I
came home to find a letter from Tristen. We've been writing back and
forth for the year and a half he's been away in county jail (for doing
naughty stuff, suffice to say). After the initial bout of anger and
forgiveness, our friendship has since grown a lot in that time through
our letters, in some really profound & positive ways. He's taught
me a great deal about myself, and set me straight when i most needed
it. He's also working really hard to make amends for everything in his
past, which makes me really proud, and seems determined to take the
worst mistakes of his life and use them as inspiration to do some great
things. I'm also proud of myself for being the one who stuck by him
when not many people in his life bothered to even try (not nice people,
so he's probably better off). Tris is one of the most interesting,
generous, funny, and caring people I know, and if he doesn't quite
deserve to be happy just yet, then he's working harder than ever to get there. He's also a moody dumbass sometimes- but i digress.

Anyways,
this wasn't a moody dumbass letter, and he seems to be in very good
spirits despite the whole jail-thing. This cheered me up quite a bit.
He also mailed me his "Disciplinary Report" from last week which had me
absolutely rolling. As follows:

I
can't even describe the amount of funny this put in my zone just now,
picturing Tris and his goofy faces and stupid jokes. I know i should be
mad at him for misbehaving, but he's such a lovable wiseass most of the
time. I bet he had the whole room laughing too, which is typical, and
the guard was probably just wet-behind-the-ears and ended up completely
flustered. It certainly smacks of rookie behavior-management to me.
They gave him ten days in the hole for being "disruptive", bahaha.
Later that day the supervising Captain came by, laughed at the
stupidity of it all, and let him back out into general population
again. Silly!

That, my dears, is the sound of frustration.

Oh yes, thwarted again, with only approx t-minus 32 hours until
February 1st- and the rental agency has still not gotten their
collective shiat together to get my name on the lease. I mean, how hard
can it be, people? Jim, who is Such a Nice Man, keeps handing me off to
this "Charlene" character at his office, who in turn hasn't
communicated her progress to Jim, and has been redonkulously slow in
following through on things. It wouldn't even feel so crucial if i
hadn't already scheduled a moving company for saturday morning, and put
down a deposit to reserve a truck.  Maybe I'm stupid for doing
that, but at the time it seemed like it would be reasonable to
anticipate that 2weeks was plenty of time to get the lease squared
away, and i was already pushing the limit of advance notice for making
reservations. Apparently not. Feh. Hatem.

I don't think I would be so mad except I'm pretty clear on the fact
that I was organized and prompt when it came to everything on my end,
and everybody else in the scenario is being inefficient. I don't even
care. I'll storm the goddamn realtor's office and start making demands
if i have to. I just want- NEED- the keys in my hand by friday
afternoon. That's all I ask. Why is this so hard?

There is a mouse in my cubicle. Or rather, there is a mouse that
commutes through my cubicle every day around 3, scurrying over to the
storage closet. More than once I've heard a female coworker shriek as
he pokes his head around the corner of my partition and makes a dash
for the opposite wall. I've decided to name him Melvin. Melvin has more
character in his wee little paw than everybody in this place put
together.

So i was arranging some photos on my cubicle wall just now (i mean,
wow. Just wow. My life is so exciting!), and a piece of paper slipped
down behind my desk. Just as i was about to think," nyaargh!", i heard
this loud CRACK-SNAP!

Hmm, i thought. falling paper isn't supposed to sound like that.

So i got down on my hands and knees to investigate under my desk. I
found the piece of paper easily enough, lodged behind the wires of my
CPU; and I also discovered a mouse trap. A mouse trap which had just
recently been sprung. Motherfarker! Nevermind that they were trying to
murder Melvin, and had they been successful I would have had a
mutilated, rotting mouse-corpse at my feet- what if i had been fumbling
around with the computer back there in the dark, as I'm wont to do, and
gotten my finger snapped in that thing?

I swear to god, if they touch my stapler I'm going to burn down the building.

I'm trying to use up all the leftovers in my kitchen, in preparation
for The Big Move next weekend. This has resulted in some interesting
recipes borne of ecclectic juxtapositions; luckily I'm a bit of a
foodie so i have a diverse pantry and i like to improvise as i go along.

found;
1 tube of crescent rolls
leftover wedge of sharp cheddar
partial bag of chopped walnuts
half of a faded red onion
jar of minced garlic
a solidified box of brown sugar

I
hacked off the dried out end of the red onion, chopped up the rest, and
threw it in the pan with a little butter until it was clear and soft,
then added the walnuts. Turned up the heat a notch, sprinkled what
brown sugar i could scrape up over everything, and quickly carmelized
the walnuts and onions. Turned the heat off, added garlic, and a little
kosher sea salt, stirred it all up. see? Told you i have weird stuff
hanging around.

I grated up a bunch of the cheddar and popped
open the pastry tube. At the wide bit of each triangle I put a dollop
of the onion/garlic/walnut mix, and then sprinkled the grated cheese
all over that. Tucked it into the pastry and rolled it into crescents,
pinching and twisting the ends to keep the filling from leaking out.
Twelve minutes in the oven, et voila!

Pretty freaking tasty in
less than 30 minutes. The butteryness off the pastry is offset by the
cheese and sweet-onion filling. and the walnuts are a nice little
crunch. Yummers.

Take that and chew on it, Rachael Ray.

yes, my bunny has a mullet.
surprisingly, this is not the source of his rage.

I'm not the only one feeling ornery about the upcoming transition. This one
has been particularly pesky lately, alternating between bouts of super
needy demands for snuggles and attention, and then turning suddenly
into a screeching, wild, biting little monster at the slightest
provocation. He knows something is up, that's for sure.

It
gets really funny when he does his limit-testing schtick, such as
repeatedly selecting one particular book from the pile near my bed and
chewing the shit out of it to see if i'll react. He'll go for the same
book over and over, no matter where i put it. Usually i just holler
'NO!', which he seems to comprehend pretty well- although it gets to
the point where he'll be about to do something he knows is naughty, and
he'll wait, honk and stomp his feet first to make sure i'm paying
attention. The little jerk!

oh, but i loves him so.

O Holy Bajeesus, & merci beaucoup!

*Big sigh of relief, wee spasms of joy*



Jim, the realtor, just called to
tell me we were ok-to-go on the lease signing next week sometime, and also to see how my
bunny rabbit was handling the "big move". Such a nice man.



Seriously, though- I'm so relieved right now I could cry.

Now i just have to finish packing...... oh my god, this lovely apartment will soon be mine!

Quick moving update: Got email
from Mum, all excited about my new apartment. hah! as if. No signy the
lease yet, for chrissakes. No word from realtor, either. Called office
twice yesterday and once today, left messages on 3 people's voicemail.
Somebody PLEASE just get your act together and contact my landlady,
seriously, you all have each other's phone numbers. And then let me
know things are okay. Also  reserved [expensive] date with moving
company, since it's gettin' late in the game & I had no other
choice. Put down a deposit, too. Feels a little speculative, and I'm
none too happy with the lack of certainty here. Got plenty of boxes
though. Going home to pack my shit this evening, since that's about the
only thing i have control over. Oh, and you can bet i'm gonna be
super-duper ocd about it, since i'm pretty close to the edge. Trying
not to think about what might happen if this falls through, since most
of my cash is tied up in deposit at the moment & there's no time to
find anything else anyhow. Also blaming myself, for being
initially  super-confident and happy that everything seemingly was
working out ok. I think i must have jinxed it all. Fucking minor
details are killing me.

Right now, there are only 3 things standing between myself and my new uber-pad.

Well, ok, 4 if you count a shopping spree at Ikea, but that's more like
a complimentary initiative with silly scandinavian words.

1. Time. Less than two weeks until February 1st!

2. Packing and moving all my possessions, of which i have many. 
Do the dishes, pack them. Wash every bit of laundry i own, pack it.
Call the mover, make a date. Hoard cardboard boxes like a
cardboard-hoard mofo.

3. Idiocy, coupled with frustration. My realtor, Jim, can't seem to get
a hold of my current landlady to get a reference. My landlady, who
lives downstairs, has five different cell phone numbers- none of which
seem to work.  I called some of them myself , and each time either
the line was disconnected, or I ended up having a disjointed
conversation (Allo? Heello?? Who this? Herro? No, wha?) with  a
variety of confused asian people. So i left a note on her door, and she
in turn spoke to someone in Jim's office, and Jim called her back on
the RIGHT number somehow, but she didn't realize it was him, and the
situation is getting awfully clusterfucky about now.  I have yet! to
sign!! the lease!!! because of this. gahhhh.

I'm hanging on though. Last night I sent my Mum a google-map of my new
neighborhood, and she recognized some of the streets from when she and
my father lived in Melrose. I was born less than a mile away up on the
hill, and for the first few months of my life we lived in an apartment
(i vaguely recall some bad stucco from the vantage point of my
bouncy-chair) which was less than 3 blocks from where I'll be moving. I
think that's a good sign, no?