(Phaysis)

Here goes:

I have announced to my roomate that, after 6 years of living with him, I am moving out. Thus ends our long history of cohabitation. It has been a long, cold winter.

Since the announcement, I’ve been looking at apartments; my goal is to find a one-bedroom flat as close to my current neighborhood as possible. It’s proving to be difficult. Feels as if the whole thing is backfiring on me. But, I keep searching.

I’ve found several places that fit the bill just right, but there’s always something that turns me away: high demand, long waiting list, no availability, obscenely high prices, stupid college-level restrictions like assigned parking, or some absurd anti-pet rules — one otherwise awesome place demanded that no dogs are allowed on the premises, period, which encroaches on any visit by my mother who travels with her dog.

I want to stay in this area, I seriously do, but I’m being priced out of my own neighborhood. I’m trying to be my own man and live on my own now that I can sort of afford it (I’m almost 36 and I’ve never had my own place — what the hell is that?). It’s time to try, but it’s an immense weight to do it. Pushing stones uphill.

So, tomorrow is an important day: I’ll have to make a decision on this one apartment I’ve been considering for the past week, pay my deposit and application fee, and await my acceptance. Failing that, my deposit goes back to me and I keep searching. It’s a juggling act with 12 balls in the air. I’m tired. This has drained me, dragged me down. It’s a full-time job, and since most apartment managers don’t work outside of business hours, it’s cutting into my actual full-time job. More stress.

All my previous searches for a place to live have been a cakewalk in comparison; I’ve either moved in with someone else or have found a suitable place within the first week. I’ve been at this since the first of the month and it’s growing long in the tooth. Ulcers from the stress; paralysis from the options; insomnia from the anxiety; cramps from the fear of uncertainty. I’m sick from this nonsense and I want it to end. And this is only half the work of moving.

Out of being worn down I’ll most likely settle on the place tomorrow and keep packing up my shit to move. Hopefully they’ll have the place ready within the week so I can start moving by week’s end. Then and only then can I be locationally and financially detached from my roomate (we’ve been interpersonally detached for years). I want the charade to end. I want the new beginning.

This weekend has been absolutely abysmal. The air conditioner in my apartment died a wimpering death on friday afternoon. I got home from work and walked into the sauna that was my place of residence. Inside thermometer read 92F. I was livid. My roomate and I have been around with our landlord for years about this stupid air conditioner. The amount of money spent on all the service calls could’ve gotten a top-notch compressor, but that’s our landlord. Always out for the bottom line.

I called the landlord on saturday morning to verify that my roomate called the afternoon before. He answered and we had a chat about the situation. Said that the A/C service company doesn’t like to answer the phones after 5pm on Friday. His words reeked of bullshit to me; he didn’t want to pay weekend emergency rates, that’s what the truth really is. Said he would call at 8am monday. He had no interest in taking care of us, his 5-year residents of this complex.

I’m serious when I say we better have somebody out tomorrow to fix this and leave with a fully-functional air conditioning system, because this is shit. Complete shit. For two days my apartment has been in the 90′s…it’s supposed to be 74. No reason for making us live in this hell any further.

But we’re trying to deal with it the best we can. We have two box fans and three portables, but it’s still not enough to move the volume of hot air in our house, not enough to dilute it with tepid outside air. I was able to keep the inside temp in certain areas at parity with the outside temp of 92F yesterday — which is commendable. All those years of living in the damn projects with no A/C taught me good enough, I guess.

I’ve had no good sleep for the past two nights and I’ve got a ragged edge because of that. Doing what I can; I have a box fan in my bedroom window above the head of my bed. There’s a dish towel clothespinned to the bottom half of it to help deflect air down to my bed. It helps, mostly. Wake up in the middle of the night to cover up. But I’m still sticky with the humidity. No A/C to dry the air. Taking two cold showers a day now; afternoon and bedtime. Wearing almost nothing, and it’s still horrible. Can’t lay down, can’t sit, can’t recline…there’s no escape but to not be at home.

I had left work friday fully expecting to have a chilled-out, laid back, casual weekend. Thanks to ancient equipment and an uncaring landlord, that has been destroyed. I am so angry.

Update: The A/C repairman arrived around noon on Monday. He had a replacement fan motor in his van and was done with his work in 20 minutes. TWENTY MINUTES, and my damn landlord made us suffer the whole fucking weekend.

My apartments are the bestest. My neighbors are really neat. All of them. I got home ten minutes ago. Right now there are 4 police cruisers and 5 police officers in my apartment complex. They’re talking with some of my really neat neighbors. That’s so neat.

Can you guess what today’s secret word is? No, that’s not it. Try again.

Yes, there you go. Can you spell today’s secret word? Try it.

G-H-E-T-T-O

Very good! I knew you could.

Hey folks.

Not sure if I overreacted about the local newspaper’s choice of story placement (see last journal entry). I did get a reply from the editor two days later, though. Here was his response:

In some way, I can understand his viewpoint, but we each had a miscommunication about what our message intent was. My concern was something that the mousepox article barely touched upon: the ability to use the exact same research to alter the smallpox virus, which humans can get, into a supervirus. My stance remains; more exploration of the ethics and social code behind creating “superviruses” needs to be done in public forum. What we’re asking ourselves is if God can create a rock so large that even he can’t lift it. And right now, we’re creating.

Ok, on to current news:

I’ll be taking friday off (using some well-deserved vacation time) to head up to TRF a day early. Will be meeting my Texarkana friends and their entourage at the TRF campgrounds around noon to set up camp and begin festivities. The weather doesn’t look that fantastic, the group is smaller than expected (thanks to some last-minute backouts, dorks), and I’ve not been feeling my best this week, but it may end up a decent weekend. I can hope, at least.

Healthwise: monday, I suffered a sharp pain in my left kidney. It struck once and disappeared. My kidneys have been kinda tender for a few days, so I’m overdosing on water and trying to eat and drink right. So far I’ve noticed nothing else wrong — my “waste” is normal, in the normal amounts, no burning, no discoloration, nothing. Totally odd. I think after this weekend I may see my doctor if it persists.

Cardio-wise, last night I started tweaking out with something resembling hypoxia. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t make any diagnosis, but in my hypochrondriac research online it’s what it feels like. Google it sometimes. My smoker’s lungs breathe too shallow, especially when I lay down for bed. I just start freaking out. Today, after work, it was a bit worse, and it’s the head-rush-and-spin with the lung-tweak and the steady, hard heartbeat that only a smoker could love, and I hate it. I want to quit so badly. I need to. Again. For good. For life.

I’m a fucking addict.

On a lighter note, my roomate and I just extended our lease on the apartment for another sixth months. We love the apartment, and the feeling of semipermanence that living somewhere for over a year can afford, and this time around the rent is fifty bucks cheaper (to a grand total of $645/mo), but the tiresome situation with the stupider-than-trailer-trash neighbor and his fondness for “bass cars” is growing long in the tooth. I’m not sure how many people in this tiny complex appreciate his frequent gifts of “Skrew’d music”, and I most certainly don’t appreciate his and his girlfriend’s constant shouting, yelling, and loud thumps next door, but it appears to me the landlord, tho we like him, might be a little too soft on dealing with many complaints. Aside from calling the police on something that could quiet down as quickly as it flares up, what can we do?

Daily bothers, daily pains, daily regrets. I’m gonna take a “chill pill” and go to bed. G’nite, all.

Drove around tonite for a bit, just long enough to get a little wound up. Went home and made a valiant effort to sit down, relax, meditate, breathe and try to think of nothing.

It was successful until about 10 o’clock, when my neighbor decided to crank up his bass car and visit with buddies in the parking lot beneath my window.

If I only had balls.

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It looks as though I’ll be going to Texarkana by myself this weekend. :sighs: It’s par for the course, really. It’s great to make plans, but shit always happens. I’ll get to visit with my mother, my family, and some of my friends, but if left up to my own devices instead of being driven to show someone around town, this same damned scenario will play out:

I’ll wake up late saturday, shuffle around the house, watch some TV, eat something, lazily take a shower, and by the time I leave the house to visit with people it’s 8pm. I zip by Moderne Primitives just in time to say “hi” before they close, and then I go to my friends’ clump of houses to hang out until too late, usually doing nothing but talking or watching TV. If it’s 1am or something, I might go to Denny’s. Elsewise, I drive back out to the country to slump back onto my mother’s couch and nod off.

I usually get woken up Sunday by visitors or something, laze around, chat with mom, fully intending to see more friends or maybe extended family, then I have to shower, pack up my things, and leave town around 7pm, which becomes 8pm, which becomes 8:45pm, etc., etc. By the time I reach Austin, it’s around 3am, I’m tired as hell, and the distance from Georgetown to my exit in Austin grows longer and longer. After pulling in, I grab my stuff, haul it back upstairs to my apartment (usually in 2 or 3 loads), check my spam, say “hi” to a few folks online, and then pass out to wake up 4 hours later for work.

Believe me, I know this routine.