Moving: The Play-by-Play

Surprise! I am now a Brooklynite. But it was not always this way... no, less than three weeks ago, I was still franticly trying to escape Nowheresville, NY.

Day 1 [Monday, Jan 3]: Schmem and I see several apartments with Hipster-Real-Estate-Agent Benny. One of them has a staircase you could break your neck on and a bedroom that smells of cat pee. The instant we walk into the one, we fall in love. We make a deposit and go home, giddy. I forbid myself to do anything that evening.

Day 2 [Jan 4]: I wake up early and fax the paperwork that is needed to Hipster Benny's office. I begin a day of frenetic list-making that culminates in a hypercoma that can only be fixed with excessive aerobic exercise.

Day 3 [Jan 5]: We are approved as renters, and then asked by the landlord if we could move in three days earlier than anticipated. We are unenthusiastic. I begin to amass a list of things I forgot to ask about the apartment when I was seeing it.

Day 4 [Jan 6]: I worry about what to do about furniture, particularly my desk. My lovely sister won't let me take the one that is in my old bedroom because "the bedroom was mine when we bought it, so it's my desk." I'm not allowed to have the bureaux in the basement, either.

Day 5 [Jan 7]: Move-in is pushed ahead by a few days to coincide with lease-signing. I worry about money and try to set up the same Quicken program I failed to set up a few years ago, with a similar result. I investigate applying for food stamps and unemployment.

Day 6 [Jan 8]: I gather most of the things I think I'm going to want and move them in to the basement to make grouping them into boxes easier. All of my books get to stay behind until I have a bookshelf. I decide to make a clever desk out of a 6ft board I find in the basement and some sawhorses. This will be the most gloriously big desk I have ever had.

Day 7 [Jan 9]: I sand and prime my deskboard. After much hemming and hawing I buy paint for it in an eye-gouging shade of orange. All of the other colors looked like old lady linoleum.

Day 8 [Jan 10]: In the morning, I take a second walk-through of the apartment to measure the windows and walls to make sure everything will fit. After picking up some kitchen chairs from my Grandmother's house I sand and prime a cabinet and a shelving unit. In the evening I attempt to organize my paperwork, but give up out of sheer exhaustion.

Day 9  [Jan 11]: I have a long phone conversation with Schmem using google documents to double-check what each of us is bringing. I take the rest of the morning off to go visit boyfriend and relax. In the evening I enlist my sister to help me paint furniture, and my father to help me sort out and pack things. I also go fake shopping online with my gift cards and make my first ever Credit Card payment.

Day 10 [Jan 12]: I stop keeping track of anything, enmeshed in a painting-packing-organizing-culling marathon during which I am tired during the day & worry myself to sleep every night.

Today, a week after moving in, I am just beginning to buy sufficient quantities of groceries & get my mechanical problems fixed (I just got internet yesterday). I may not love this area, but right now I feel like I need to live here for three years to compensate for the amount of effort it took to get here.

But it's a city on the move, I hear, & Manhattan calls...