Home, the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
~Robert Montgomery
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
~Robert Montgomery
When we first conceived of the plan to move to San Francisco with no jobs and only the stuff we could pack in our small Toyota, I knew it would be difficult. I had lived in Indiana for 10 years (TEN YEARS!)--way longer than I had expected--and I had been in school all that time. I had a bunch of friends that I had known for a lot of years, I knew where everything was, and I was part of a community based on mutual interests and the shared trauma that is a PhD program. I knew that leaving all that behind and embarking on a new life--even a new life with someone I loved--would be hard and, at times, even excruciating.
What I didn't realize was that I would be leaving behind something else that was perhaps even more difficult to live without. I was leaving a home: an apartment that I loved and a town that I at least had grown to like even if it was a small town in Indiana. I was also going to be leaving behind a lot of my stuff. I know that for many people, the act of divesting yourself of stuff makes you feel freer, lighter, maybe even more secure because you can prove to yourself that you don't need things. I think the girlfriend feels a little like that.
I, on the other hand, tend to equate "having stuff" with security, with comfort, in short, with home. With very little else about this leap feeling secure, not having "my stuff" suddenly seemed like a way, way bigger issue than it should have been. Add to that the (literal) homelessness and joblessness, and the whole world felt, and continues to feel, like a very insecure place. We have very little control over the job situation, outside of applying to as many jobs as possible and signing up for temp agencies, which we have been doing. The stuff we left behind in Indiana will continue to be in Indiana until at least one of us is employed so we can afford to go back and do something with it. But finding a place to live, that we could do something about.
All of which is a prelude to saying, we found an apartment. We did a lot of research on the internet and finally came up with a small, family-owned apartment complex that is a 2-story ring of apartments around a central courtyard with a swimming pool. It had an unoccupied, second-floor, 2-bedroom apartment and allows cats with no extra deposit or cat rent. It is pretty much perfect for us. We moved in the day we left the dogsitting gig.
You'll recall that the stuff we have with us either 1) came out with us in the Toyota or 2) was shipped in boxes to us. We brought no furniture. We brought no pots and pans. We brought 2 coffee cups, 2 forks, 2 butter knives, 6 spoons (for some reason known only to the dark reaches of the girlfriend's brain), 2 sharp knives, a coffee pot, a wine bottle opener, and a beer bottle opener as far as kitchen wares go. We also brought 2 pillows, a set of queen sheets, and 3 blankets. I could give you a list of all the other things in the car, but suffice it to say that we're pretty low on housewares of all kinds. We bought an air mattress to sleep on, a fry pan, a regular pan, some plates and bowls, and a desk chair. We got a lamp and 2 plastic lawn chairs from the girlfriend's friends and a desk and a thick foam mattress pad from a list called freecycle.
I have gone through the inventory of our household stuff because it is the area that we're still having the most trouble with. Without jobs, we can't justify going out and buying furniture, but that's what we really want to do--to turn our barren apartment into a home that feels like a home. To make it feel like it's a place we intend to stay for a while, rather than somewhere we're still just passing through. Don't get me wrong, it's a really nice apartment, it's just hard to appreciate it when there's no place comfortable to sit down, there's no place to put the few items that we did bring from Indiana so all our stuff is kind of everywhere, and we spend most of our time staring at it and wishing we could do something about it.
So here's hoping that the girlfriend will find out that the job she interviewed for last week is going to hire her and that I do a good job in the interview with a tutoring company that I have on Friday so we can get a few pieces of furniture and start making plans for how to get the rest of our stuff here! And that the freecycle thing continues to work for us. This really is a very nice desk.
Next time: Pets! Jobs?
What I didn't realize was that I would be leaving behind something else that was perhaps even more difficult to live without. I was leaving a home: an apartment that I loved and a town that I at least had grown to like even if it was a small town in Indiana. I was also going to be leaving behind a lot of my stuff. I know that for many people, the act of divesting yourself of stuff makes you feel freer, lighter, maybe even more secure because you can prove to yourself that you don't need things. I think the girlfriend feels a little like that.
I, on the other hand, tend to equate "having stuff" with security, with comfort, in short, with home. With very little else about this leap feeling secure, not having "my stuff" suddenly seemed like a way, way bigger issue than it should have been. Add to that the (literal) homelessness and joblessness, and the whole world felt, and continues to feel, like a very insecure place. We have very little control over the job situation, outside of applying to as many jobs as possible and signing up for temp agencies, which we have been doing. The stuff we left behind in Indiana will continue to be in Indiana until at least one of us is employed so we can afford to go back and do something with it. But finding a place to live, that we could do something about.
All of which is a prelude to saying, we found an apartment. We did a lot of research on the internet and finally came up with a small, family-owned apartment complex that is a 2-story ring of apartments around a central courtyard with a swimming pool. It had an unoccupied, second-floor, 2-bedroom apartment and allows cats with no extra deposit or cat rent. It is pretty much perfect for us. We moved in the day we left the dogsitting gig.
You'll recall that the stuff we have with us either 1) came out with us in the Toyota or 2) was shipped in boxes to us. We brought no furniture. We brought no pots and pans. We brought 2 coffee cups, 2 forks, 2 butter knives, 6 spoons (for some reason known only to the dark reaches of the girlfriend's brain), 2 sharp knives, a coffee pot, a wine bottle opener, and a beer bottle opener as far as kitchen wares go. We also brought 2 pillows, a set of queen sheets, and 3 blankets. I could give you a list of all the other things in the car, but suffice it to say that we're pretty low on housewares of all kinds. We bought an air mattress to sleep on, a fry pan, a regular pan, some plates and bowls, and a desk chair. We got a lamp and 2 plastic lawn chairs from the girlfriend's friends and a desk and a thick foam mattress pad from a list called freecycle.
I have gone through the inventory of our household stuff because it is the area that we're still having the most trouble with. Without jobs, we can't justify going out and buying furniture, but that's what we really want to do--to turn our barren apartment into a home that feels like a home. To make it feel like it's a place we intend to stay for a while, rather than somewhere we're still just passing through. Don't get me wrong, it's a really nice apartment, it's just hard to appreciate it when there's no place comfortable to sit down, there's no place to put the few items that we did bring from Indiana so all our stuff is kind of everywhere, and we spend most of our time staring at it and wishing we could do something about it.
So here's hoping that the girlfriend will find out that the job she interviewed for last week is going to hire her and that I do a good job in the interview with a tutoring company that I have on Friday so we can get a few pieces of furniture and start making plans for how to get the rest of our stuff here! And that the freecycle thing continues to work for us. This really is a very nice desk.
Next time: Pets! Jobs?
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