Phase III: Unpacking and settling in

Our first night in our new place was wonderful. I can't believe how quiet this apartment complex is at night (well, all the time, for that matter). Yesterday the girls at the office told me they are completely full with a waiting list, so I know people live here...maybe they're all mute.

The air-conditioning in this place is super-powered. I was a little concerned, being on the third floor, that it would be difficult to keep the place cool enough to survive. This is primarily based on our experience at the townhouse in Harrisburg. The top floor, with the bedrooms, was never cool enough during the summer. We could have set the thermostat to 45 degrees and still have been sweating through the night.

The basement was like a meat locker and actually uncomfortably cold. When we staged the house for sale we moved the TV to the basement, which really cut down on the television viewing. Somehow the act of walking down 9 steps seemed like way too much effort to watch crappy sitcoms, so the only time we watched TV was Biggest Loser night (Tuesdays, 8pm - but we're between seasons now, I think the new one starts in Sept?). On Biggest Loser Night we would bundle up in sweatpants and sweatshirts AND wrap up in a blanket just to survive the arctic temperatures.

The main floor was perfect, of course, since that's where the thermostat is located. So basically, we lived in the Goldilocks House: This floor is too cold, this floor is too hot, this one is juuuust right.

Anyway, so this place is perfect - it's a bit of a delicate balance, though, because we've had a few Michigan Winters in the middle of the summer if it gets turned down too far. So we felt quite lovely the first morning we woke up in Michigan...except for The Plague.

The Plague was still draining Matthew's functional capacity, but I was feeling okay (it didn't really hit me until the next day). I like to believe that I have a super-human immune system. I think it's the Chia seeds. So if I feel crappy one day I am certain that it will only be one day, by the next day I'll be on my feet. I think this is borne out of my experience when I was in my teens and early to mid 20s. However, this is now a delusion because things have changed since I turned 30.

And on that note: What the hell is that about, anyway? It's like a switch flips at age 30. Gone are the days of having a few drinks and staying up late on a Friday night and getting up Saturday morning like nothing happened. Now I have one drink, fall asleep in my chair/on the couch by 9pm, wake up feeling like I had 14 drinks and need a nap after breakfast.

Gone are the days when I could remember everything I had to do in a day without writing it down or remember everything about a client's history and relationships the minute they sat down. Now I'm lucky if I remember a quarter of my to do's and I find myself thinking "damn, what was her husband's name again?" 3/4 of the way through a session.

But I digress.

The movers arrived at noon (actually, a little before noon) despite the fact I had given them the wrong address (oops) and didn't even seem slightly concerned when we pulled the 26' truck around. True professionals. They did seem a little relieved when we opened the door and it was only half full. Unfortunately, it was RIDICULOUSLY warm AND humid that day. And they had to haul everything up three flights of stairs.

Again: hiring movers = best decision ever.

Now here's an interesting thing I learned in this process, and I would be curious to hear from my readership who are of the male persuasion on this: Matthew felt guilty about the movers doing all the work. So guilty, in fact, that he had to LEAVE the house.

I noticed this the day before, too. When the movers were there, he went to Subway to get lunch. This seemed kind of strange to me, especially since there were a few special instructions he was to give them, such as 'don't pack those things.' There were some items (e.g. garden hose and reel, some large shelving in the garage, flower pots) that we planned to leave at the house and some other items (mattress, vacuum) that we planned to use and would pack ourselves.

This is why, when the movers in Michigan hauled up the garden hose and asked me where to put it, I was like, WHAT IS THAT DOING HERE? What am I going to do with a garden hose in a third floor apartment with no spigot? Oi...

Anyway, just as they arrive, Matt says: I gotta go
Me: well go, they can just put the boxes outside the door.
Matt: what are you talking about?
Me: you can use the bathroom, they can just leave the boxes out here.
Matt: No, I mean, I feel bad that I'm not helping.
Me: Why? You're sick, you should be sleeping. Besides, this is why we hired them.

This fascinates me. I can intellectually understand how it is sort of un-manly to watch others labor at carrying your own stuff when you are an able-bodied strong man, but we're paying them to do that. Am I wrong? Apparently I am, because Matthew explained that, even though we're paying them to do that, it makes him a "puss-bag" (I believe this a cross between "pussy" and "douche bag") not to be out there sweating it out and doing manual labor.

Sometimes it is really great to be a woman, you know? Particularly when it is HOT and HUMID and you live on the third floor. The thing about being a woman is, I don't have to constantly 'prove' my femininity. I am a 'girl,' even when I'm wearing grubby clothes and no make-up and it's not really a 'threat to my femininity.' If I feel the need to be more 'feminine' I just put on a dress. It's pretty simple.

Being a man requires constant monitoring of masculinity, though I think the importance of this fades with age (or it does for some men, not all). Masculinity has to be 'proven' regularly and can be taken away with a simple omission of manliness or commission of puss-bag-ness. It seems exhausting, y'all should just have a sexual-revolution and move on.

Well, I don't really care if Matthew is a puss-bag, so I sent him to Starbucks to get me some coffee and food. When he got back, I put him to work arranging and re-assembling the furniture while I told the movers where to put items. Telling people what to do and where to go is a role I feel quite comfortable with :)

Do you think the movers even noticed or cared? I was really convinced that they could care less that he wasn't hauling stuff, since it's their job and all, but I may be wrong because as the two-hour window we had the movers for was drawing to a close I realized they were not done. Not even close. Well, I'll be damned if, after all that, Matt and I were going to have to haul the heavy furniture up by ourselves. So I followed them down to the truck and headed for the boxes.

First, they freaked out a little. "Oh no, that's really heavy, why don't you take this?"

It was a fricking laundry basket.

An empty laundry basket.

Be-still my heart, I might collapse from the vapors under the burden of that weight. Again, my femininity, thus weakness and incompetence, is automatically assumed, which invariably has the effect of pissing me off. So I grabbed a big ole' box of BOOKS. (Proving my masculinity of course.)

Holy GOD, who packs a large box with BOOKS? Don't you know that's what the small boxes are for, they even say "recommended for Books" on the side. I'll tell you who: my husband. Well god bless him, because I hauled that box of books up those stairs the whole way thinking a) I will kill you for this and b) this is just like being at the gym, just one more rep...I mean, step. It was HOT in that stairwell and by the time I got in the door and Matthew walked up and said, "oh my god, what are you doing? give me that," I was done with being manly.

Now, however, Matt had to help with the unloading because I was being more manly than him, so we both made a bunch more trips, up and down, up and down. Toward the end I commented how unbearably hot it was in the back of our mobile sauna/moving semi and one of the guys said, "at least you notice, some people never even walk into the truck and then they get mad when we sweat on their stuff."

Can you imagine? It was literally90 degrees and 80% humidity and they were going up and down three flights of stairs...

"Don't you touch that table with your sweaty hands! I'm going to need you to put towels between yourself and my belongings so you don't contaminate them."

Even I'm not that OCD.