Officially an Ann Arborite

The days since my last post have been blurry. There was quite a bit of sweating and grunting over a period of three days whilst wrestling furniture down the stairs of a 100-year-old Victorian house. The matress and box springs came out the window a la Monty Python's Holy Grail. The first night in the new place I had no bed and no hot water. I made several vaguely remembered sad and lonely late-night phone calls. The following day, still hot and sticky and feeling extra-bummed about leaving Chelsea, I sat down on the only box-free surface - the toilet - and wept like a five-year-old.

But I still managed to get a date that week! After beers at Arbor Brewing, we went over to Top of the Park for the free movie, which turned out to be Monty Python's Holy Grail.

Most of my time has been spent at the apartment, making it look more like home. In my first week I have already run over and completely crushed the downspouting in the back yard with my car and put more nail holes in the walls than the landlord probably anticipated. The front of the apartment is a Gobi desert of hardened earth, with street-tough thistles clawing their way through. Pots of coneflowers and daisies await transplantation. They seem happier than they did in Chelsea, having come into full bloom in the last three days.

On my first perambulation around the neighborhood, I poked into Eberwhite Woods for a minute, and found a downy woodpecker feather. Otherwise, the inventory of wildlife around the new place is something like this: house sparrow, house sparrow, house sparrow, house sparrow, starling, starling, starling, sub-adult robin, cardinal, cardinal, house sparrow, house sparrow, juvenile Homo sapiens, house sparrow, little bunny rabbit, starling, starling, house sparrow, house sparrow, house sparrow, house sparrow.

And spiders. I have many spider friends in my new place. And earwigs who want to live in my magazines and I'm afraid I'm going to have evict them.

The cat was a little jumpy for a day or two, but she's doing well. The anti-histamines prescribed for her allergic skin have not been working, probably because they aren't particularly effective when Itchykitty Skinnybutt spits them out under the refrigerator.

And yay! for the post office. Law School P's key found its way to me. He asked what he could do for me for taking care of his cats. I told him to bring me a shrubbery.