Tag: Moving

  • Moving Stuff Around

    After Thanksgiving, like the day after, is when we put up our Christmas decorations. And to be honest, we never had a good place to put our tree. The curse of a small NYC apartment: There is a never a good place for anything.

    But this year, the wife came up with a good idea, which was to move our lounge-sofa away from our windows, and place the tree there. The tree looked nice in that location, and with all the other decoration we put up, it looked very festive, but cluttered – a Christmas explosion.

    Anyway, I mentioned before that we take everything down after New Year’s, but with the holiday on a Monday, and everyone back to life on Tuesday, we didn’t get around to cleaning up until this weekend. It took all day Saturday, but we got it done. Life had returned to normal, but we decided not to move the sofa back. We were tired, and ready to relax.

    And something amazing happened.

    The new placement of the sofa has changed the whole mood and flow of our apartment. You could logically assume that we were just reacting to something being “new” and in time it will wear off. But I have to admit, for the past two days our home has felt different, more home like, peaceful, calmer even.

    Is it possible that the placement of the sofa was holding us back? Does anyone remember Feng Shui? That was a pop-culture thing, right? Was that real or something made up to sell sofas?

    The funny thing is that I remember being a kid and my parents would do something like this very randomly, like every few years; that they would get a bug in their ear and just start rearranging the furniture in the home, and then talk about how much better everything felt.

    So, I have discovered another way that I am slowly becoming my parents. Not that I mind.

    No… Maybe the better way to think about this is that I am coming to a better understanding of who my parents were.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Moving, Weather, Tottenham, and Crappy Time Lords

    (Half days are killers)

    Last night, we brought up the idea of moving apartments to the kid. She did not like the idea, and I understand why. Her objection was that she didn’t want to leave her friends, and I knew that was coming. Having gone through the pandemic and not being able to see anyone, she now is living a rather normal childhood; school, parks, friends. (She’s just missing playdates, but I know that is coming.) For a seven-year-old, she’s living the dream. We mentioned to her that moving to a different neighborhood in the City would mean that we would have a bigger apartment to live in, and though she would be in a different school, we were still in the City and can come back and visit her friends. That didn’t sell her. To her, our little corner of Harlem is the best place in the world.

    I don’t like getting older sometimes. Lately, I keep thinking and talking about the weather, which clearly is a sign that I am getting older. Such as, it was 40 degrees this morning, and it’s the end of April. As we are about to hit May, it should be warmer. I say this because the month of May is one of the reasons I still live in New York City. It’s supposed to be not too hot and not too cold. It’s a Baby Bear month! I want to put on a lite coat and sunglasses and take a walk. It’s the little things in life that make it worth living, and I need my little things, damn it!

    Tottenham better beat Leicester, and West Ham needs to beat Arsenal. That’s my weekend.

    What if we are living in the “fixed” timeline? What if things got so bad that people in the future went back in time and “fixed” whatever made things so bad, and this is the “better” version of things?

  • Stay Alive

    I had made a promise this weekend that I would start working out again come Monday morning, which by the way, is the worst morning to start working out. It’s a fact… or at least should be.

    Most people say that and make this promise and have written about getting started and all the motivation crap.

    For me, I lost my running shoes in the move. They were in New York, and I remember packing them up, or I think I do. When all of our stuff made it to California; no running shoes, and I also lost a pair of gray slip on Van’s that I loved.

    So, I had no running shoes, and honestly, not a big deal, right? Yeah, I don’t have a job, and I can’t justify spending money on shoes, when that should go to rent, and I also don’t want to add to our debt.

    That left me one option, that I’m not very proud of… a workout DVD. It’s more like a program as the thing has like 20 different DVDs for working on parts of your body. Look, I will admit that the shit works, provided that you stick to it, as the wife and I used it in the past. So, I’m not knocking the program.

    What makes me uncomfortable about the whole thing is the super positive attitude from the people in the workouts. I interpret their reactions as inauthentic, and that has everything to do with me and not them. I also understand that they are paid actors to be super-hyped about “gains” and crap.

    Exercising for me is just a necessary evil of getting older. I want to stay on the planet as long as possible (wife, kid, family, friends, things like that) so I have to get up and work out.

    I sort of wish there was a workout video that was like “Hey man, we get it. You just want to be healthy or look good with your shirt off. Whatever it is, we get it. So, let’s get this over with so we can move on to other things.”

    I don’t know how motivating that would be.

  • DMV And Mass Weed

    So, if it has DMV in the title, I bet you can see a cliché story coming about waiting in line for hours.

    And you would be partially correct.

    I now live in California, and I needed to go and get myself a California drivers license. To speed up the process, California allows you to fill out forms online, and have them waiting for you at the DMV. They also let you sign up for an appointment, this way you don’t have to spend hours waiting in line. I took advantage of this and filled out the form and requested an appointment. The earliest I could get into my local DMV was January 24th, at 10am. I love the irony of how they created a system to cut down on the waiting time, which has a two and a half month waiting time.

    I went to the DMV this morning and waited two and a half hours just to be seen by someone. It turned out well, I have acquired a California drivers license, am registered to vote, and am an organ donor.

    While I was waiting for two and half hours, I scanned the news and tried to catch up on my reading. A story that caught my eye was about how Massachusetts legalized the sale of weed today. They are now the first east coast state to legalize, which is cool, and I think also shows that it is only a matter of time before it is legal everywhere.

    The aspect that I found interesting was the timing of all of this. Massachusetts allowed sales to start two days before Thanksgiving; a holiday that revolves around food and family. I mean, being high does make you wanna eat, and most people I know need to be high to deal with their families.

  • Adjusting

    Today was my first day of a little depression. With the huge Camp Fire burning to the north of us, we have been covered in smoke, so we can’t go outside as the air is unbreathable. The wife goes to work, the kid goes to school, and I am at home looking for a job, and trying to write.

    It was fun for the first few days.

    Today, clearly, I hit a wall.

    I felt unmotivated, and couldn’t get going on anything. I mean, I got groceries for the family, but then I couldn’t do anything else.

    I watched the news, and just spent the day thinking about everything that could be happening to me in New York. Social media doesn’t help, because I can see what all of my friends are doing in NYC. And that kicks in the “fear of missing out.”

    But they are in there, and I am here, and 3,000 miles separates us.

    Another part of this is that I was talking to an old college friend last night, and he was asking me about how I was doing, and why I moved to California. It wasn’t in an accusatory way, more along the lines of “help me understand your decision so I can support you.”

    Why did I move?

    Well… I wanted a better life for my kid. I wanted to go on an adventure and try something new. I wanted to focus on writing. But as I was talking to my friend, I found myself saying something that I hadn’t expressed before, which was I was becoming the type of person who couldn’t celebrate other’s successes without trying to pull them down. The theatre world isn’t very nice, and I was beginning to take part in the bitter middle-aged actor stereotype. And to be that person made me a crappy father and a shitty husband. Maybe that was New York’s fault, but it was really my fault.

    I needed to change things.

    I needed to reinvent myself.

    Today was a day that I started to doubt that decision.

    Not that I am changing my mind.