Sorry. Long time, no complaints. It's not as if there hasn't been anything to complain about. It's just now, taking a break from art and job searching, that I have some time to do it right...
So we made it to LA, thanks mostly to April's driving of the U-Haul (with the platform auto trailer in the back too!). It got pretty scary in through the mountains of Arizona before Nevada. Ever been scared awake? Try the Hoover Dam detour -- lane changes in pitch black with visibility of only about 30 feet.
We had a friend of April's check out the place we'd be living, and she vouched for it. Things that are normal to anyone out here but not to the newbies -- stairs and hills and no-outlet streets -- were overlooked, or rather not considered. So when we drove into our new neighborhood for the first time, we pulled onto the narrow street, and our new landlady waved us on down. The turnaround circle at the end of the block was too tight for a U-Haul and car trailer. After about a half-hour of trying to get it out, we ended up palming the passing garbage man a pretty penny to back it down the street for us.
Then we began the unpacking of the truck. What took me about three-and-a-half hours to load in Florida (from our ground-floor apartment to the truck a quarter of a block away) took April and me two days to unload, and even then we left some of the huge stuff in the garage; two days later we paid some migrant workers to move the rest, because we just had no strength left.
(The view from our house is gorgeous. We have two big picture windows and a patio balcony with a sliding glass door off the bedroom. It all looks down a hill. From the back patio area, where there are grapefruit, lemon, and fig trees, we can see the Hollywood sign in the distance-- distant enough to be a nice view, and far enough to not be near the super-touristy zone.)
Back to the unpacking. It was at the very end of the first day that I noticed I was having some major sneezing and chest constriction. April had discussed with the landlady that I am severely allergic to cats, and she said she would clean the place and that her cats weren't in our area. When we arrived, however, the landlady said the cats had the run of the place. We also noticed that we share air ducts with the owner, who lives upstairs. (This woman is a nurse!?)
We had to buy a Dyson to clean the carpet. It's a souped-up vacuum designed to get pet hair and dander out of carpets; also, it's apparently designed to take the money out of your wallet. The good luck was that the floor model was on sale, and the manager knocked more off the price when she heard the swanky neighborhood we lived in. It was like name-dropping but with zip codes.
We bought it. I vacuumed. And again. And again. Still sick.
A doctor's visit later, and I was on antibiotics and "do not operate machinery"-strength cough syrup. Ever cough so bad it triggers your gag reflex and you puke? I can scratch that one off the list.
Sickness aside, it took vigorous cleaning and closing off the air vents to slow the cat poop/pee smell from coming down here. Yes, i am back on the cats. These cats are too stupid to shit in the litterbox. How do i know? Well, when I walk around the building to go to the laundry room, I can usually see a cat sitting in a window, sitting there with crusty poop stains on itself and poopy paw prints on the bathtub it likes to lounge on/in, in between taking craps in it. And every once in a while it comes wafting down the vents.
I will have to kill myself if a stranger ever tells me I stink like cat pee.
The hills. Lovely. Beautiful. Make me feel like a wheezy Kenny Kreiger (the sixth-grade odd boy too weak to lift and play trombone yet too large to wrestle anyone in gym class, except me -- even though he outweighed me by about 50 pounds, I was the closest in weight). So the flatlands and lack of pedestrian opportunities in Florida have made my walking stamina sucky. After a month of working up to it, i can now make it down and up the hill without too much help from the dogs pulling me. (I actually taught them the command "mush.")
And now, a seldom given comment of praise for Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, the local competitor to Starbucks: Think of someone telling you they are giving you a minty wafer wrapped in a 20-dollar bill-- and then giving you watery baby poop wrapped in an old pita. (Okay, I swear the next article will be much lighter in the excrement references.) That's what it would be like to go back to Starbucks after Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. It is far superior.
I am getting off the point, which was never really all that clear to begin with.