Tiny Little Fractures

So hey! We’re moved. And though my shift key is performing slightly better than before, it is in no way back to its pre-breakage performance levels. I give it a C.

Adam and I keep wandering around the house saying, “Uh, we live here? How weird is this?” I’ve never moved so close to my previous address before — sure, I moved all around Boston, but the city and its outlying suburbs have such distinct personalities that it feels very far away, even if it’s merely from Brookline to Cambridge. But Vermont — particularly small-town Vermont — not so much. I can practically see my old house from here, and I fall asleep to the same church bells I fell asleep to before. The train is louder here, and that’s about it.

It is different in that it’s essentially an apartment, and not a house, which is a first for us since we’ve been married. It’s nice, in a way, to have a smaller, warmer space, especially since right now, we just don’t need it and the fact that it’s less per month doesn’t exactly hurt. Yes, our daughter will take up room, but it’s not like I’m going to be giving birth to a four-year-old, as I keep reminding everyone who will listen, and a year is a long time from now, when our lease is up.

hAhAHAHAHAHA, lease (see how the shift key mocks me, even after being “fixed”?).

The reminder that I am renting (and owning! Thrilling!) leads me to the fact that what made a mostly uneventful move exciting was getting screamed at — no literally, SCREAMED at, in a rather offensive way — by our neighbor two doors down from us. It all started with a front door vs. back door mover thing and ended up in a hideous rant about renters! These horrible renters! And how she hopes that these people moving in are quiet and aren’t big party people who will, and I wish I were making this up, leave bras in the trees outside the building. I … bras? Really? I mean, I was standing there with a belly 10 inches out from my body, and thinking, really? The most exciting evening I’ve had lately involved Netflix and some Hostess cupcakes. Seriously, lady. Your fit is most misdirected.

When I stammered as much in her direction, she pulled out her big gun, wagging her finger in my face and screeching, “Don’t tell me how you can possibly understand any of this. You’re not a homeowner!”

Oh ha ha HA, angry old lady! HA. If only you knew how deeply I wish I could say I wasn’t a homeowner. Also, the whole Dirty Renters vs. Perfect Owners thing is so played out, because I’m sorry, owning means nothing these days, at best, and is a gigantic albatross, at worst. (See Baudelaire bird around my neck for details.) I have so much sympathy for the landlords in my building who are, in all likelihood, renting at a loss like the rest of us. And further, has this woman not heard that this is a time where we must all sacrifice? If the worst sacrifice you have to make is sharing your otherwise pristine building with tenants, consider yourself lucky.

Anyway, speaking of tenants, I’m sewing up the details on ours and awaiting first month’s rent. In the meantime, I have to deal with a mess on our property insurance before Dec. 1, figure out if I need to get a locksmith and a new lock on the house as a key went AWOL, determine the key handoff with my former tenant (and track down her damn rent!) and accommodate the new tenants’ request for a special allergen dry cleaning for the carpet that costs three times as much as normal carpet cleaners. Oh, and file endless paperwork and pay people astronomical sums of money for absolutely nothing at all. All from VERMONT for a house in Florida I would do anything not to own anymore, but cannot sell, thanks to the financial meltdown and piles of foreclosures driving prices down to levels so low that I don’t know when I’ll be able to sell, much less my neighbors who paid twice what I did.

Add all of this to a move of my own and a life of boxes, a car that needs a ridiculous amount of repairs and that I owe a laughable sum of money on for unavoidable mileage overages that directly involve the state of Florida (sorry, Florida. I hate you.), meaning I need to buy a new car or … Oh yes, and prepare for a baby at a time when every headline is screaming, “IS THIS THE END?”

Now I realize all of this is do-able and no one is dying, but it does ratchet up the anxiety levels a bit, leaving me a bit of a handwringing mess when I arrived for my ultrasound today — which was great, by the way. She is still a she, and her heart is four-chambered and perfect and I am so, so lucky. However! I was all hand-wringy and anxious and I’m prone to crippling anxiety without external factors and this, combined with the state of the world and pregnancy, has left me a little afraid of backsliding into the anxious insane person I was at the height of my GAD, so I thought hey! Let’s nip this in the bud! I foolishly mentioned this to my OB/GYN — the only one I hadn’t met before, and now, the only one I really don’t like — who suggested I see their hypnotherapist to find the “root of the problem in my past — perhaps in my childhood.”

Oh heaven help me. I think my anxiety can be tied to actual events, hormones and life, not whether my parents held me enough as an infant, you know? This. This is why I’m a CBT gal, my friends. (For what it’s worth, however, my old CBT therapist used hypnotherapy with me a few times, and it worked. So it’s not like I’m against the practice as a whole. But come on. MY PAST.)

Anyway! I’m really fine, just a little anxious over the long looming list of things that have to be done in the next two weeks. And decidedly NOT heading to hypnotherapy, for God’s sake.

Happy Wednesday! I, for one, plan to make a dent in this mess, rather than explore my childhood.

*Snow Patrol

18 comments November 18th, 2008