Moving IV: Epic Fail

Started trying to put things away today and mostly failed, in large part because the apartment now resembles one of those sliding-piece picture puzzles:  everything is mixed up with everything else, and there is no place to move it and sort it out, because every space one might move it to is already filled by something else.  I took a crack at sorting out the cider-making equipment first, then the Christmas stuff, then the things of Jack’s that will be kept, then the things of Jack’s that will be thrown away, stacking things atop one another, grinding my back again and again against the low archways and torturous spaces, and getting more and more frustrated, until finally I realized I was walking in circles, which is what I do when I short-circuit.  And all the while the temperature outside was steadily, perversely rising…  When the sweat started dripping off my forehead and chest and onto the rug, and I saw that the bacon grease in the cast iron pan from the morning’s breakfast was still a clear liquid, I realized with a not-so-silent curse that I was going to have to shelve everything else and put the air conditioners in.

The air conditioner that came with the apartment went into its spot in 10 minutes, with a minimum of fuss, because various pieces of wood were nailed around the window and sill to accommodate it long ago.  It, of course, is useless:  it’s old, spits out almost no cold air (I honestly can’t even tell if its compressor goes on), and is in the living room, which has no containment and is unusable anyway, on account of being filled with BOXES.  The air conditioner that I brought with me from the old apartment is new, and works like a champ.  It took me over two hours to put it into the bedroom window, because some nuance of its underside contour prevented it from being safely stable in the new location.  I had to figure out how to stabilize it, scrounge up the wood to shim it, size the wood without a saw (because I don’t own one) by knocking serrations in it with a hammer and screwdriver and then breaking the it with my heel against my old cutting board from Ivory Grove, then manhandle it all into place by myself, with Jack trying to show me what he was doing on Spore every five minutes.  I got it operational, but I’ve discovered that while it’s operating, some nuance of the architecture makes everything in a five foot radius of it vibrate with a profound basso hum, which can only be alleviated by opening the closet door (eliminating any containment of the cold air.)  And it’s plugged into the only grounded outlet in the entire bedroom, which just happens to be the same outlet that Eve is plugged into, since the bedroom was the only place I could put Eve other than in Jack’s room.  And there’s no door on the entrance to the bedroom, so there’s no containment of the cold air anyway.  I have thumbtacked a sheet across it as a temporary measure.  It’s every bit as ghetto as it was when I did it in the previous apartment, and in my house at Ivory Grove before that, and pisses me off just as much, and works just as well.

I have decided that tomorrow, I am going to start throwing stuff out wholesale, in garbage bags, without sorting it.  Fuck this noise.

In the meantime, it might be below 80 in the bedroom now.  And I have a cold Magic Hat #9.  The inside of the bottle cap said, “Wise choice, my friend.”

Indeed.