RevSpork

Our Apartment is a Freakin' Mess - Part 2

Remember me? I'm half of a couple with the apartment that's a freakin' mess. It still is. In fact, if you looked at our apartment this evening and compared it to a week ago, you'd be hard-pressed to note any significant change in the mess. On the contrary, although the improvements are subtle, they are there, and we have good friends to thank for it.

Sometime during the Carter administration, Tori (with help from Yours Truly) cleared out a massive chunk of old wardrobe. These ended up in trash bags and left on our back porch for shipping to the Brown Elephant as soon as possible. ASAP mutated into three years, by which time Jack came along and clawed the bags into near-oblivion. In the meantime, Tori and I plotted the donation of more than just clothes: we wanted to walk through every room in our abode and clean out unwanted materials. We pulled off a mini-cleaning coup a few months back when we culled our book and CD collections and donated the goods to the nonprofit I volunteer for, Open Books. But now we set our sights on bigger game.

First, we were going to need some assistance. We knew we had a lot to donate, too much for us to walk a mile and a half to the Brown Elephant, even with our little shopping cart. We needed serious trucking, and although the Brown Elephant does pickups, it has to be weeks in advance, and arranging a weekend pickup can take longer. Enter Rae, Denise, and her awesome truck. I e-mailed Rae, begging for the opportunity to exploit her girlfriend and her awesome truck. I emphasized Tori's and my love, devotion and strong sense of bribery, and a deal was struck.

Over the last few days, Tori and I piled up an impressive collection of unloved stuff: three DVD players, several kitchen tools, a decade-old VCR, and the aforementioned wardrobe, rebagged for a nicer-looking pile in the hallway. This afternoon, Rae and Denise showed up with the awesome truck, and Tori and I lugged our stuff downstairs, where Denise loaded it into her truck.

The operation went without a hitch. And everyone benefited: the Brown Elephant got a ton of clothes, Rae and Denise got a nice Mexican lunch, and Denise's awesome truck got three games that the Elephant wouldn't take and Tori and I forgot to bring back to our abode. (Sorry, Denise.) In the meantime, our apartment is still a freakin' mess, but we have improved our maneuverability. And really, that's what it's all about, right?

Our apartment is a freakin' mess - Part 1

It's late on a Saturday night (well, late for 38-year olds), and Jack the Psychotabby is nosing around in the sun room, until recently filled with greenery but now entirely empty.  Our living room, meanwhile, is in a state of...something.  Let's call it mid-spring cleaning.  And the dining room can safely no longer be called such.  We can call it...our room full o' stuff.  Yes, the apartment's been painted.

After a couple of years of furtively picking up paint swatches at any hardware store we happened to be passing, discussing what colors we want where, giving up in annoyance when we couldn't come up with a color scheme we agreed on, we finally got the job done.

Not all of it, mind you.  Only half of the apartment was repainted: the living room, and sun room, and the entrance half of the hallway.  The bedroom and office got drywall cracks patched over, but that was it.  Our landlord offered to split the costs with us, as long as we didn't go crazy with the paint colors.  (So much for my plaid bathroom.) 

We stuck with white for the hallway and sun room, but we actually agreed to a color in the living room.  A few weeks back, we were flipping through this six-zillion color paint wheel lent to us by the painter, and we reached our typical lack of consensus.  Tori would pick a color which I'd immediately reject, like nuclear taupe, while I'd pick a color, like neon wino vomit, and she would toss me her "you have GOT to be kidding" look.  Normally this would lead to my giving up in disgust, telling her to pick whatever she wanted, then I'd retreat into the bedroom and lay down with my iPod.  This time, however, I came upon a great idea. 

"Sweetheart," I said, "Instead of picking from six zillion colors, let's pick a basic color and then work from that color family only.  That way, we'll whittle our way down to only six thousand colors, and that's gotta be easier, right?"  Right.  We decided to work only within yellow, and incredibly, we decided upon a color within five minutes.  The color?  You're not going to believe this: it's called "light yellow."  Yes!  In a housepaint world where colors are typically named by stoned Benjamin Moore employees reading the excrement emitted by squirrels fed the Oxford dictionary ("what about 'sandpiper liver?'"  "Sounds great!  How about "dunghill ketchup?") there's still room in America for "light yellow."  (You think that's wonderful?  We actually has the option of "yellow!"  It still exists!  Given, we'd all go blind from the color if surrounded by it in our living room, but still...yellow!  Wow!) 

And now it's all painted, and you know what?  The light yellow works.  It's got a creamy look to it, bright but not obnoxiously so, and we kept the trim and the mantle white, so one doesn't drown in yellow when they enter the room.  Now all Tori and I need to do is agree how to rearrange the living room.  I've already told her she can do whatever she wants.  I need an iPod break.

A note to you hot chicks on Facebook

Why is it that whenever I’m on Facebook, there’s an ad informing me that young, attractive women are looking for me?  Letting you down easy hasn't worked, so now I have to bring out the big guns.

Stop it, hot young chicks.  I’m not interested.  If I haven’t responded to your increasingly desperate pleas after six months, that should be a helpful hint right there.  I feel like I’m constantly being stalked every time I’m on Facebook.  It’s getting to the point where I don’t feel like spending my hard-earned free time there in fear I’ll be harassed yet again by you young, hot chicks. 

I’ve held back for a long time, but I finally have to put my foot down: if you continue your search for me, I will have no choice but to ask my wife to go over there and beat the living crap out of you.  And she will, too.  She knows I’m not tempted by your phony siren song, but you’ve become enough of a nuisance that she has to make you cry.  And she will.  And I’ll watch.  Because catfights…mondo meow!