I am one worn out girl. The good news is my little chemo brain seems to be working well enough to handle all the house drama. The bad news is that seems to be all I can handle.
I’m managing to juggle the faxing, the negotiating, the calling, the depositing, the inspecting, the placating, the sobbing, the bargaining, the consoling, the financing, and the drinking. But if you aren’t my lawyer or real estate agent, good luck trying to have a conversation with me. After a few hours of jumping through housing hoops, I’m a blubbering, incoherent, drooling mess…and that’s before I start drinking.
Yesterday I spent no less than four hours on the phone with my bank. Granted, about seventy percent of that time they serenaded me with top forty hits made to sound like a seventies soft-porn soundtrack. But for the other thirty percent of the time, I had to do math and speak intelligently with the person on the other end of the line (who, sadly, did not sound like Barry White). They expected me to use real words to express my needs. I tried pointing and grunting – no dice.
I don’t know how much time I spent talking to my agent and lawyer, faxing and scanning and pleading over the course of the day. But somewhere in the middle of all that fun, I managed to have lunch with a friend. I have absolutely no clue what we talked about. Come to think of it, Rocco joined us, so it’s very possible I didn’t get a word in edgewise. My little nuked noggin simply could not keep up with the conversation. I relied heavily on my nodding and smiling skills.
After juggling a few more phone calls, I decided to swing by the pottery studio. I’m taking a brief break from playing in mud to deal with the move and needed to pick up my things. If I’m at home, I feel guilty for spending the money and not physically being at the studio working on something. If I’m at the studio, I feel guilty for not being at home packing. Plus, the one thing a gal getting ready to move should really focus on is creating more things that we’d either have to move or store. So, I’m taking a little hiatus to focus on the casa calamity. (If this rambling mess isn’t evidence of my brain slowly oozing out of my ears, I dunno what is.)
I managed to time my arrival perfectly with the beginning of the kids hand building class. Nothing like a bunch of ridiculously wealthy eight-year-olds speaking french with their nannies and complaining that they aren’t getting enough attention. Somehow, over their incessant whining, I’m pretty sure I heard my ovaries shrivel up. Conveniently this litter was stationed between my shelf and the area where my pieces needed to be. This involved me walking through the mass of the budding elite while holding my pieces above their heads and saying, “Excuse me,” repeatedly.
Somehow, in my mind, I only had a few pieces. I’d carry a few home with me, then pick up the remainder before the end of the month. Someone kindly pointed out to me that it was, in fact, the end of the month. (That does make sense with today being the first…) Plus, once I started packing it up I realized there was a shit ton of baked mud to be dealt with. My tired, groggy ass wasn’t dragging that mess home! Plus I’d just fielded another call asking me for the one piece of housing paperwork that I had not thrown in my bag “just in case.”
New plan – pack it all up, stick it in a corner, ask real damn sweetly to pick it up later. Fortunately that worked. So I managed to pack it all up, write my name on the box, and race out the door after more hugs and PDAs than a Hills lunch at the Ivy.
Then I got my period. Now my uterus hurt AND I was trying to remain civil while my dear, loving husband offers suggestions of how I might better approach the housing situation. So with a new pain in my head (ass too, technically) I reach into my ridiculously large bag to find my sunglasses (which I just purchased the day before to replace the pair I’d lost on our four hundred and seventeenth house hunting expedition). I’m fumbling around and fuming, finding nothing. So I try another pocket and…hmmm…there’s two pairs.
Now, where the hell is the other pair from? Clearly I’m a thief. Did I take them from someone I know? A total stranger? Are they from the studio, the department store where I stopped to take a phone call, the restaurant, the coffee shop I stopped to take a phone call, the PATH train, the fruit stand – where the hell did these come from? And why are they so damn cute?
Clearly I can’t keep them. I’ve been very busy laundering my karma trying to help my odds of getting this frickin’ house already! But clearly I’m not going to back and retrace my steps from that day of confusion. If only my little obliterated brain could remember anything other than the date my mortgage commitment letter is due.
Hell, maybe I’ve stolen other things and my hapless head is so fried I don’t even realize it. I’m the chemo clepto of the tri-state area! I’m not responsible for my actions, I swear!
Maybe sunglass karma is what’s doing this to my uterus. I swear I’m ready to dig it out with a rusty spoon. Just when you thought Attorney Review couldn’t be more fun…