While sitting in the clinic office Friday afternoon, frantically typing on my iBook in order to get some serious work done, I chatted on and off with a few of the girls around me. “You know, I haven’t even bought my books this semester,” I said. “I need to, but with so much else in life to spend money on, I just can’t afford my books right now.”
(Truth be told, I’m not entirely keen to purchase my textbooks. Every semester, I fall for the bluff from the teachers that you MUST have all your books in order to make it in the class. I bite the bullet and shell out the hundreds of dollars in textbooks for each class. I then lug them to campus with me every single day because I know how important they are. Only I never use them. And I still learn. And my grades remain pretty good. In addition to this inconvenient factor, textbooks for grad school have gotten out of hand. I’m taking only two classes this semester, and between the two classes, I’m supposed to have SEVEN textbooks. Which, in the modern university market, translates to something like $600. And that’s a conservative estimate. Fuck.)
“I just moved, too, so not only am I super broke, I don’t have any furniture in my living room,” I continued. “But you know, I think I’m going to go to IKEA this weekend. Obviously, I can’t buy anything, but I can dream. YOU CAN’T KEEP ME FROM DREAMING.”
By “can’t buy anything,” I really meant I couldn’t buy anything unless I encountered a deal so good that there was no way to leave the place WITHOUT buying it. Up to now, the only place for me to sit down at home has been my desk chair, which is only comfortable for so long, i.e. until I reach the point at which my butt needs a full-body massage. I’ve been itching to get a couch, but Craigslist has proven fruitless thus far, and I can’t quite afford a new one just yet. So when the IKEA voice directed me to the middle section of the self-serve warehouse floor to a plain yet comfy-looking armchair on sale, I only barely managed not to squeal in delight and football tackle the nearest sample chair.
Enter the delightful POÄNG chair (I’m not sure how to pronounce the brand name; I guess at it and it comes out sounding like “pwang”, which while amusing, I’m fairly certain is wrong), part of IKEA’s “Seize the Days” Sale. A chair for $59 instead of $89 automatically deserved my attention, and when I sat in the thing, one of the IKEA employees had to talk me down and convince me to stand up in order let another customer try it out, because I was not budging.
Thrilled is only the tip of the iceberg. I could barely make the purchase because I kept staring at the box in the shopping cart, and I suffered some pretty serious separation anxiety when I had to leave my new chair at the front of the building so I could get my car and bring it to the loading area. Now that we’re home and I’ve put my fabulous chair together, I’ve been hard-pressed even to get up for a drink of water because it’s just so damn comfortable.
I’ve been in Albuquerque since Thursday. Having been back in LA for a week, which was basically enough time for me to move and sort of reestablish myself, I decided I still needed more time away. That, and my partner had to go back in for surgery again.
Friday was the big day. In other words, the beginning of a whole lot of sitting on my ass. There’s the waiting before, then the waiting during, followed by the waiting after (during recovery), and of course the waiting to leave. It’s taken a few days, but my ass is rebelling considerably less now than it was on Saturday. I guess that’s what I get for sleeping in a chair Friday night, but there’s no question that it was worth it.
One of the best parts of our one-night stay in the hospital was watching Robert wander the ward in search of chocolate. During our last stay in June, we managed to score chocolate ice cream. Riding on the wings of that success, as soon as the man was able to, he was up to walk around and on a mission to find the chocolate. Only to learn, though, that the nurses of our little realm scorned chocolate as bad for you, and instead encouraged patients to stick to vanilla or strawberry as they are more “healthy.” BULLSHIT, I SAY. Chocolate is every bit as fabulous for you, if not more. And besides, it’s ice cream, people. Oh, and just for the record, dark chocolate really can be good for you, even beyond the obvious psychological benefits.
We never did find that elusive chocolate ice cream, but fortunately the vanilla was crazy outstanding. Oh, all right; so was the strawberry. And, we did manage to find Carnation chocolate instant breakfast drinks. And since it was chocolate over breakfast, it fit the bill. Which leads me to the conclusion that chocolate, be it the act of devouring it or just searching desperately for it, is quite possibly the key to a speedy recovery and a better overall hospital stay. Trust me.
*Evidently I misspelled “chocolate” in the title originally. I’d spelled it “choLOClate.” Obviously the result of not getting enough chocolate in my diet.
Five days, five trips back and forth between the old place and the new one, and five dozen or so boxes worth of worldly possessions, I’m finally to the point where, between the time I get up in the morning and when I go to sleep in the morning, I don’t have to unpack any boxes.
It’s amazing how liberating this is. Things I’m so not going to miss about the old place: EVERYTHING. I love not having to worry about making sure nothing looks like it’s been used, especially the damn bathroom. I love that I can use my own dishes now (I bought some!), and I don’t have to worry about some crazy woman holding up a frying pan like some freaky Jason. Wait, I can put a loaf of bread on the counter? What? You can do that?! YES YOU CAN, MOTHERFUCKER. And I am, it’s on there right now.
One of the perks of living in this place is that it comes with a dog. A dog that’s not abused by being forced to live in the utility room with a little square blanket it’s supposed to poop on, no. (If there’s anything I feel bad about from moving, it’s that the damn dog doesn’t have a decent owner; at least when I was there I could take him out and play with him and try to improve his poor doomed puppyhood. But I digress.) This dog is a genuine big dog, the biggest dog with whom I’ve ever gotten to share the same plot of land.
When I went swimming to cool off this evening (hello, pool!), the dog decided to join me. First it was a game of fetch, and then he got hot and decided that jumping in the pool was the perfect way to cool off. Wait, let me rephrase that: he decided that jumping on me was the perfect way to cool off. It just happened to be convenient for him that I was in the pool when he decided to take that plunge.
That’s Dylan, the best new friend I could possibly ask for. He’s cute even when he’s all soggy.
