Like god, Aunty Christ hates you

My horoscope from Tuesday: This is not the time to make sweeping changes, and any mistakes made now could be particularly difficult to undo. Keep a low profile and stick like glue to the status quo.

Soooooo yeah. On Tuesday, I unpacked my belongings from the move from my old apartment, assisted (read: watched) Rich Bachelor with his unpacking, finished cleaning said old apartment, and accepted a new job, which I begin Monday. To the stars, I say: phhhhhhhhhhhlllllllllllbbbbbbbbbbt, raspberries to you.

(To anyone who does not care to hear the intimate details of my life, I repeat: phhhhhhhhhhhlllllllllllbbbbbbbbbbt, raspberries to you. Come back next week or something.)

The new house, which for the time being lives up to the moniker Fix-Um Haus, is tiny, cramped, dirty, outlet- and closet-poor, hot, needy, needy, needy. The backyard is another story. The house sits on two lots, and since the house itself is tiny, the fenced-in yard is huge, encircled with grape vines and blackberry bushes. Which sounds like paradise, right? It’s actually kind of a white-trash paradise: yellow grass, crumbling concrete driveway, weeds, overgrown bushes. We have a hammock, backyard lights, a pool that tha thug dawgs are afraid of, and a lawnmower that no one wants to use. Oh, it’s magical, after so many years living in apartments and condos, to have a yard of my own to obsess about. So many dead leaves! So much cat poop!

I spent much of the day today at a laundromat across the street from a Chinese joint named Lung Fung, which sounds suspiciously like “lung fun” or “lung fungus.” In actuality the interior reminds one more of the latter than the former, as no fun is, can, or ever will be had in Lung Fung’s greasy, MSG-soaked bar. I’ve always been partial to shitty areas of town, and our new neighborhood is pretty darn shitty. In a good way! I mean, in a good way, totally! The heavy police presence is a really good thing, I think.

Three more days of un-paid labor, before the office job begins. Oh, I am so looking forward to/dreading this thing. When I left my previous position, last August, I was determined to find myself in a work situation that I actually, at least, might enjoy when next I found myself in a work situation. Instead I am finding myself in exactly the same work situation I was running away from last year. Aww shit. A moment of silence, please, for my unacknowledged dreams of a superior life.

Umm … what else? Well, lots of weird overheard conversations lately, for some reason. In Remote Mountain Village, while walking to the ATM machine, this one caught my attention: “I have this mnemonic device I use when I’m trying to remember things. Like, if I go to the grocery store, I’ll be like, ‘Milk, butter, eggs. Milk, butter, eggs.’ You know?” “Yeah,” his companion said. “I know.”

Ohhhhhh right ... repetition. I think I’ve heard of that.

There’s a whole shitstorm of writing to be done about our new neighborhood, and all the conversations we’ve had or overheard with people here. It’s an entire neighborhood of characters, frankly, and not in a good way, that I can see. Several weeks ago, we were ambushed at a bar by a miniature former nurse who wanted to talk about the head injury she had sustained at least a decade ago, including what she has done pretty much every day between said injury and now, including that day’s trip to the food pantry. A few days ago (Tuesday, perhaps—the day of the horoscope), we went to breaky at a pharmacy with a lunch counter, complete with weird, 1970s-style manikins dressed in sequined berets and Brownie uniforms, and were treated to a soliloquy about how wonderful she, the speaker, is—she’s 80, and she’s irrepressible! The couple who were her presumed targets could do nothing but laugh and laugh—uncomfortably, and without humor—before she made her excuses and traveled to the sidewalk café, where she found more unwilling conversation partners.

Any mistakes made now could be difficult to undo. Nonetheless, they are done. Oh fuck, these mistakes are done.