Dangermond.org

I went and picked up my mother to come back to the LaLa and watch the Academy Awards. G came over and L did too as she is in town from NY. I was so weary it was hard to focus on pulchritude, but it was good having mom over. It was the first time she had seen the house in about two months.

Finally, I took mom home and L left and then while G watched the rest, I cleaned up.

Then I got in bed and all was right in the world. No house terrors. No talking from blind Jim beneath me. No cars speeding down Toulouse or sounds from people dumping their trash into the big dumpsters behind the Can. The red motion lights were turned off. And finally, sleep.

I can’t tell you how many times people have made reference to the LaLa as a money pit – well after 22 months I came back to the house to find a beautiful tree sitting on top of my dining room table. It was a big mystery. I thought Graham brought it. But she said no then when she came over she searched it entirely for a note.

Late that night, when I was walking around the house in the dark (except for the red glow from the motion lights, which NEVER go out) I noticed the tree and wondered again who brought it.

I told my mom about the tree and she said, “Pin some one dollar bills to it and call it a money tree!” She’s always full of good, practical ideas.

So today mystery was solved – TL dropped it off when I was on one of my interminable runs to the Can (I have one left – a few pantry items) – so the tree is the first living thing to enter this area – and I think, foolish as it may be, I might pin one dollar bills to the leaves.

Yesterday was a blur of activity trying to get the house in some sort of presentable shape to host its first party this morning. The Mardi Gras Marathon’s 10 mile mark is right in front and friends were coming by to have mimosas and breakfast. About 7:30PM Robinson, who was over to put in speakers, said there was no way I could get the house ready in the shape it was in – boxes everywhere, stuff all over the place – and I said, you just don’t know me.

By 9:00, Graham had gone off to get two large pizzas, I was thinking I should doubt myself, and Beth and Kerry were headed over with Jeri to have some wine. By 9:45, I had Graham cleaning the front door windows, and I was running to the Can with a load of empty boxes to take to the dumpster, and running upstairs to get my Ipod because Robinson failed to come through while I did what I set out to do.

After everyone left, around midnight as I was cleaning wine glasses, Jeri, who lives one house over, brought me a cup of brown sugar (since I hadn’t gotten back to the Can to get a few things, sugar being one of them. Then I ran a bath and I got in and soaked and swam around. I tried every position and decided that I didn’t want to get out but if I stayed in I might drown from falling asleep – since I had been up since 2AM on Friday morning.

Someone had suggested getting arm floaties for just these occasions.

Anyway, at 5AM Sunday morning, I ran to the Can to get white sugar, since I didn’t have that or butter. And I began the breakfast makings – a big pot of oatmeal, Terranova’s green onion sausage on the grill (which when I got a look at the condition of that grill I realized I need a new one – after dragging it all over the place and living with it in my living room at the Can), buttermilk biscuits, pears and Stilton, blueberries, and champagne and OJ and coffee (new coffee pot secured at CC’s the day before – the exact one I was looking for – Capresso – it gets the water the hottest).

Then rescue the chairs from the shed and dust them off – and WALA! – the first guest arrived and I poured a mimosa and we proceeded to watch the first runner go by around 8AM – running 6 minute miles. My neighbors put up a sign that said you are about to take a turn for the worse and then offered the runners, beer, cigarettes and hot dogs.

It was a gorgeous day – and then everyone left around 1PM and I washed all the dishes and laid on the couch and I fell asleep and suddenly a man was standing in the living room – it was George, from Elegant Exteriors coming by to talk about the front yard. Groggily, I walked around with him outside and we talked about the yard, and then he left and I went back to the couch and the next thing I knew Vivian Lee was screaming for Tara on the television set and I woke up to find the sun in my eye, Arlene crashed by the open front door, and a strange feeling that I have lived in this house my whole life.

I’m surrounded by boxes but I couldn’t look inside another one or sweep up another dirt pile. Instead after taking a shower outside and washing my hair – I put on some comfortable clothes and opened a bottle of champagne. G came over and we ordered salads from Italian Pie and toasted to the move in.

We sat on the porch so she could smoke and marveled at the fact that I am in the house.

Wow – I’m in the house – I can’t believe it!

Really I can’t – it’s 2AM and I woke up in my new bed and didn’t feel strange – it all felt right.

Yesterday morning I was going to meet someone who works for my contractor to help me move – I went to Budget on Canal Street to get the truck and it wasn’t open and the place was locked up and all the trucks were next door in the vacant lot. I kept getting my call sent through to the national number and finally the guy said he didn’t know what was going on. So I was sitting in the vacant lot trying to figure out what to do when I looked across the street and saw a small U-Haul truck parked in front of a hotel – so I called U-Haul and found out they were on Tulane and Broad.

The woman who answered the phone said, “you sitting in front of Budget? Cause that guy left town. Come here darling and we’ll help you out. I’m gonna to put a sign up there saying come over to U-Haul down the street.”

Moving, moving, moving.

Here’s the deal – every day something is going to go wrong – lots of things are going to go wrong – and lots of things are going to go right.

I’m in!

I took a shower in my outdoor shower and looked up at the sky that everyone wanted to put a roof on and instead I was looking at the moon.

Hallelujah!

So yesterday was fun, but today it was back to work in earnest along with the myriad to do list that has to do with the LaLa. Nobody showed up for work today – go figure. Well Louie finally did but he didn’t finish – go figure. I bought a new king size bed and it is showing up tomorrow – woo hoo. I borrowed sheets from my mom until I can get the bed outfitted.

I brought all my fiction over and put the books up on the shelves. That felt like a nice accomplishment.

I had a mini meltdown when the bank told me that I didn’t qualify for a jumbo loan today – then they called me back and said actually I could qualify if I borrowed more money – enough to make you pull your hair out.

I worked in the tower all day today and it was funny having people show up and come up here while I was sitting at my desk. Dave and Steve looked more excited than I did about my being up here. They’d like to see the money they are floating me on is probably a lot of it.

I’m this ** close to getting in all the way – and I’ve made a vow to change my attitude and quit griping about all the things that go wrong in a day or don’t get done and focus instead on the beauty of what does work and how lucky I am. H dropped into my apartment at the Can while I was loading up boxes of books and wanted to know if I had a smoke handy. He said he marvels at how I just go and go and go – he can’t believe my stamina.

Well I marvel at how relaxed the rest of the world appears to be instead of me. How do they do it?

Relax is going to be my new mantra and goal.

Got up this morning and came to the LaLa at 7AM to meet James (carpenter number 10) and lo and behold Giovanni sheepishly showed up on the back porch. He looked at me worried we were going to have a row and I said, are you here to work? And he said yes and took off his coat and we resumed normalcy for the day.

James put screens in on nearly all the doors and then left at 3 to make his 80’s GI Joe costume for Fat Tuesday.

Mike came by to look at the other screen panels and gave an estimate of $1224. Good god!

The A-1 Appliance repair man came to install the hose he had ordered for the dishwasher and ended up spending the entire afternoon under the sink cussing under his breath. He now has to order yet another hose. Lordy!

The fridge showed up around 2:30 in the afternoon – the wrong one – I called the manager at Lowe’s and he said to go ahead and let them take it off the truck and he’d call me right back – he didn’t – and it didn’t fit into the space – and we had to take the light switches off and the shoe molding but in order to do that we had to turn off the electricty – which caused the doorbell to go off nonstop – so the refrain “Who Shot the LaLa?” played on an endless loop making the dishwasher repair man become even grumpier than he was before.

I thought they just needed to order the stainless panels for the front of the frige but turns out the guy at Lowe’s ordered the wrong one all together because this one is outfitted for custom panels. But it still doesn’t open but Lowe’s insists a 36″ opening is all it needs – it has a 37.5″ opening except by the baseboards which give it 36″.

Spoke to the manager at Lowes finally at 6:30PM and he said we would figure this out on Wednesday since Lowe’s is closed for Mardi Gras.

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else’s vision.
– Penn Jillette

Joe was supposed to help me move but I was trapped like a rat and finally when I could get away I called him and he said he was sitting with his boys drinking beer – but then he said he’d come – and you know what he helped me move my desks and file cabinets up into the office. While we were piling the desks into the elevator he asked me if he could ask a personal question – what Joe? I said kind of exasperated – and he said, “do you have something in your past, with your parents, or a man, that hurt you so?”

I stumbled to answer the question because I am not focused on past hurts and so was having a hard time answering him. I told him there was always hurt but there was always good and that I consider myself a lucky person relatively speaking.

When we got the desks up in the office – I was fussing around with their position while Joe went and sat outside on the terrace off my office – in one of the teak adirondak chairs – he looked up at the cloudy sky and said “Rachel, girl, you’ve got it good and you don’t know it.”

Then he told me that if anyone did anything wrong to me in the least he was going to hurt them – he would not tolerate one person hurting me. Good Joe. Whatyagonnado?

I went back to the LaLa and got the Bean and the rest of my stuff and came and set up my office – I’m typing from my tower right now – the future domain of all things wonderful – and well, tomorrow is Mardi Gras – and life is good.

Friday the moving truck comes to get the rest of the stuff – and by Friday night it is just possible I am taking a bath in that tub. I’ll let you know.