Somewhat settled into the new place. I have internet now at least, so I can happily melt my brain via the Intar-web at home as well as work. As a consequence, there are still some boxes here and there, but hopefully they will be (mostly) taken care of and cleared out.

Right now I’m not living with any of my roommates, oddly enough, but just the people that are staying with us for a month. I’ll call them Tracy and Dan. They have two cats that are perfectly capable of eating mine, but there have not been any untoward incidents, except for the time Max, the burly alpha male, bit Tracy on the wrist when she tried to shove him back into their room. I think the cats are restless to explore the rest of the apartment, and taste the blood of the furred creature they have scented from the other side of the door. I hope Quarkie has enough sense or sheer coward instinct to run from a confrontation. Max looks kind of like a fluffy cow, but in fact is the cat equivalent of one of those Scandinavian bodybuilders that can haul Boeing 757s with his teeth.

The roomies in the lease are the boy, of course, and the other two boys, for whom I can’t think of clever pseudonyms, so I’ll instead call them by their defining traits. Anglo-Boy is, as we speak, gallivanting about Ireland, probably getting sloshed and sputtering poetry at fiery red-headed lasses (do they say “lasses” in Ireland? I know they do in Scotland). He’s Anglo-Boy because he has an obsession with all things European, including being a snob (he freely admits this, I’m not just being mean). He takes tea every afternoon at 4:00, no earlier or later, and listens to German classical composers. I suspect it is a source of great unease to him that he was born and bred in the Midwest. Kind of like gender dysphoria, only…regional? Cultural? Some sort of snob syndrome? Oh, and he’s also an incredible neat freak. While the rest of the apartment still looks like it was hit by a tsunami of boxes, his is impeccable - somewhat remarkable given that he left for sunny Ireland the day after we moved in.

Physics-Boy was around for a bit but has returned home to Wichita. We all went to the same high school, btw, and were in the same highfalutin’ smart kids program. Well, smart kids + kids whose parents have connections. Physics-Boy is brilliant in his lab, a little less so outside. Once he made coffee and did everything else right but failed to place the coffee pot under the drip. Didn’t notice until the boy yelled at him from across the room when he heard a loud hissy burning noise. Anyway, Phys-Boy will one day evolve into Absentminded-Professor. Oh, and he’s also incredibly messy, a characteristic element of the A-P Syndrome. While Freud would have classified Anglo-Boy as anal-retentive, probably reflective of some sort of bizarre early childhood diaper-fastening ritual with his mother, Phys-Boy would definitely be pegged as anal-expulsive (I don’t care to speculate what THAT might reflect).

The boy is, well, the boy. Mah sweetie. He can be found here.

My parents were understandably uneasy about my new housing plan when I told them about it. Our rationale for moving in together was pretty strong - my roommates were leaving, I would be living by myself and having to pay more rent, and the rent would be basically useless because I would be spending most of my time over at the boy’s place anyway. Our rationale for living with the other boys was that our parents would be more okay with it if we lived with other people around, and not just us. Makes sense, right? We planned out my talks for each parent (his didn’t care, as long as we were happy with it). For my paranoid mom, I would give her the sell that I would I would be much safer living with a bunch of boys that could defend me if an armed thug broke in (because, of course, we have roaming gangs of thugs wandering Lawrence streets at night). For my dad, well, I just hoped he wouldn’t shoot the boy.

I talked to my mom first, and her reaction surprised me. She was fine with the idea of the boy and I living together, which is good (most especially if I plan on marrying this fellow someday, I am eternally grateful that our parents are all on good terms - unlike some of my friends), but cavilled at the fact that I would be living with ALL boys. “Your dad might not like that part,” she warned me, which forced me to change tactics ever so slightly. I would now have to defend the other two, as well as my boy! While I’m happy that my parents trust my relationship with the boy, I am a bit baffled as to the suspicion of the other two boys. I guess they have some vague idea that because there is more sperm floating around in my immediate atmosphere, I will get pregnant that much faster. Who knows.

Anyhoo, my dad was a little more difficult, but he said he’d still support me, and that if I needed to pull out of the lease at any time, he’d help me pay for the cost. Which is really nice of him, because heretofore he has been kind of scarce about helping me out with paying for things. He’d do it, sure, but I’d have to ask him for it, and then really really justify why I needed money for x. bill or y. expense, and then he’d bargain it down or so. He’s been pretty good about it lately, and I really hope this whole moving in with (oh, the horror) boys thing doesn’t set back any progress in our relationship. I don’t think it will, but I am still a bit worried.

I do wonder, though, if being constantly surrounded by masculine presence won’t get tiring after awhile. Kind of like my freshman year, when I lived in an all-girls’ dorm, which turned out to be a holding tank for incoming freshman sorority members. If we saw an unescorted male wandering around, we were instructed to yell “man on floor!” and an RA would come to our rescue. I guess it had its perks - I could walk around in Snoopy pajamas, without a bra, and not feel self-conscious - but sometimes I had to escape or I would be choked to death by the palpable estrogen and strains of John Mayer songs in the air. Change estrogen to testosterone and John Mayer songs to intellectual debates that turn into alpha male competitions, and that would be an accurate description of my current living arrangement.

My friend Heather, who lives in a women’s scholarship hall, told me that if ever I need female company, she would visit at a moment’s notice. I told her if she needs to escape the collective girl-borg, the same offer extends to her.

Every year around this time, I find myself hefting boxes up to 80% of my body weight, mismatched furniture, an angry cat, and millions of various sundry belongings that aren’t packed neatly and nicely according to a rational formula, but tossed in trashbags with the panic of one who realizes that the deadline is 10:00 a.m., it’s 5:00 a.m. currently and the carpets and floors are still liberally coated in cat fur and soda spills. Every year, I bleed sweat by the gallon in the searing Kansas heat as I cart my belongings across town. Every year, I say, as I slam the last of the boxes down on the floor, undoubtedly invoking the ire of the sleeping people in the apartment directly underneath, never again. Never again! I will stay here until the end of time! - And then every year, I go and do it again.

This year has by far been the worst, though. Several factors have colluded to maximize my misery. One big problem is that I’m moving from a spacious three story townhouse, inhabited by four people, to a much smaller four bedroom apartment that, once the boy and one of my roomies comes back from being out of the country, will be occupied by six people for the duration of this month. I didn’t realize how much crap I had accumulated over the year that I lived there until this weekend. I thought I’d been good after the harsh lesson of yesteryear’s move, but was sorely mistaken. I finished moving finally yesterday, and there are boxes everywhere. Seriously everywhere. The apartment looks like some horrible puzzle where you have to push the boxes into a certain alignment to get to the bathroom, and then push a new arrangement to get to the kitchen. There are even boxes on my bed that I’ve just been sleeping between. They will get unpacked, hopefully, once I figure out where things go!

Another big problem is the fact that the boy is still off gallivanting about in Lebanon, resulting in two consequences: 1) I had to move his stuff, and 2) I did not have his help! He did pack most of it before he left, and he did volunteer his sixty-something year old dad to help me, which I refused because I did not really feel up to breaking the sweet, pot-bellied elderly Lebanese man. I got help with the heavy stuff that I couldn’t handle on my own, thanks to Kristen and one of the new roomies. Everything else I moved myself, and, as it turned out, there was quite a lot of everything else. The problem with enlisting help is that -everybody- is moving, hence everybody is already pissed off and sweaty and if you ask them for help they will say ’sure, yeah’ and then magically disappear. Really, that’s the most efficient way to make people vanish without using a wand. A few random guys hanging around our apartment complex offered to help me move things, but…I guess I might be prissy, but I don’t really feel right about letting random potential creepos follow me into my apartment at 4:00 in the morning, armed with heavy boxes. I don’t know.

And then there are other little things that I’ve had to deal with this week. Like the SBC people, who we put in charge of our phone and internet services, which currently do not work. Be warned: they are bastards. When you call, you get put through twenty minutes of automated voice system hell, in which a friendly robot voice asks you a variety of questions. It is voice activated, which entails that you scream answers at the robot until it finally understands what you are saying, or just gives up and has you respond by touch tone (after maybe, oh, thirty tries?). Then you are transferred to a living and breathing sales rep, who oddly enough, sounds less human than the robot. “Hello welcome to SBC I am sales rep #238927q4 how can I make you a very happy and satisfied customer today?” they all query (and I’ve talked to almost dozen of them over the course of this week). I imagine that they are all held at gunpoint at the other end of the line until they finish their million-call-per-day quota. Then the sales rep proceeds to ask you the same things that the robot asked you already, rendering the entire twenty minute screaming match useless. Not to mention all the mystery charges that appear on the bills. Oh, and of course we are being charged for the internet and phone service that does not work. Currently I am using the internet at the computer lab on campus.

I intended to use the computer at work for my various blogging needs and email access, but - as it turns out - Belle and the director are out of town, and I don’t have access to the computer network. Thus nullifying the purpose of me being there, as I can’t really check email and we practically get no foot traffic at all at this time of year. So my well-earned hours today were spent re-reading Colin Thubron’s In Siberia - not a bad way to spend time, as it is an excellent book, but it would be kind of nice to actually do something. Even if it’s deleting emails from Nigerian royalty and penis enlargement conglomorates. It also took me an hour and a half to actually get into the office, because the door code Belle gave me didn’t work. I felt like going home and sleeping, but then I’d feel guilty about not taking advantage of all the extra hours I can pick up this week, and also I am broke-ass and need the money. I guess I can catch up on my reading. Hopefully nobody’s sending the department angry emails about why we haven’t responded to them yet.

My millions of box friends are waiting for me at home, just waiting for me to unpack them. I get tired just thinking about it. There’s also recycling sitting on our new porch, which I am reluctant to throw out because the recycling center, which is at Walmart, is closed till September (I think they’re thumbing their noses at the city council, which blocked the building of a new Walmart on 6th St.). This leaves Lawrence with basically no recycling center, which is kind of ironic and embarrassing - the hippies and activists protesting the construction of the new Walmart depend on the other one for part of their lifestyle. At any rate I’m kicking myself for not taking it after my trip, when I had about a week or two sitting on my ass, being lazy and jet-lagged. Now we have a mountain of accumulated junk that should be recycled, but will smell like rotted trash come September. I really don’t want to throw it away, but neither do I want a mini landfill on my front porch.

Sigh. So, back to the boxes. I think if I unpack a box a day, by the time next moving day comes, I’ll be done unpacking and can repeat the lovely cycle of student apartment life! Yay!