The Long Weekend

Busy, busy, busy.

As most of you know, and as some of you don’t, HoBiscuit and I moved into our new apartment in mid August. Now, as some of you might know, and most of you don’t, since we moved in we’ve been living out of boxes and suitcases. This is not because of our busy schedules or our innate laziness, but because we have actually been physically detained from unpacking our belongings into our apartment thus making it our home. I can see you scratching your heads in puzzlement at that bit of knowledge so allow me to elaborate with a single sentence of clarity that will enlighten you as to our predicament.

We have no closets.

Well, that’s not entirely true. You see, we do have closets but only if your definition of “closet” is ‘a small, virtually unusable space sectioned off behind cheap, hollow doors but without any actual shelves or bars upon which to place or hang items you wish to put away.’ But, should you define “closet” as ‘a cabinet or enclosed recess for linens, household supplies, or clothing’, then we are well and truly screwed.

As you can imagine, this hampers the unpacking part of moving in to a new home.

Well, you may now be making faces at the monitor as you attempt to convey your disbelief at our misfortune. “Why,” you may be shouting at asking the screen, “didn’t you just have the guys who remodeled your kitchen build you some closets?” Good question! Let’s explore that, shall we? But first, because you obviously don’t recall how much we absolutely loved our kitchen contractors, allow me to refresh your memory by supplying you with this fine tidbit of information about them; they SUCKED! The fine and upstanding people who built us our kitchen did everything absolutely, totally and 100% WRONG. Need proof? Go ahead and read this and then come back here. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Back? Good.

Perhaps now you’ll understand why we were a tad reluctant to ask our kitchen contractors to do anything beyond the scope of what we had originally hired them to do. I mean, it took them a total of SIX attempts to install the cabinets properly. And they had to redo the doors more times than that because every time they took them down to stain them they kept messing them up!

Idiots.

And thus, Keystone Kops Construction was crossed off our short list of closet makers. Last week we finally found a closet company who we felt was offering a good price for making our closets and we signed them up. Of course, it dawned on us that now that all the construction was done and we would finally be getting our closets, it might be a really good idea to paint the fricking house and then unpack everything that wasn’t going into the closets. As we surveyed our unpainted apartment and did some quick mental math, we came to the conclusion that if we attempted to paint it ourselves we would wind up in divorce court, the hospital or jail.

Or, much more likely, I’d be dead and HoBiscuit would be happy.

Not wanting HoBiscuit to ever be happy, especially when her happiness so depends upon my untimely death, we hired painters. Now, I must say that these guys did one hell of a great painting job. They painted everything we wanted painted and absolutely nothing that we didn’t. Even better, when they realized that some of the paint we had was of a different shade than we had originally asked for, they not only informed us before they painted with it, but they also had one of their guys come with us to the paint store to make sure we didn’t pay for the new paint.

Now that’s service.

However, being that I’m a neurotic, anal retentive bastard, I didn’t want them to move my computer stuff or my home theater equipment when they painted. So, Friday morning I woke up at 6am and began moving boxes. And kept moving boxes all day. By midnight I had moved everything I could out of every room in the house and piled them all into the living room. When the painters arrived they were amazed that I had gone through such lengths to keep them from touching my stuff, and laughed at the little “Painter Guys, Do Not Touch” signs I had put on several boxes. After watching how careful they were while they painted the house, I felt comfortable enough with them that when they were ready to paint the living room I let them move most of the stuff while I nervously watched from afar.

And I do mean nervously. I was even wringing my hands and sweating.

Anywaste, now the apartment is painted and I’m actually in the process of unpacking things into their proper places (except for closet stuff, of course). It’s a great feeling; unpacking into a new home. And even though we’ve been living here for almost six months it’s never felt like home because we’ve never really unpacked. But all that’s going to change, this will be our home. We’re very excited and once we’re all settled we’ll finally have ourselves our first home.

But first, does anyone know how to get rid of that nauseating ‘new paint’ smell?