So we moved, which you may or may not have heard. The apartment is nice enough, it has a big living room and a big kitchen. It also has a back porch and a front stoop which I haven't had since living in Queens. The windows look brand new and that will be handy come winter. I don't think we'll have to worry about putting plastic up insulation on these windows. But the bedrooms are like coffins, really big coffins but non-the-less I have had a difficult time sleeping here. Over four years of sleeping in a big, open space and now I sleep against a wall my ass practically hangs out of a window. Said window being only three feet away from our neighbors' window so yeah, I'm a little self conscious about that. Have you ever tried being self conscious in your sleep? It totally wrecks havoc on the REM cycle.
And I'm beginning to get the feeling that this apartment doesn't want us here. Nothing as dramatic as disembodied voices from the fireplace (we don't have one of those anyway) or invisible midnight marching bands but still, something is not quite right.
First of all, the day were moved in the movers were three hours late, not too big a deal if you are planning to start at noon and don't actually begin until 3pm but we were supposed to start at 5pm. They didn't get to our old place until eight. We weren't done getting stuff into this place until 11pm.
We got our stuff in without too much damage but we discovered that the bathroom sink drained really slowly. In the book of rules our landlord gave us (so not kidding, it looked like the booklet I got in the dorms at college) they said "let us know if there's something wrong, we'd rather take care of a problem while it's small then let it build up into something bigger." So, I emailed them. They sent someone over a couple of days later without ever replying to my email. But the sink was fixed so yay! Right?
Wrong. They just broke it in a different way so now the u-pipe leaked. I called to let them know and someone came back, and now we have a slow draining bathroom sink again...Which is better than a leaking sink but hundreds of thousands of homes across America have sinks that drain properly AND are leak free. Apparently this is not going to be one of those households.
Then we discovered the fruit flies.
I eat fruit, I am not ashamed to admit it. I like bananas and apples and all sorts of berries. I eat grapefruit and really like those crazy asian pear things. Most of my fruit I leave out in our fruit bowl. What? Bananas go brown in the fridge!
I don't know where fruit flies come from but one morning we woke up and discovered a swarm of them living around our sink and nestled into the stuff we store onto of the cabinets. I know they're harmless but they are GROSS and I have no desire to battle my way through them to make my morning coffee. Once we realized the cats weren't going to help we started chasing the flies around the kitchen trying to smoosh them in our hands. Deceptively hearty those little boogers. They only have a lifespan of, like, three days but they are impossible to crush! Like adamantium I tell you!
When that plan failed, my The Husband, started talking about importing spiders from the yard. Nuh-uh. No way. We've already got a daddy long legs living in one of the bedrooms and I've spied at least one other lounging webside in a corner near the kitchen ceiling. I do not need any more spiders than that living inside the house with me. As it is those two were hardly doing anything to quell the problem, what do I want with their lazy, outdoor cousins? For-get-it.
I did a little research on the ol' interwebs and discovered a page of possible home remedies. All non-lethal to other members of the household, all DIY and all sounded promising. I mean, why would the internets lie to me? So we chopped up a banana, put the pieces in a couple of deep take-out containers and sealed the tops with plastic wrap. Then I poked wee, tiny holes in the plastic wrap and we put them near the kitchen sink. OK so maybe the holes were too small because we watched those traps for hours and while the flies would land on top of the container and walk around on top of the plastic wrap they never actually went INTO the containers. Make the holes bigger he says, so I do. Then, of course the flies can get out. Fail. I poured myself a glass of wine and then poured the flies some and walked away from the kitchen.
The next morning we had a few flies, not nearly as many as we had hoped but any progress is good progress. For three days we put up with the smell of rotting banana and watched closely to make sure we were still luring them in. This morning we had two take out containers of stinky fruit and angry flies. They seem to be gone, for now, but I guess it will never be safe to leave fruit out in the summer here...? Are they hitching rides home with us from the market? Do I need to start thinking about fruit fly larvae when I eat a fruit salad? On second thought, don't answer that, I probably don't want to know.
Oh and then the fridge broke down on Saturday night. We didn't even realize it until The Husband went in for a beer and it came out warm and frothed over when he opened the bottle.
Well, maybe we put too much stuff in the freezer. Maybe we need to clear space around that compressor doohickey that makes the cold. Nope. Maybe we shifted the temperature dial when we were putting away groceries? Nope, in fact that thing doesn't move at all, perpetually set at level 4. Well, maaaaybe we accidentally left the door open, we'll close it and see what happens in an hour. Bupkiss. On Sunday morning I woke up from a dream of premature burial punctuated by a neighbor's phone call and the fridge stunk of the 1/2 gallon of milk that was going bad. Oh, and all of the fruit we moved in there to keep it safe from the (fucking) fruit flies. The irony, it was too much for me. I had a small, but meaningful, breakdown that sent The Husband scurrying towards KMart to buy a cooler, and ice, and milk. And if he had come home with a new wife I really would not have been surprised but he obviously loves me because he came home and made breakfast instead.
Do you see what I'm saying though? There's something off here and I don't know what it is. Maybe it's jinxed, or I am. Maybe I am blowing all of these little things out of proportion and I should just take a pill and relax. Or maybe, in 349 I am moving us the hell out of here.
I don't know. I guess we'll see how long it takes for the fruit flies to come back.
