I have a coworker and neighbor who said I could come live with them instead my terrible (and now former) roommate. So I stayed to the end of the month, as I'd already paid for the rest of December, and moved with 14 minutes left before January 1st.
The plan is to save up this month's rent and use it towards a deposit on a place, so that I can actually be on the lease, not need to move every few months, and avoid some of the many issues involved with in an unofficial sublease.
So I spent New Year's Eve there, two nights at a friend's, and then last I went to crash back at the neighbors but was locked out. I have keys, but there are also deadbolts. I'd grabbed a drink with a coworker after work, and after waiting on the trains to run, it was now thirty past midnight. I tried calling and knocking to no relief, and thank goodness a friend was awake and I spent the night at their place instead.
But again, waiting on trains plus the walk to and from the station....my whole body was shaking with my shivers once I finally got inside.
It was an oversight, but not one I wanted to replicate. I had to call out from work to rest today, so as not to sabotage my health, not to mention I didn't have my necessary meds on me last night.
So new plan: a different friend is out of town through the last week of January and left me keys before he left. I've been looking for the right time to move there, and figured this was as good a sign as any.
And thus I headed back to the place I'd tried to sleep at the night before, gathered my belongings and hermit crab, and took an über up to the Bronx (because if I can't stand the cold, my tropical hermit certainly can't).
But then of course chaos ensued. Side stepping the story of the über driver who yelled at me over then phone, made me cancel the trip (and get fined for it) and then accepted my following request for someone else (...), I got in a car, quickly loaded my things and then the crab, and he dropped me off at my new home.
Only I'd never been there before and I couldn't get the key to work but someone on their way out held the door for me and I lugged all my stuff up to the fifth floor....only not to find the apartment and then to discover - whoops, the driver dropped me off on the wrong street.
So back down I went, careful not to get locked out of the building I wasn't supposed to be inside of while my stuff was still being gathered, loaded myself into the next car, insisted to this driver that I hadn't entered the same address twice, up I went this time with working key....finally in the right building at the right apartment... only to find that once again I am locked out...with working keys in my hand. This time not a human oversight, but a technical one.....the lock is falling out of the door and thus my working keys can't actually unbolt my surroundings.
So here I am, sitting on the floor of a foreign hallway, encircled by my belongings, munching on my thawing food, keeping my hermit crab warm with my own body heat, waiting to be rescued by my friend's roommate on his way here....who's never had such an issue with their lock before.
And thus my stance that this isn't me focusing on the negatives of a neutral situation, or somehow recreating this situation with my choices, but rather that there is something cosmically and comically at fault.
I don't know what I'm supposed to learn from it, because honestly this is just further validating my decision to sign a lease and have a stable home. But hey. At least my little crab is okay after three moves in a cold week, and I'm grateful to have my little companion climbing on me as we wait for the roommate and the future. He's the most consistent thing I've had in my life in the last two a half years and it's amazing that a little thing could be my home.
So that's what I'm taking away for now. That and the hope that I'll sleep not in a hallway tonight.
Wish me luck.
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