strip away the justice, justify the scrutiny

[background music: I Almost Told You That I Loved You, Papa Roach]

    Against all odds, I'm surprisingly less bonkers than I thought I'd be at this point. Why? I've got the keys to the new place, which doesn't yet have a name.

[Better Now, Rascal Flatts]

    Landlord Bob met me over there, keys and garage door opener in hand. While I brought in a carload of stuff (random things that didn't need to be packed into boxes so I'd just stuffed them into cloth shopping bags) and stored it as out-of-the-way as possible, he made the last door-lock installation (front door) and repair (door to garage) so that I've got new keys and no one else has them.

[Nookie, Limp Bizkit]

    I was careful to take my shoes off on each trip in, because the carpets were freshly cleaned and I want to keep them that way as long as possible.

    It felt good to get a start on the move, to do a big chunk of the manual labor myself (which I "missed out on" for the move to The Rat Hole because of the timing with picking up the truck and having the cable installed). It already looks like somebody belongs there.

[Hate that I Love You, Rihanna]

    And the place is beautiful. Even as I was getting physically tired, hauling my out-of-shape ass up to the second (third? whatever?) floor to leave things in the main bathroom, I kept thinking how amazing the fancy windows are—they are easy-open and self-locking—and how damn cool it's going to be to sit at the top of those stairs and talk on the phone with my friends from NY, CA, and AK.

[Gotta Have You, The Weepies]

    And I don't even talk on the phone all that often. Maybe now I will?

    I also crossed my own personal Rubicon this afternoon, writing The Letter to the Rat Hole Landlords (a.k.a. Slumlords). It is a delicate balance of "conveying the extent of my personal dismay and fear" and "subtly threatening to use the power of my legal education and expertise"—which really means 'hiring an attorney to represent my interests because I wouldn't have more than the first clue how to do that', but they don't know that. I was as polite as possible.

[Don't Say You Won't, Alkaline Trio]

    If you know me at all, you know I have the knack for being horribly impolite when I wish it, so count it in my favor that I held back. I was respectful, but direct. I was direct, but not aggressive. I expressed the problems, offered a solution, and indicated that I expected the solution to occur. No, I'm not really banking on it, but since legal relationships are all about who pays, it never hurts (OK, it rarely hurts) to make one's preference known.

[Giving Up, Ingrid Michaelson]

    Anyway, it was remarkably freeing to write the damned letter. I'd been stressing about it for a week, since I talked to The animal-brained Lawyer (who, naturally, created his own...no, he didn't create it, but he was, prehaps, the contributing factor to my own internal drama). He's like, what—a Coke at bedtime? a triple-serving size bag of M&Ms for lunch?—to me, whirling my brain like Skittles soup. I can count on one hand the people who leave me feeling 3 steps behind; he is the leader of the pack. So. Yeah. I knew I had to write the letter. I put it off. I wrote it today. It's 3 pages long. It wasn't easy. But now that it's done, I feel 100x better.

[Letting Go, Lupe Fiasco]

    I'm also not deluded enough to think that it's really going to work. It seems important to reiterate that.

[Never Say Never, The Fray]

    So now I'm sitting in my fairly barren rat hole, listening to a mix I'm working on (for the neverending broken heart, who contacted me last night for the first time in a month—because he missed me), drinking a well-earned beer, contemplating either a cool shower and then bed, or just falling into bed and a shower in the morning. It's looking more like the latter.

[Lover Lay Down, Dave Matthews Band]

    9:30 tomorrow, my most good-natured (no, it's not a crime) and probably most patient friend will arrive. We'll take a load of plants, food & clothes to the new place on our way to pick up the truck, and then it's ON: six hours to move everything the *bleep* out of the Rat Hole and into the new place. I don't care what happens to any of it, where any of it goes, beyond getting my bed upstairs and set up. The rest of it can happen when it happens. Once it's all out of here, I'll be comfortable in mailing the letter (yes, with a receipt) and never returning to this place. Ugh.

    The new place is really great, though. Can't wait 'til y'all see it.

[title quotation from the Lupe Fiasco song, above]