The alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. today. By 4 a.m., my dad was on his way back to Texas. He’d been visiting since Tuesday and the door of his tolerance was beginning to jam. He says New York City is a toilet that won’t flush. That’s an opinion, of course, but no one can argue that it’s a sidewalk constantly crowded and a doorknob always smudged and sticky with a million fingerprints.
But my dad also accepts that it’s where I brush my teeth every morning and sleep and people watch. Almost a year since I packed three suitcases to capacity and called myself moved, I consider this progress.
My dad helped me further set up my apartment in the last week. Cade and I had attempted to install a coat rack before in an unsuccessful, and consequently, humbling, half-hour. I shrieked, “How can we be so inept and stupid?!” as holes were drilled into the wall, but screws mysteriously wouldn’t stay in the holes. Forget trying to put up the easy install mirrors I bought at Ikea. We were hopeless idiots, the reason companies write “Do not eat” on the plastic packaging of processed snack foods.
My dad, however, is MacGyver. He could’ve made a microwave out of some solar cells, aluminum foil, and cardboard, but we headed to P.C. Richard to buy one instead. I also finally joined the comfortable side and bought an air conditioner. WOW. Unless you’ve spent all day absorbing the radiation bouncing off the pavement and then retreated into a four-windowed studio that’s just as hot, you won’t understand.
Side story: I came home from work one day a few weeks ago and did what I had been doing at the height of my overheated misery - I stripped down to my skivvies and sat at my computer desk, which happened to be the floor. (I borrowed all the furniture back at the apartment at the top of The 39 Steps). When I got up later to get dressed and go to lunch, I had a miniskirt of sweat and dust bunnies plastered on the backs of my legs and a scud skid mark on my underwear. Holy Jesus! I needed a desk, air conditioner, and Swiffer…stat!
My dad figured out how to drill the coat rack into the wall, built a shelf for the microwave (out of a freecycled piece of wood - I am definitely the spawn of this man), and hung up some art. Among the things to hang up were the stringed decorations I bought a few weeks ago at West Elm. The decorations are shiny and brittle with a delicate tinkle. Visitors to the apartment now immediately gravitate to the bed, upon which I bellow, “WATCH OUT FOR THE DANGLIES!”
My last purchase was a computer desk and chair. I tend to be a financial hypochondriac and avoid making large purchases, but the home office situation was getting ridiculous. I didn’t have wireless internet set up yet, so I had to keep myself precariously attached to the router, which my Time Warner guy placed on my tv stand. I had to hunch over my Powerbook on the floor, an uncomfortable position that deterred me from blogging. Besides, my undies were getting hideously and embarrassingly stained from the floor I still hadn’t bothered to scrub clean.
So now I’m set up in the city. I enjoyed my time with my dad and the fruits of his labor/expertise and my debit card. I’m dancing across the apartment, now fully clothed, to the hum of the air conditioner. This space feels a lot more like home. My dad sits at home in his favorite chair, relishing the quiet and familiarity. He’s flown thousands of miles back to Corpus Christi, Texas, a toilet that flushes.
Tourists are people who are “travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited” (official UNWTO definition).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_Organization
the new apartment looks lovely! congrats on the next chapter of your life…