Soppho

The first time I heard this song, the radio was playing in the living room while I was on my belly in my bedroom, cleaning out boxes and clearing away the dust bunnies under my bed. Not 15 seconds after the song started, I scuttled backward from underneath the bed like a cockroach, and crawled as fast as I could to the living room to google the name and artist and buy the song straightaway. I love music sometimes to the point of obsession, and I love lots of different types of music, but this instant enthusiasm is still a rare occurrence for me. And this song? Totally worth the fuss.

Their mugs sit at a perfect diagonal on opposite sides of the tiny coffee shop table. He stares deep into the screen of his laptop as he scrolls up and down the page of a news site. She gazes at a gallery of celebrity photos at the same news site, tapping “Next” almost as soon as each new page loads. Their legs are wrapped around their own chairs. His left foot runs up and down the length of one of the painted chair legs; her legs are still, hooked tightly behind her, like a racer perched in her blocks, waiting. Their identical laptops sit back to back, but the identical tops of the identical screens touch, just barely.

Confession: I’d like to pass this off as one of the chocolates I got for Valentine’s Day this year. But it’s not, because I am weak, because I am a stereotypical lover of chocolate, and, predictably, because the ones I got from Valentine’s Day are long gone.  I mean, have you looked at this thing? Because I cannot help myself, I’m not even allowed to be alone in a room with a chocolate from Gearharts. My parole officer said so.

Another confession: I don’t really care about Valentine’s Day, I’ve known way too many people who take it way too seriously, and I don’t really observe it.

Another *another* confession: Y Chrome got me chocolates anyway, and I was psyched. And then, because I had President’s Day—the day after Valentine’s day—off, I was feeling nice and relaxed and unconcerned about the 500 dishes bound to accumulate by making real food and we decided to make a really nice dinner. And then we lit some candles for the table. And we drank a bottle of wine. Do you know what this means? I was totally duped into celebrating Valentine’s Day. By myself. I was duped by myself. And it was awesome.

And now back to your regularly scheduled curmudgeonly programming.

This is Louie, also known as Louie Loustoferson, or—when he’s feeling a little sassy—Lou Lou Fabulous. I adopted him from the SPCA two years ago this spring. He was a stray, and it was a friend of mine and her husband who found him; whenever they’d step outside of their apartment, Louie would come running up to them and talk and talk until they gave him some food. Probably a good tactic, considering he had been declawed, and has no feline street smarts of which to speak.

He’s the most talkative cat I’ve ever known, and sheds about a pound of hair a week. Seriously. My mom and my sister thought I was making it up until he plunked down on my sister and left a sweater on her lap. Still, he’s also the most cuddly cat I’ve met, and needs to constantly be touching someone. In short, if he were a boyfriend, he would have been kicked to the curb long ago, but as a spontaneously shedding yeti of a cat, he and I get along just fine.

Apartment hunting in Charlottesville is tough. I know, I know. Cue Carrie Bradshaw tapping out on her funny looking Mac something ridiculously cliched like, In New York, the only thing more difficult to find than a good man with reservations to the hottest new spot in town on a Friday night is a good, rent-controlled apartment. I know. I want to gouge my eyeballs out, too. I want to punch myself in the face. Still, it doesn’t make it any less true. Apartments are expensive; nice apartments are prohibitively expensive, and anything moderately priced is often an old building teeming with students who are up far and away too late for my old lady self to tolerate, and I live in constant danger of tripping over the remnants of beer pong games and breaking a hip.

But still, with all that in mind when my renewal lease arrived in my mailbox in December, I was feeling rather brazen and decided that finally it was time not to check “yes” and send it back in. I was tired of things falling apart around me, the floor leaving huge splinters in my feet, leaks destroying my things, having my stove and fridge in the middle of my living room, and having to go out into the building’s hallway and open or close a window in order to adjust the heat. Plus, Y Chrome is going to move in with me when he finishes classes this winter and there ain’t room in here for the both of us. Surely we can do better than this, right?

RIGHT?

We had our very first apartment viewing yesterday. I had made the appointment to view three apartments, but when we arrived, the agent told us that two of the apartments had already been leased, so we would only be viewing one. A little disconcerting, but alright. The apartment was small, surprisingly dark for 4 pm, and dirty; the brown carpets were stained and worn; the bathroom was covered with the sort of grime that doesn’t go away, and—best of all—it would cost only $800/month for the privilege of living there. And then my head exploded, but no one could tell, what with the condition of the carpets.

Yes, it’s pretty early in the game to become certain that I will never find a place to live, but, really, I am a professional fretter, and apartment hunting is like the Fretting Olympics. I immediately regretted not just renewing my lease. Sure, the apartment I’ve got now is even smaller and probably more run-down, but at least it’s familiar. It’s a shithole, but it’s been my shithole for almost five years.

When we got home, I got into the shower to decompress. I was standing under the water, still feeling a little crestfallen. I picked up my foot to turn around and grab my shampoo bottle from the shelf, but as I moved my leg something felt funny. I looked down, and there, stuck to the bottom of my foot, was a tile from the floor of the shower.

Okay, it isn’t even remotely the worst thing I’ve ever encountered in my apartment, and I’m not really a believer in woo-woo or signs from the universe, and I approach hesitantly anyone who strongly believes in horoscopes. But at that very moment, the heavens parted, I could hear the angels singing, and I’m pretty sure it was the voice of God himself that called, “I saw the apartment, and saw that it was the suck.” And then I was all, “Dude, I’ve been floundering down here for the past 26 years, and you’re just showing up now to help with my real estate decisions?” And then it got a little hairy, some smiting was involved, etc etc, but in the end I felt much better about leaving this old apartment behind. And I believe that something will turn up.

Still, don’t be too surprised when this blog is coming to you from a refrigerator box somewhere in downtown Charlottesville.

Just kidding. Rents on those things are outrageous.