Overwhelm; Or, RDB bitches and moans about the blessings in her life.

I want to put in "wood" flooring (that Pergo stuff or whatever) in my dining room/living room area.

I want to paint that area, as well as a wall or two in each of the two bedrooms.

I want to buy a hammock to put on my porch.

I want to buy a bedroom set (but one that matches my wardrobe units that I love).

I want to buy a couch (but it has to work with the as-yet-non-existent wood floor and the as-yet-non-existent color of the walls).

I want to buy a TV bench.
And a TV.
(And a Wii and Rock Band, let's be honest, but I can probably handle that part alone.)

I want to buy a dining room table.

What order to do these things in, and how and where and when to do them all, and how much money to spend on them, and what color/fabric/shape/size/texture/model/style to do it all in... these things are beyond me.

I am so overwhelmed. And it turns out, I'm not really a project girl. I have some friends who are uneasy without a big project in progress; as soon as they finish one big thing they are on to another. They'd love this. Me, I want it done instantly. The second I figure out what I want to do I wish it were already done. I want to enjoy the finished project, not the process, at least not in this case. I have other things to *do*.

I do have the money to do these things on a simple scale. I mean, I can do them, but some of the furniture is coming from Ikea and some of it from Urban Home, none of it from Moda Italia or H. D. Buttercup. And that's fine; when I really wish I had oodles of money is when I think about the getting-all-of-this-done part. I am going to be out of my house for the next two months - go now! do it! I want the money to pay someone to take care of all of it while I am away so I can come home and see it finished. I do not want to oversee it myself, I want someone else in charge.

That's the key, isn't it? I want someone else in charge.

PS This post is from slightly over two weeks ago but it was somehow sitting in drafts and didn't get published, I don't know why. I'm at camp; definitely not thinking about all the things that aren't getting done at my condo right now... but I have visited this one dining room table twice now... without ordering it... arrrgh.

More about the condo, of course: a positive, a negative, and a neutral.

0. My apartment had a laundry room, downstairs, that consisted of two washers and two dryers. A total wash cost $2.00 in quarters. My condo has a laundry room, on the same floor as my unit, with SIX of each washers and dryers. It is bigger, brighter, and much cleaner… and a total wash costs $1.50. Sure, it would be nice to have the washer and dryer be free and in my own unit, and perhaps I will at some point, but this is already daaaamn nice. Yeah fifty cents cheaper! What a win.

1. Once, just once, I have driven all the way to the old apartment (cue BNL – honestly, I love that song) and halfway into the driveway before realizing I didn’t live there anymore.

2. Annoyance: my new place came with a very nice refrigerator, one that was much newer than the one I had in my apartment and which I bought on craigslist over four years ago (and which the Salvation Army kindly carted away for me last week). In the old freezer, I used the top shelf to keep a couple of trays of ice and a bowl for ice cubes, since I could never handle that whole take-a-few-cubes-out-of-the-tray-but-manage-to-keep-the-rest-of-the-ice-from-falling-out-all-over-the-place skill. The new one has a built-in ice maker/water dispenser thingy, so there is no top shelf; that space is taken up by the ice maker… which doesn’t appear to work. The water in the door works, so clearly some part of it is correctly connected to the plumbing and turned on, but the ice doesn’t work, and I don’t know why. I don’t even really know how to know if it’s the ice maker that’s broken or the hookup or a switch that’s not on or what, but I know eventually I’ll get someone who understands these things to tell me the answer and hopefully even to fix it. In the meantime, where you normally trade the space for automatic ice, I have no space AND no automatic ice. And that is very annoying, since I use my ice, like, every day. Oh, the extreme horrors of my insanely difficult life :)

Whatchou talkin about, Willis?

Ohmigod do I love my condo. It terrifies me, and overwhelms me, and causes the occasionally nearly-crippling self-doubt (but what doesn’t, in my life?), but I LOVE MY CONDO. You know, I was looking at places on and off for about a year, and I had started with a much wider range of possibilities than I ended up with, in the sense that when I began, I didn’t really know what I was looking for. Sure, maybe a one-bedroom would work, I thought. Sure, maybe it made financial sense to look in Tarzana/Encino/Reseda/VanNuys/StudioCity/NorthHollywood and not just Sherman Oaks. Sure, maybe blahblahblah. I definitely knew I’d would *like* a two-bedroom in Sherman Oaks, but in April of 2008, that seemed pretty out of reach for me because the prices were just too high. But I continued looking in fits and bursts, prices continued to drop, and I narrowed down a few of the parameters: had to have at least two bedrooms and two bathrooms and space for two cars to park. Van Nuys addresses no longer acceptable. Farther west of the 405 than a couple of miles no longer acceptable, and farther north of Ventura Boulevard than a few blocks also no longer acceptable. I stopped looking for a while; I started looking again. Prices continued to drop. I stopped again and started again. I considered my friend’s proposal that I should be looking at small houses, not condominiums. I let my realtor know how much I really, really liked my current neighborhood, even though it was kind of expensive. And a year later, I ended up getting a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom nearly 1400 sq ft condo with a huge patio exactly one block from where my apartment was!! And at a price that was $60,000-$100,000 less than similar condos had been selling for only one year earlier. AND it’s 2009 so I’ll get the first-time home buyer’s tax credit thing (actually, I’m claiming it in 2008 so I get the money sooner – even better, and now you understand part of the reason for the belowandaforementioned accountant). Yay Me!

Losing Weight

So, I am packing and moving and therefore I am trying to Throw Shit Out. To this end, my wonderful friend Leah came over the other day and watched me try on clothes I bought many years and many miles ago and made the perfect "I love you but THROW THAT SHIT OUT" face at all the appropriate moments and then yesterday I brought nine bags of clothes to Goodwill. I mean, Trader Joe's paper shopping bags, so not huge, but still. Nine bags.

So now I am starting to pack up my books and I'm hearing Leah in my head saying, as she did on Saturday, "do you ever get rid of a book?" And I told her that I did, sometimes, yes, but not so often. And that is the truth; I do sometimes, and sometimes I send them off in the mail to a happy reader elsewhere in the world who wants some specific book I have but don't really want, all thanks to BookMooch.com, which I love. (It's awesome. To date I have sent off 22 books I did not want and received 23 books I did want. Most of the ones I sent cost about $3 to mail; most of the ones I received are ones I would have spent $7 or so for in a used bookstore or $15 for in a new bookstore. Fabulous.)

And so anyway, I'm starting to pack up my books and I just pulled off 10 books I am not going to keep! That is huge for me, trust me. Two of them are signed by the author and still I'm not keeping them - that is unbelievably out of character for me, the girl who has a separate shelf devoted to books signed by their authors. No really; that's one of the 26 shelves: Books Signed By Their Authors.

Ten books, two of which are signed by their authors. I rule.

Can you find this for me?

The poem called "My God Father of the Gentiles". I want to read it.

Thank you.

Oh and by the way.....

I BOUGHT A CONDO. I CLOSED LAST TUESDAY. I OWN A CONDOMINIUM.

I need a couch. A dining room table. A bedroom set. Hell, a decorator (ha). Because I'm the sort of kid Anna Quindlen could love:
"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."

Support the RDB Housing Fund. Send me a check for twenty grand.

See, here's the thing. I've been condo shopping for aaaaaaaaaages now, and prices have been coming down and it's all very exciting (and terrifying) for a first-time buyer who is ready to take the plunge.

I've seen a lot of places and I've learned a lot about the process and about what's out there and what changes I could or would make to various units... etc. And I've been learning about what I like and what I don't, and what I could live with and without, and of course I have my top-10-ideal-attributes list in my head and every condo has some number of these items and the more the better but no one place has it all... etc.

HERE'S THE PROBLEM. I HAVE FOUND MY DREAM CONDO. And it costs about $20,000 more than I was planning to spend.

Want to give me some money? A little bit of money? A lot of money? No really, want to give me some money? Or know someone who does?

Sigh.