eiffel 65, leave my head please

So I moved last week. That's why the site was unavailable for a few days, and why I was unavailable for slightly longer. Jen and my parents and me packed up two years' worth of garbage, computer parts, depression, and other household furnishings, throwing away approximately 75% of the aforementioned stuff or donating it to other worthy causes. And then we moved me to Marlborough.

After two years of living in the wonderful Victorian duplex in beautiful downtown Reading, Massachusetts, it's time to move on. Time to move on to a small one-bedroom apartment in a nice apartment complex that gives me candy when I sign the lease. Yup. Nice candy in a nice mug with a little ribbon around it and everything. Butterfinger! Tasty. Of course, I do not want to be able to say I moved into this apartment just for the candy, so I've found plenty else to like about it, first and foremost being, well, the odd color scheme.

My new place in Marlborough is blue. Yes, blue. The carpet is blue, the bathroom fixtures are blue -- this includes the toilet, sink basin, and the shower -- and the filtered light through my new bedroom window is blue. And now I can't get that goddamn song out of my head.

Here is a list of what I miss in or near Reading:

1. The black-on-white street signs.
2. Emperor's Choice.
3. Showcase Cinemas Woburn.
4. The fact that we lived on a one-way street off a one-way street.
5. Betty's Thrift Shop, where the sign read "Come in and browse! Love, Betty."
6. Stumbling, nicely soused, down the less-than-1/4 mile walk from the commuter rail station to the house at midnight after one of MediaOne Express' big-ass parties at the House of Blues
7. The Horseshoe BBQ.
8. Kitty's.
9. The uber-l33t shortcut down Washington St. to Rt. 128.
10. The Atlantic.
11. Walking, dirt-poor and freezing, in the snow a mile to Burger King (crossing the railroad tracks) because it was Free Fries Day and I wanted to eat
12. The phrase "Victorian duplex"
13. The three porthole-like windows on the third floor.
14. Hardwood floors.
15. Beautiful trim all around the house.
16. Researching the house's history at the Reading Library the first week I lived there because, being unemployed, I had nothing else better to do
17. Jamie's hard drive magnets attaching stuff to the fridge.
18. The wonderfully reassuring sound of the commuter rail train's bell, no matter what time of the day you heard it
19. Ditto the clock bell on the Epispocal Church in the center of town, gently ringing 3 AM on a hot summer evening.
20. The heat register in the downstairs bathroom, which kept the room nice and damn toasty in the wintertime (it helps to have a toasty warm bathroom)
21. Mario's Pizza, where every delivery order was taken by folks who sounded quite apathetic and every pizza delivered almost-hot yet the pizza was always delicious.
22. Our pipe dreams of drilling holes everywhere and dropping 10BaseT down from the ceiling
23. Chew Chew's, home of the ultra-cheap English Muffin / Grapefruit Juice breakfast for my commuter rail commuting.
24. The creaking of an old house, especially at night.
25. Enough space to have Jan's chili parties
26. My pipe dream of having a monthly movie night
27. Moxie the computer, whose case and monitor we had to leave behind because there simply was no room left in the van (I'm sorry, Rachel. But Moxie'd been dead for 18 months.)
28. The ultra-cool fact that the best exit to Reading on both I-95 and I-93 was Exit 38.
29. That roast beef place in Winchester I always remembered how to get to but could never remember the name
30. Being 20 minutes from Canobie Lake Park, 10 minutes from Somerville, and no more than a half hour from the ocean.
31. In that same vein, late-night road trips to Maine "just because".
32. The knowledge that where you were right at that moment was very special and it was HOME, not just to you, but to generations of folks before you.

Here's what I don't miss now that I'm out of Reading:

1. The insane landlady.
2. The insane housemates.
3. The insane people who drove 50 mph down our tiny road because it was a shortcut
4. Having a zillion funeral parlors nearby.
5. The 50-mile commute to Compaq at Marlborough.
6. $15 parking tickets for parking on the street overnight.
7. The fact that the house isn't terribly well-insulated.
8. The insane landlady choosing the exact day I move out as the day she brings the plumbers in to renovate the bathroom, something she'd been promising us for at least a year beforehand. (Though watching the plumber chuck the sink out the second story window where it smashed into a zillion pieces in the front yard was rather cool.)
9. The exorbitant electric bill brought on by three computer-lovin' people.
10. Knocks on the door.
11. The fact that nothing in Reading was allowed to remain open past 10:00 or something. (No 24-hour ANYTHING.)
12. The Phantom Rottweilers on the other side of the house.
13. Having an important piece of mail get lost in someone else's pile.
14. The Phantom Ring.
15. The basement steps.
16. The incredibly cranky furnace, whose repairs I guess I'm still paying off.
17. Nobody (myself included) ever remembering that Tuesday was trash day, so leave the trash out Monday night.
18. The sickening feeling you get when you realize you're having more meaningful conversations with your cats than with your housemates.
19. The sickening feeling when you decide eh, that's not too much of a problem.
20. Getting evicted because housemates decide to leave in the middle of the month without even a 30-day notice and refuse to pay the rest of the utilities (or even pay the rent they've owed for months) and the insane landlady deciding you can't pay the rent on your own so out you go even though you've been a very good tenant yourself for two years. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
21. Having to leave stuff behind because you've got a one-day moving window and nobody else has come by to pick up their stuff or throw any of their old junk away so you spent a lot of time throwing it away and you're not sure who the landlady's gonna sue once she finds out all this crap has been left behind. Again, not that I'm bitter.

Here's what I really enjoy about my new place in Marlborough:

1. The fact that it's mine, mine, MINE ALL MINE.
2. The fact that if I get evicted due to no rent or whatever, it's my own fault, dammit. I am not responsible for the errors of others, only myself. Er, only my own errors.
3. Quiet. You can hear someone's radio or television while outside in the hall, but not once you're in the comfort of your own apartment.
4. One bedroom. One bathroom. One living room. One dining room. One kitchen. One balcony. MINE.
5. The fact that it's cat-friendly. (The cats say this is their favorite thing, too.)
6. The clean slate. I've got a nice shiny new apartment and this time it won't get trashed or messed up or anything. Honest.
7. I can arrange the furniture the way I like it and if I don't like it, I can move it around to suit my needs without having to ask anyone else first. Hoo hah!
8. Certain establishments, like pharmacies and supermarkets and Bickford's restaurants, are allowed to be open 24 hours in Marlborough.
9. Certain establishments are located very very close to me.
10. A dumpster outside, meaning I can take trash out whenever it needs to be taken out, and not piled up for one day out of the week that I'd forget anyway.
11. The Price Chopper on Rt. 20 has a live sushi chef during regular business hours, so you can buy sushi made to order right before your eyes. At a supermarket!
12. Instead of a 50-mile commute to work (100 miles round-trip) every day, I now have a commute of 3 miles.
13. Because of this, I can get up when I normally do (no disruption of my sleeping cycle) and have time for a good shower plus a sit-down breakfast with actual cereal and actual milk and actual juice and actual coffee, and still get to work earlier than before, feeling great and unharried and unhurried (no battles down Route 495), and ready to have a day.

And that, I think, is almost worth the cost of moving.

Take care, and don't eat anything you shouldn't.