We've been in the new house since Thursday. It's funny how everything takes on an odd tone akin to nostalgia, as though we're borrowing perspective from the future and using it up now. Every 'first' is remarked, discussed, and associated with warm feelings. Awww, we're having our first meal in the new kitchen, or I just watched my first DVD in the new house*, or This insurance bill is our first piece of mail here, or Awwww, I just pinched my first loaf on Madison Ave. Such bullshit! The first meal in our new kitchen was great, I loved it, and it felt special to sit down with my wife and talk and eat and look around. But shouldn't every meal be like that? Does mere novelty explain that heightened emotional valuation? I don't know the answer, but I even had one of these awwww moments when I saw my first rat scamper across the parking pad.
What the fuck difference does it make if it's the first time we do something in the new house? The Buddhists are onto something with that 'living in the moment' stuff. Taking a bath in the whirlpool tub the first time is nice, but it should always be nice. I know for a fact however that in two years it'll be ho-hum, another bath in the whirlpool tub, whooopedy-do.
I suppose I can blame the exhausting moving process in part for making things feel so special right now. We've been living in chaos for months, and it's going to take another month to get settled in. Yesterday we bought some curtains and hung them for the first time in our new house(awww). Our first expedition to Ikea** to furnish the new place(awww). But the moved-in chaos is much better than the pre-move chaos as it doesn't have the actual moving chaos ahead of it.
I'm sore as hell after five straight days of heavy lifting. I took my first two Tylenol at the house Thursday, and have achieved my first 10 since. My hips, knees, and feet ache like a rotted tooth.
*It was David Cronenberg's ExistenZ. My own disassociation with reality following several days of heavy lifting and weeks of unsurety made this selection appropriate. That and the fact it was the DVD on top of the box I opened after setting up the TV room.
**I loathe the local Ikea. The customers there are the rudest, most hateful bunch of schmucks anywhere on the planet, with absolutely minimal regard for other human beings. If a meteor crashed into the damn building on a Sunday afternoon the planet Earth would benefit dramatically.***
***I would include my own loss as a Sunday Ikea shopper as also beneficial to Earth.****
****My boss/editor always corrects me when I put the definite article in front of Earth, as in "The Earth." She says "Earth is the planet, the earth is dirt." I argued that Earth often takes the definite article, and she said I was looney. The curriculum we were arguing over was written by me***** for a book called Voyage to the Center of THE EARTH, however, so I won the argument.
*****She also hates the passive voice, but then again the passive voice is also hated by me.
2 comments:
I love ExistenZ! I recently found it used on dvd, but haven't had a chance to re-watch it.
I generally loathe all other customers at every store I patronize, Ikea included. But mostly I hate the other people at the grocery store. Having said that, I'm off to StuporFresh!
Ah, StuperFresh. I made the mistake of going to the one in Towson by the Town Center one day near noon, and was beset by a mob of old codgers from the home up there. "Can you help me with the cat food? She only likes tuna in white sauce and I can't read these dang labels." Help one codger and you get mobbed.
There was a traffic jam of biddies with empty carts in the dairy aisle--looked like the PA Turnpike during an ice storm.
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