"The apartment was found in disarray."

The Good:

Unexpectedly, my friend and colleague DJ surprised Ms. K and I with a wedding gift -- two wedding gifts! Orchestrating donations at work, she not only presented us with a lovely card signed by 18 of my colleagues, but two gift certificates -- one to the restaurant Blue Hill in Manhattan and the other to Char No. 4 in Brooklyn. Hey, maybe there's something to this whole getting married thing.

Furthermore, on the same day that we received the gifts, I unexpectedly won a free service probably valued at about $50. Huzzah. Time to take that luck to Vegas!

The Bad:

Apart from losing a couple of paychecks to IKEA, things have been generally good. The new apartment is great! No regrets! However my previous landlord is less that happy with me and is threatening to sue me in small claims court. This can probably be sorted out without going to court and we've been playing phone tag over the last week, but right now the red voice mail indicator is flashing on my work phone and I really don't want to pick it up and listen to the message because I know there's a 99% chance that it is him. Needless to say I've been procrastinating on this all morning and, well, need to just nut up and call him back and sort it all out. He says, "The apartment was found in disarray," and I need to explain to him that that was pretty much how we received it from the previous tenant.

The Not So Ugly:

A couple of days ago, after going over a week without cooking gas, I finally made my first meal in the apartment, which was a modest supper of chicken, sauteed crimini mushrooms, and green beans. Apologies for the iPhone quality photo. My camera is packed somewhere . . . . But hey, note the granite counter top at the top of the picture!

"We're going to crack open the big egg!"

I know, I know. I am a bad blog neglector. See, Ms. K and I got back from vacation and life sorta slipped back into this sleepy late August vibe complete with picnics in Prospect Park, bottles of white wine, and trips to the Cortelyou farmer's market. Naturally Labor Day weekend was a staycation since our travel budget was blown in Sweden . . . and then some. Basically a whole lot of nothing has been happening.

It's been a year since Ms. K and I moved in together and very nearly broke up in the process. Time flies! Despite our grand home improvement plans, our initiate stalled sometime in November. Dusty pictures remain unhung, trim is still not put back up, painter's tape is still up in the bedroom, and a To Do list is still on the fridge like a tally of our failures. I think the problem is two fold. On one hand, losing the car in the accident last January cut back on our mobility and the ease in which we could visit Lowes or IKEA. On the other, I think we lost steam in the end because we want to live somewhere else. To put work into a place that we would like to be out of in 6 months seems silly at this point. Never mind the fact that half our books still are in need of bookshelves.

When Ms. K and I got back from abroad, it became ever more obvious that we hate our apartment and our neighborhood. We even started poking around Craigslist to see what apartments were going for. But money is still a big factor and while it is not as expensive to get a back yard space in Park Slope these days, I'm sure we're both reluctant to double our (currently cheap) rent.

So we have dreams and we're working on them, but it doesn't make for very exciting blogging. Ms. K wants to get her masters in Computer Science, we're both working on freelance projects, yadda yadda yadda. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, check out this video that blew my mind:

"A modest proposal."

Recently, after Ms. K made a grumble about our neighborhood stemming from another altercation with a hasid, I made a modest proposal. "Hey, we don't have to live in Kensington. It's just a thought, but we can see what is available when our lease is up in October."

After all our hard work, scrubbing, DIY projects, and suffering, the idea of moving by the end of 2009 seemed like a betrayal, especially since we were hoping to stay put and save money to buy a place. I felt guilty for suggesting it, but there's no reason to be miserable in order to save a few hundred dollars.

As the idea grew in our heads, we started naming places we'd like to live instead. I even went onto the dreaded Craigslist to see what apartments were going for in the neighborhoods we desired and boy have prices gone down since September. Funny how when we were last looking was right before the stock market crash. Now, for only a 30% upgrade in rent, we could live in Park Slope or have a backyard in Windsor Terrace. A BACK YARD. Soon we were giddy with fantasies of Weber Grills, patio furniture, cocktails, baby pools, and Harley frolicking in the grass.

Giddy.

"Full of grace!"

Mrs. Carbonell, the old woman who lives across the hall from us, has a sticker of the Virgin Mary on her front door. This is a marked departure from the mezuzahs that adorn the other doorways of our neighbors. Maybe it's the Catholic guilt in me, but every time I run into Mrs. Carbonell I imagine the steely glint in her eyes is all knowing and all disapproving.

She doesn't say much when we do run into each other, she in her housecoat as she takes out the trash, cigarette dangling from the fingers of her spindly arm. However Ms. K had a brief conversation with her when we first moved in. Turns out that old Mrs. Carbonell used to live in our apartment long ago. That is until she got robbed via the fire escape. (Thanks for sharing! Along with our broken smoke detector and dodgy electrical outlets, lord knows I'll be sleeping better at night!) But surely she's figured out by now that her new neighbors are lesbians, especially if she's quite aware that our apartment is a one bedroom.

And so every time I see that Virgin Mary sticker it says to me:

"Oh man, she's onto you!"

All I have to think about is that look in my neighbor's eye, all knowing and all disapproving.

"You are ugly woman."

As previously mentioned, I kind of live in a weird neighborhood -- weird because I'm this (cough cough) yuppie Brooklynite lesbian living in a heavily Russian and Jewish Orthodox neighborhood where no one smiles. My neighbors seem saddled with a leaden sense of stoicism, a psychic weight dragged with them from the old country. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Also previously mentioned, people around here seem supremely weirded out by dogs -- particularly large dogs. When I take Harley through the building to take him for a walk, there is a palpable distaste and sometimes a fear of his presence. It doesn't bother me as much as it bothers Ms. K; it just is what it is and it is the price we pay for cheap rent.

That said, I was taking Harley out for a walk this evening and upon coming back to the building he pulls me with all his weight the closer we get to the door. That is what he does -- he pulls. He's a big dog, so you kind of have to really fight against him or break out into sprint because he's got places to go apparently.

We go though the front door and into the vestibule and I open the main door with my keys. He starts pulling me into the lobby, which again is like a g-force.

What I didn't know was that there was someone behind me as I entered the building, although he was far enough behind that the main door closed before he could get through. No big deal, I thought. Normally I would have gone back and opened the door for the 60 something year old man with a bottle brush mustache and who was carrying a couple of shopping bags, but like I said, Harley was calling the shots.

Even though Harley was pulling me, I managed to look over my shoulder towards the man who was 10 yards away at this point.

"Shit!" he called from the vestibule, clearly irritated and offended that I had not held the door for him. Someone buzzed him in and he walked to his side of the building, GLARING at me the whole time. I think he grumbled something in a language I did not recognize.

Look, buddy, I didn't not hold the door on purpose. I'm not some ill mannered asshole like you. Harley is calling the shots here and if he says move I move. Besides, people here are so weird about dogs that I try to stay out of people's way.

And FURTHER more, I am a lady (er, sometimes, when it suits me). You do not shout obscenities at a lady.

Oh, he was not happy with me and continued to glare as he waited for his elevator. (As he did so I was reminded of my previous run in with a neighbor.) My spine stiffened. I have a big dog, I thought. You do not. I will out stare you. I kind of wanted to get in his face, which is really not me at all, but I didn't want to upset Harley.

When his elevator came, he gave me his parting shot.

"You are ugly woman," he shouted out as he boarded his elevator.

I laughed. That was the best he could do? The worst insult he could lob in his broken English?

Next time I will let Harley eat you.

"Ho ho ho. Santa needs some whisky."

For me, 2008 was one of those years. Profound. Seismic. Transformational. As December counted down, I thought I would feel a eulogy stirring in me, fingers itching to explain the year with wistful poetic words or some black humor. It didn't happen and so I marked the transition into 2009 quietly and home with Ms. K, the both of us recovering from bad colds as we watched episodes of The Wire.

Like many I was glad to see 2008 go. The year had started off so nicely -- Ms. K and I spent our first real stretch of time together, cooked a nice dinner, and drank successive glasses of prosecco between sessions with our new toy from Babeland. A week later her life in Pennsylvania imploded while I was spending the night in the emergency room of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital with a debilitating case of the flu. (Ah, memories. $5,000 only gets you the best in this city.) So we spent the rest of the year trying to put our lives back together. We moved in together. We fought. We made up. We realized we want to spend the rest of our lives together.

What do I want for 2009? I want to continue to build upon the foundation I created in 2008. Smart money choices and even smarter career choices. I want to laugh more. I want to reconnect with the world. I want to travel -- dear GOD my body aches for a beach and sunshine! I want a lot of things, but mostly I am grateful for what I have because it was hard earned.

"And how dare you leave your readers hanging on the status of the bookshelves?"

Thank you everyone who gave be birthday wishes, your comments did not go unnoticed. In the shuffle of my birthday, it also did not go unnoticed that I have been in New York for four years officially -- my anniversary was November 13th. That said, my blog anniversary was yesterday, which means that I have been talking nonsense for nearly the same amount of time I've been a resident of the Empire State.

So. My birthday. It was good, obviously. The party I had a couple days before was small and intimate and made for a good reason to get The Apartment somewhat ready for company. And by ready I mean shoving things under the bed and into closets like Ms. K chose to do. Apparently I wasn't bothered or embarrassed enough that 3 to 8 people may be imminently arriving when the place still looked like a construction zone. There was blue painter's tape on the walls and tools strewn about. I was still finishing up the laundry and a certain someone was stressed out by the arrival of our first guests in the new place.

"People are going to be here in an hour and you're sitting on the bed
FOLDING LAUNDRY??!" Ms. K bellowed. "You haven't even made any food for people!!"

I glared at her as she stormed off to finish vacuuming.

She came back five minutes later. "Honey, I'm sorry I got so angry. It's just that this place is such a mess and people are coming over. Aren't you embarrassed?"

Meh, I thought. My friends are forgiving. At least we have BOOKSHELVES!

Indeed we did. The day before he had gone to IKEA, returned the farkakte old shelves, and purchased two Billy bookcases plus height extensions. I think that's all I really wanted for my birthday, some semblance of order in The Apartment. (That and a double ended vibrating dildo.) And after Ms. K had managed to shove all the odds and ends into the closets and under the bed and into drawers, I managed to take a long look at the place and appreciate that finally it looked like two adults live here.

"Honey, I like our place," I said repeatedly throughout the evening. The few people who did come to my birthday party said the same, appreciating all our hard work -- the painting, the sanding, the light demolition.

"Look," I explained to my guests as I passed around my digital camera. "The place used to look like this."

[ Photo ] [ Photo ] [ Photo ] [ Photo ]

We've come a long way.

"I can has bookshelves??"

New York is not in a good mood today.

My power tool fueled natural high came to a crash the next day when Ms. K emailed to say that the book shelf installation process was not going well. Yes, the drill cut into the masonry with ease, but after 3 hours only one bracket was up (7 more to go!). Reality check time -- we just didn't know what the fuck we were doing, which was creating a massive time drain. Later, when Ms. K called to vent her frustration, she said she was done bullshitting around with the shelves and it was time to think about abandoning the plan.

Christ, the IKEA bookshelves already represented Plan D and I had sunk around two hundred dollars into this plan once you factored in tool rental and concrete screws. I sighed with defeat and frustration -- frustration because Ms. K and I, by conservative estimate, must have around three or four hundred books. (Obviously I was speaking in hyperbole when I said in a previous post that we had 15,000 books) Stacked waist high along the wall of our living room in addition to towering above the kitchen table, the place looks like a Dr. Seuss illustration. The chaos makes me long for a wall flush with neatly organized books like a smoker must long for that first cigarette after a prolonged separation. I surf enviously on the IKEA website for an economical solution to our personal library. Yes, YES! I MUST HAVE BOOKSHELVES!

Except that I'm broke.

"You really think you're going to be able to have a birthday party here in two days?" she said as we surveyed the damage when I got home.

The lone bookshelf bracket affixed forlornly to the living room wall surrounded by the remnants of the day's hard work. Tools were discarded everywhere, the contents of my hardware box spilled over, and balls of used blue painter's tape littered the floor. Oh boy, the place was a wreck and she was right. How the hell was I going to have my small intimate gathering on Saturday?

Time for Plan E, which involves going to IKEA yet again.

"I have a sewing machine and a dream."

On Sunday, Ms. K and I took an important step in our relationship. We went to IKEA.

Lured by the promise of cheap household items and breezy Swedish marketing, we drove to Red Hook to round out a list of things we needed for The Apartment. We told ourselves that we could only spend $100 because, you know, all that cheap shit adds up fast and, well, it's not the best time to break the bank when the bank is already broken.

So yes, it's official -- we're domesticated. We spend our weekends on DIY projects, looking at decorating websites, and going to suburban-esque chain stores. I'm sure if we had a yard we'd be raking leaves right about now. Seriously, I can remember a time not too long ago when Sundays were spent recovering from hangovers. Now we go to Lowes and IKEA.

Oh and that $100 budget? High fives for sticking to it, but I feel like we get negative points for buying pilsener glasses, wine glasses, and cocktail glasses. Did I mention that we have enough kitchen supplies already to start a restaurant?? Maybe this is just an excuse to throw a party and try and get some of our cred back.

"Don't worry, love will prevail!"

Now that Ms. K and I are in love again, we can turn our attention towards The Apartment and the very large list of things to do. Does this mean we're nesting? Does nesting involve scraping the paint off the bathroom walls in preparation for painting it a color called Anjou Pear? DIY projects? Trips to home improvement stores? Hot cooked dinners? Copious amounts of sex?

Oh man, we're totally domesticated. I hope it doesn't come across as barf-worthy, dear readers. At least it beats two weeks ago when we seemed to hate each other.

"naked chicks in a hot tub"

Thanks everyone who recently passed along their support. Moving is hard -- fucking, fucking hard. And combining households with a lover puts the stress in a whole new ballpark. Yes, this was definitely One Of The Three Most Stressful Things I've Ever Had To Endure. (This coming from the girl who up and packed her life for New York City.) I think I cried more in the last few weeks then I have in the last few years. One breakdown came when I couldn't find my wallet for all of three seconds. Another when Ms. K couldn't find her car key. There were fights and someone slept on the couch one night, but hopefully things are finally settling down.

Anyway things seem a little more peaceful at Casa Rouge. I put a big dent in bedroom organization and Ms. K fixed the screwy electrical outlets. Some of our larger projects (Bookshelves! Painting!) have been put on hold because we're fucking broke right now and the living room is a disaster. Baby steps, right?

"I am a lot more worried about us . . ."

Things are slowly -- emphasis on slowly -- starting to settle. Our various possessions are finding the appropriate cupboards, closets, and drawers to live in -- although I'm still stumped as to where to put our 15 baking sheets, 27 pots and pans, 12 Pyrex dishes, and 9 muffin tins etc. Seriously, with the amount of kitchen stuff between the both of us you'd think that we were opening a restaurant.

That said it's the intangible things that are taking longer to settle -- mainly the chemistry between Ms. K and I. Something shifted with the move and our energy is off. We've been distant with each other and we've more apt to argue. Now we're worried that something changed for the worst. Is our mojo still packed in a box somewhere?

"This building is full of miserable old people."

So we have finally moved to Kensington -- it only took a week. But hey, it takes a while for two women to move interstate households into one apartment, especially since the only help we had was someone that Ms. K knew in Pennsylvania. It was hard going through one of the most serious transitions of my life with very little support. There are scratches on my arms and fingers, bruises on my thighs, muscles that ache, emotions that are fragile. But we did it. Finally.

Like any good lesbians, Ms. K and I have been spending a lot of time at the local home improvement chain store. We're seriously worried about the state of the wiring in the apartment and Ms. K is confident that she can replace the outlets with something safer. I defer to her, especially since I don't want to die in an electrical fire. And our concerns were only deepened when one of the outlets started sparking and destroyed a table lamp. (Mental note to self -- check to see if the smoke detector works, update insurance policy, and call 311 to narc on the landlord.)

Apart from that, we're slowly getting settled and rooting through all the extra stuff we have. There's also a cultural adjustment since the building and the neighborhood is mostly Orthodox Jewish and Russian -- old Soviet types who have probably only smiled three times in their lives and shrunken widows with their heads covered with babushkas. I'm already making friends with the neighbors.

The other morning when I went to go move the car at 8 am, I tried to park in one space before abandoning it for something easier to pull into. As I got out of the car, still bleary eyed from a lack of sleep, a heard someone shouting at me. "Miss! Miss!" an old Russian man barked from his second floor terrace as he pointed to the space I had previously abandoned. "Your parking . . . is no good!" And then put his fist repeatedly into his palm. "BANG, BANG, BANG."

The man seemed to think that I had been banging my bumper into his. First of all, I didn't bang my bumper into his whilst parking. And second, if there was any bumping it was totally within the legal limits of fair urban driving. It was a love tap at best.

I put a hand to my ear and made the international sign of No comprende, Señor and started to walk off. He made a sharp hand gesture and I was afraid that he was going to come downstairs and confront me, but he didn't. Part of me wished he had because I needed to blow off some steam.

Ah, good times.

"Your mom is a piece of work."

Who am I? Two X chromosomes, DNA, molecules forming tissue and bone and organs? Dark hair and eyes that need corrective lenses? Am I twenty-nine-years worth of experiences? Layers of psychological conditioning? Am I words formed by finger strokes and neural impulses turning thought into action?

What I hope I'm not is my mother. She and my father stopped by briefly to see the apartment and take some furniture that I just didn't have room for. The idea was to stash it in their basement for time being so Ms. K and I would have some breathing room in the place. But the second she got in the door she was criticizing the new apartment and spent an hour forcefully trying to tell Ms. K and I how to arrange the furniture, especially the pieces I wished to be temporarily rid of. And again my mom asked Ms. K when she was going to get a real job.

Sigh.

I told Ms. K to warn me if I ever get like my mom.

"Don't worry," she said, "I'll smother you in your sleep with a pillow if you do."

"I don't know how this placed hasn't burned down yet."

I knew it was a risky move signing for an apartment that Ms. K hadn't had a chance to see, but I was bolstered by faith and optimism. Look! An apartment! For us! Yeah it's kind of a mess, but I have a vision! A vision of apartment awesomeness!

When Ms. K and I opened the door last Thursday, she didn't quite have the same level of optimism that I had. The place was a wreck -- a dirty wreck with many layers of paint on its forty-year-old walls. The previous tenant hadn't cleaned (ever) and the super hadn't painted or done repairs. The toilet was brown and so was the shower. The stove had a couple of years worth of caked on grease and food. When I saw the apartment previous to signing the lease, I had overlooked these glaring problems somehow. Probably because the previous tenant was still there and her shit was everywhere so I couldn't assess the full horror.

But, honey, I have a vision!

There were tears and things have swung back and forth between I hate this apartment and I hate you for making me live here to Let's make this work! The dog versus cats issue has exploded into a ginormous issue, the electrical wiring in the apartment is dangerously old, and we've also started fighting about how we just have too much stuff.

Fun!

Stay tuned for the next installment of Adventures in Cohabitation!