Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

fiddledragon is officially nominated for sainthood: she voluntarily surrendered most of her Saturday to take her van down to Providence, pick up hypnagogie's mattress and box spring, and haul them all the way up to Brunswick, Maine. This was very much a mission of mercy, as hypnagogie recently learned her borked-up shoulder has been the result of a six-years-undiagnosed torn rotator cuff, and the bed that came with her rented room (I'm searching for a diplomatic way to phrase this) sucks hairy man-ass. Like, "a comparably sized pile of Reddi-Wip would provide more back support" levels of suck, that's what I'm saying here. The one that got hauled up on Saturday is like memory foam only better, and allows her to sleep without wanting to take hostages when she finally wakes up. Out with the old, in with the new, and all that.

I was already in Brunswick when the bed arrived (see previous entry for details on birthday dinner and didImentionIgotasmokingjacket), and the plan was to haul the old bed downstairs before fiddledragon arrived, in the interest of streamlining the process. I'd assumed that the blob mattress of blobbishness would be the challenging part of the operation, especially since the journey involved a staircase that turns twice followed by a trip through the kitchen and out to the storage room, but that bit turned out to be not too awful. The box spring, however, was...problematic. The item itself turned out to be what you might charitably call "vintage," hailing from the days when the "box" in "box spring" really meant something. We're talking the sort of thing where an accidental drop on your toes earns you a Vicodin script at the ER: hardwood 2x4 construction, weighting roughly the same as the 2004 defensive line of the Indianapolis Colts. When the power grid goes down during the upcoming Apocalypse, this sumbitch will be the first thing they chop up for firewood. Also, let's review: torn rotator cuff.

Luckily, fiddledragon arrived in time to help with that part, which was completed with only a tiny bit of damage to the ceiling plaster, and then it was time to move the new stuff in. This was a good news/bad news situation, because on the one hand, the mattress was considerably lighter and the box spring disassembled into easy-to-carry components, but on the other, (1) up the stairs instead of down, and (2) no handles on the mattress. My thumbs are still not speaking to me, but all in the end is well, and fiddledragon is awesome, and hypnagogie is much less inclined to get out of bed in the morning for all the best reasons, and yay.

That was the main excitement of the weekend, which was otherwise largely taken up by lounging and avoiding the single-digit temperatures that Maine likes to face-punch its residents with. hypnagogie and I took the time to reconnect—if you haven't done one of these in a while, yes, long distance relationships still blow, and Skype can only do so much—and it felt like we'd leveled up somewhere along the way. In any relationship there are those conversations/discussions/arguments that keep happening over and over again, where you can only hope to chip away at the central Thing over time; we revisited a couple of those, only we'd somehow managed to filter out the noise and get right to the signal. Truths felt heard, rather than just brushed against, a gift of time passing or of wintering in or maybe just of us being us for so long. Time was far too short because it always is, but I'll take what we have.

So it's official: this April, we will be moving to Providence, Rhode Island. We've been talking about escaping our Worcester apartment for some time now; the apartment itself is fine, but the surrounding building and rental management company have each been doing their own special version of slow-motion implosion, marked by decrepit everything and surcharged everything else. Last straw came a week and a half ago, when the city cheerfully slapped "WARNING! DANGER!" signs on the doors of two of the quaint [read: old] elevators to our 10th floor abode, leaving one poor asthmatic elevator to do the work of three, which it does with the sort of sound effects you usually hear when trying to winch a stump out of the ground with a chain and an '89 Ford.

Meanwhile, in the midst of our discussions, rain_herself got offered a sweet two-year consortium internship in Providence, which took away our sole reason for staying in Worcester, so away we go. I still work in Lexington, and it might have been nice to get something in that area, but there's no way on any coil mortal or otherwise that we'd be able to afford it without resorting to a dice-roll roommate situation, so we started looking in and around Providence, a town we fell for last autumn during a restaurant crawl. Luckily, Andrea's Google-fu hit the jackpot: first floor of a house, three bedrooms, gas stove, clawfoot tub, on-site laundry, all for less than we're paying for the powder room-size alleged one-bedroom we're in now. There's gonna be a guest room. There's gonna be a library. If it sounds like I'm panting as I type this, it's because I am. Even better, even with its status as an ex-crack house from 20 years ago, it's only questionable-neighborhood-adjacent now, as opposed to our current actual questionable-neighborhood-entrenched situation in MA. (There was a stabbing in our lobby last autumn. Police tape and a cleaning crew. We're leaving now.)

Moving is not among my 98,000 favorite pastimes, but this time out I'm more than willing. Our landlord is an easy-rollin' kinda guy, the sort of private landlord trait that can go either way in the long haul, but at the moment is spectacular in that he's willing to buy the paint if we're willing to provide the labor. This has sent us into full-bore Decorator Mode, going all Christmas-catalog on the Sherwin Williams website picking colors. Andrea has more stamina for abstract design pondering than I do, but I must admit it's been fun playing the "Which do you like better for the bedroom, Jackfruit Sorbet or Bonobo Splendor?" game, at least until she hit the dreaded "Nothing looks good, I think we need to pick a different sofa" juncture, at which point I threw the couch cushions at her. We have pretty similar design tastes, though, and in the end I think we made some good choices. At least until tomorrow, when OMIGOD EVERYTHING IS HIDEOUS WE HAVE TO START OVER. Not sure which of us that'll be.

Anyway, yes, it's yet another State of the Union on our return labels, but it's not really any further from Boston than Worcester is, and they have more restaurants per capita than any other U.S. city. Plus we'll have actual, y'know, space. Anyone wanna come to a housewarming party in a few months?

Such as:

1) Successfully left the house for work at 5 a.m. two mornings in a row while refraining from taking hostages, punching innocent bystanders, or consuming my body weight in Pepsi

2) Had a glorious job interview at Place I Really Want to Work, to be described more fully when I am not recovering from item #1 above

3) Arranged a job interview for second place next week, and got invited to meet at a third

4) Hauled the first carload of stuff to the new place—y'know, essential stuff, like books, DVDs, the mandolin and the dulcimer, and the braid

5) Met the third roommate (does she have an LJ, jasra and majes?), so I can now say with authority that my new roomies all display vast levels of Awesomeness

I have a place to live in the greater Boston metropolitan area! Oh, land of sweets and joy and joyness! It's a gorgeous place in a friendly part of Malden, big room, rockin' kitchen, fantastic roommates of similar interests and disposition.... Man, it really is more than I could have reasonably hoped for. I met jasra and majes on Saturday, and they fed me dinner and showed me around and told me about their gaming habits and their love of cooking and their quarterly get-togethers, and then they took me to the movies and invited me to crash at their place for the night, and friends, let me tell you that I slept the sleep of the blessed and the unrepentant wicked that night, so delighted with what has befallen. So much thanks to everyone who helped make this happen, for you are legion!

So question mark #1 is down, and question mark #2 is on its way to toppling as well, as fiddle_dragon and jasra have conspired to get my resumé into the right hands at their company, and I just got a call today from a place in...Newton, was it?...regarding a position I'd applied to there. Recrossing fingers and wishing from the happy place for all the necessary ducks to align accordingly.

There's so much else going on, too, that I don't even know which blinking signpost to start from. Some is wonderful, some is not wonderful, some is merely big and complicated. More posts to follow with the details as they become warranted (although the septic system backing up into the tub probably won't merit the write-up); for now, though, I embrace this bit of happiness and contentment, and wish everyone well. Good night, all.

20 things I love about the new apartment, especially vis-á-vis the cabin we just vacated:

1) It's shiningly, dazzlingly, new-car-smell levels of new—the building is less than five years old, and this apartment was the last chunk completed.
2) It has exactly the right amount of room, with two bedrooms (one of which has been designated the Lounge) and a sizable living room-slash-kitchen. Not so small as to leave us constantly getting up in each other's wheelhouse, and not so big as to be floating around the space like orphans lost in La Guardia.
3) Hardwood floors that don't resemble 1920's freight elevators.
4) DISHWASHER, baby!
5) The walls, being off-white instead of wood-brown, actually reflect light rather than swallow it whole, anaconda-like.
6) It has radiant heating through the floorboards—slow to warm up, but once it does, oh my gods, I am never ever leaving. Pants are once again optional.
7) Rodent-free.
8) Including thrill-seeking adolescent bats.
9) It's less than a mile from the old place, which has meant a much easier moving experience than anticipated.
10) That radiant heat? Included in the rent.
11) And we're still paying less!
12) The bedroom and lounge both have built-in waist-high shelves spanning two walls each.
13) Gardens, composting, root cellars, guinea fowl being raised in the guest house...yep, New England hippie landlords!
14) They take care of the plowing.
15) They also take care of the garbage, which means no more backroads Saturday morning drives to the transfer station, praying that the insect larvae that are camping out in the bottoms of the garbage cans don't decide to make a break for it. (This was not a pleasant summer in some ways.)
16) We actually have hope (my breath catches as I type this) of actually keeping this place clean!
17) Our Internet won't be hooked up for another who knows how long. The landlords gave us their Wi-fi password.
18) There's a birdhouse outside our bedroom window made out of two poles, a teapot, and a ceramic elephant.
19) Remember when I mention the walls reflecting light? They also apparently concentrate smells, which means smelling dinner on the way through the front door.
20) Even this early on, it feels like home. It really does.

After a late-night discussion and the necessity of creating a new Foursquare listing, we've decided, based on figmentj's idea, to name the apartment Chalice. It suits the space. The space suits us. And it's still here in this wild, wooded New Hampshire greenness, just one road over from where we were, and there's all this contentment that clings to our skin like light and rain and wonder. Do come visit sometime. We'd love to have you.

The move north went off without a hitch, and the unpacking process has been progressing nicely. Still no Internet or landline phone (those come next week), but cell service is marginally better than we anticipated, which is to say that we usually can pull in one bar and occasionally two. The house is still amazing us on a daily basis—we live here?—and is slowly (but not too slowly) becoming a home, sporadic warts and all. Pictures and stories to follow, once we have our very own WiFi to drink from. Love you all!

Little bits of catching up on the upcoming New Hampshire move and other miscellanea:

* Packing, packing, packing. figmentj is doing the vast majority of the cramming-things-in-boxes part, whilst I'm covering the hauling of large objects and projects such as excavating my car. (If you've seen my car, you'll know that this was a project that called for a combination of backhoes, Napalm and some questionable hiring practices.)

* Job hunting, job hunting, job hunting. Scary as hell. Onward, ever onward.

* We went up to Gilsum to pick up the keys and move the first few items into the cabin to Claim Our Space. Offices have been assigned, tentative layouts have been mapped out, measurements have been taken, and resident spiders the size of Chips Ahoy have been met. Well, okay, one. One mutant spider. I'll be the one locked in the bedroom, sleeping with the lights on with a baseball bat under my pillow.

* Keene is a pretty sizable and nifty town, and only ten minutes away. Gilsum is a flyspeck, but here's the thing: "downtown" Gilsum consists of a post office, an honest-to-gods general store, and a war memorial, and yet while we were there we saw no fewer than 15 or 20 people stroll through.

* We finally watched Sunset Blvd. the other night. J'adore. I want to be a drag queen just so I can do Norma Desmond.

* Thanks to two years of overheating, the rubber base to my laptop has finally fallen off. This parallels my car, which now has so many things broken with it that it's started randomly fixing things just to perpetuate the randomness.

* Pants are still evil.

figmentj and I are currently in the midst of apartment hunting in the Keene, New Hampshire area, in anticipation of our move there so that she may begin her grad studies. Apartment hunting is an activity I rank somewhere near tripping on asphalt while wearing shorts on my list of Fun Things to Do, especially when it's out of state, but we diligently headed up to Keene on Saturday with appointments to look at a few prospective homes. The first was in decent condition but a little too small for our purposes; the second was a bit more banged-up but more than livable, and big enough for us to express interest.

Then there was the third and last on our docket, which is a log cabin out in the middle of nowhere outside Gilsum. Please let me repeat that: a log cabin out in the middle of nowhere. It costs more than the other places we'd looked at, so we weren't really considering it that heavily, more on a whim than anything; we even thought about canceling our appointment altogether and trucking home. But we figured it'd be good for the entertainment value if nothing else, so we headed off down a small road, and then a smaller one, and then onto something that made the GPS go, "Wait...what are you...?" That last one was Hammond Hollow Road, and the cabin was at the very end of it.

My gods, people. My gods, I have never been in a place that felt more immediately right. It is, indeed, a log cabin, wood inside and out, but beautifully constructed, and lemme tell ya it was ginormous, big enough that we could take in a roommate and never ever see them. The kitchen had more counterspace and cabinets and drawers than we'd ever conceivably need, the master bedroom had sunlight pouring in like the sea, the backyard had beautiful garden space and a pond on the property behind a ridge of trees...it was beyond perfect. Best of all, when I looked over at figmentj, all the tension she had been carrying for the last several months, all the weight she bore in her shoulders and arms was completely and utterly gone. Just plain gone. This was the place.

The landlady was utterly wonderful, clearly loved the place, and could clearly see that we were falling in love with it. She said something that I doubt I'll ever forget: "The Hollow will change you," which (aside from being the best plot bunny I've tripped over in years) seemed an acknowledgement of what we were experiencing. She told us that the roads are kept well plowed int he winter, and that the surrounding homes had mostly family members and vegetable farmers who bartered, and that she hadn't shown the place to many people lately, and she'd be willing to consider lowering the rent over the summer until the financial aid kicked in, and I knew every step of the way that this was how every horror novel of the 70's after Harvest Home started and didn't care. We went in expecting to thank her for her time; we went out asking her how to get in.

( Pictures within! )

So now we wait. We have our references in, and there's the whole credit check thing as well (not to mention the frantic job hunting that would be happening anyway). But the landlady strikes us as a woman who puts great faith in her intuition, and if we clicked with her as she did with us, then this can and will happen. I now end this post, as it's difficult to type with all my fingers crossed.

So! Yes! I've moved!

The background, for those not in the know: I'd been living at Praxis, the Watertown apartment of primal_pastry and her three increasingly-less-wee ones; the family recently moved to a new house in the area, leaving the apartment to me, which sadly I couldn't afford on my own. Meanwhile, fellow Watertownian fiddle_dragon recently found her new dream house with her sweetie zeyr out in Natick, leaving her roommate wired_lizard wanting to stay in their lovely apartment but without someone to pick up half the rent. Furthermore, figmentj, is finishing up her last year at Mount Holyoke, but although she has a paid-for dorm room there she has increasingly begun finding the Boston area to be more of a home than Over Yonder. And finally, she and I are planning our wedding for a year from now (literally, a year from today!), and would like to make a home for ourselves at that time, but want to make something as close to an us-home as we can in the meantime even though we can't afford a place to ourselves just yet.

Long story only marginally less long, we've moved in with wired_lizard as of Sunday, with me here full-time and figmentj here on weekends and days off and whenever else is convenient, crashing at the dorm only when necessary.

Needless to say, the last week or two has been banana-f*ck crazy, even when you don't figure in my dad's week-long visit from Chicago not too long ago. We started hauling stuff over on Sunday and helped get fiddle_dragon's stuff out, along with zeyr, sindrian and yendi [please note: formally submitting all four aforementioned LJ users for sainthood status immediately]. Then sindrian and shadesong popped back over on Monday to finish lugging furniture upstairs, and then figmentj headed to Natick to help a bit with unloading the Moving Truck o' Hugeness before swinging by Praxis to fetch Lucy "Pantywaist" Cat. Yesterday was a bit more subdued as I'd managed to anger the gods of calf muscle maintenance by throwing staircases at them for several hours, but I did do a bit of lifting and lugging to feel all accomplished and stuff.

And then there was today. Today was my first IKEA trip ever. Yeahhhh. This really deserves its own post to tally the loot, which was acquired through a combination of wired_lizard's savings, a belated tax return and a check from my dad, but suffice it to say that I determined somewhere in there that IKEA needs to be a verb, which would enable me to make the perfectly accurate statement "we IKEAed all over everything."

It was in IKEA, however, that we, the three residents of this apartment, decided that the apartment shall henceforth be known as "Sven Inga Byxor," which is Swedish for "Sven Without Pants." You may now express your deep abiding envy.