Home Sweet Home

OK, we finally found a place. I am perfectly happy with it, it’s growing on the lil woman, I think she has separation anxiety from the old place. It met all our requirements: at least two bedrooms, two levels, at least 1.5 baths and somewhere to bbq- (deck/balcony)- downtown. I actually think it surpassed our requirements, penthouse suite 42 foot ceilings, bedroom and loft, two full baths, living room and den, courtyard with gas grills, free internet– downtown. The only expectation that we lost was living inside a building. We actually wanted a walk up put your key in place like we had before, but in downtown Baltimore rental properties like that are scarce.

Cons

The cons I immediately see are bearable in the least but for arguments sake they are: (1)The AC doesn’t really boom upstairs. I’m sort of Penguin-like while the lil woman walks around draped in a blanket, I sorta like steam coming off my breath– especially in the summer. (2) Bedrooms aren’t confined. Some sheek retro architect guy designed the place as if it were a Manhattan dwelling for swinger couples who happen to be voyeurs or something. So while I’m in the room watching TV and Micki is hibernating somewhere, she hears my television program and thus turns on another TV and I hear that TV and we behave like angry neighbors adjusting the volume to compensate. This also renders us sex-less when guests are upon us. Which brings me to: (3) Walls are thin. Word of the house is “huh”. We hear shit– we think one of us is talking to us we just walk around yelling “huh?, baby you say something”. It doesn’t help that I talk to inanimate objects and to every asshole on the football field on the TV screen, and to random people I see out on the street out the window (who can’t hear me) but I like yelling: “look at that 300 pound cock diesel muscle bound dude with a dog the size of a sim card”– but that’s just me. I’d like to add a (3.5) because it’s not really gripe but I lose Micki in the place. She leaves the room and boom– gone. You would have to see it to understand, but it’s two separate second floors, I think we should build a bridge across them or something. “Honey where you at?” is the second phrase of the place. Which brings me to: (4)Living room upstairs. This is not actually a gripe again because this was a decision, to make the room adjacent the kitchen (pictured above) a sitting room where no one really sits and making the den the living room where you spill beer and popcorn weekly. The problem with this is after you climb a flight of steps and realize you don’t have your beer– man it’s almost a lease breaker. (5)Living in a complex/community. I’m a get along guy. I get along with whoever the hell I want to get along with. I’m nice to who I want to be nice to. Living here I feel responsible to wave and smile for some reason. We have 24 hour reception/door people, I gotta wave and speak to them. Wave and speak to neighbors. Put a face on. I’m actually a ghetto bred asshole and sooner or later somebody is gonna realize this. This is not so much of a problem as I found my own entrances and exits where I don’t have to encounter humans. (6) The Neighborhood. We’re still in MT. Vernon but our rear end is in Seton Hill. And as quintessential Baltimore goes a neighborhood can go from Heavenly to Hell in one quarter mile. So one half our building is in Heaven the other half in Hell. It doesn’t bother me– I’m from North-East-South-West-whatever parts there are in existence-Hell, but I oft think to myself- am I gonna have to smack a mofo?

But other than that, I really love the place, I think it is the only place we’ve seen that could be possibly better than our last place, which although I’m still very fond of, I’m realizing its best attribute was convenience. And that’s something you want in a dwelling. Once our new home is convenient– I’ll be content.

Beer sports movies and pocorn living room

Example of the open air bedroom design– the two doorways are to bedrooms. They have no immediate ceilings.

Window where I spy/yell at unsuspecting Baltimorons, seven flights up.

Appendix I

Moving. So we were set to move on October first but due to the wedding in Chi we are running behind schedule. We reserve a 14 foot U Haul truck online and are scheduled to pick it up on the most notorious street in Baltimore. Not notorious in it’s really bad, but let’s just say there is no good on this street and it usually is the street that separates the bad from the good. Anyone who lives in Baltimore knows what street I speak of, it spans the width of town and boasts a college, a courthouse, a VD clinic, a graveyard and a funeral home– all on the same street. So I knew something was shady and unpredictable but trying to move the first of the month you need to reserve a moving truck much more in advance. So we get to homeboy hook em ups or whatever it was called– I aint hating homeboy was getting his hustle on– fuck Cassidy– this dude was a hustla and of course “they” or “he” don’t have a 14 foot truck. At this point I need to note that homeboy hook em ups had a bails bondmen service, pre-paid cellphones, Maryland transit passes, and a big sign that said: INTERNET. I’m not sure how that worked, I know Al Gore invented the internet but maybe he gave it to homeboy to sell.

So homeboy is polite I’m ready to fly off the handle at any point and he offers us a 10 foot truck. We would have to make several trips with this truck so homeboy offered us 1/4th off the mileage costs. Thanks homeboy. Since we had to make the extra trips, we needed more time than the allotted eight hours or so, so he said we could bring the truck back tomorrow. Micki yells “you said you were closed on Sunday!” Homeboy says, “I don’t know who told you that”. Micki yells “you did!”. Homeboy says “oh, well we’re open til 1pm”. As if there was a “we”. So I tell homeboy we’ll have it back by noon when Micki realizes the basis of homeboy’s hours: Micki: “you just want us to be back so you can watch football!” Homeboy: “yup”.

So me Micki and the Baba man get into the truck, and before I proceed I must digress. When choosing moving help we selected a)the Baba man because not only is he my best friend that I would count on in a moving situation– he’s a professional art handler. This dude moves shit like nobody’s business– I’ll get into that later. I chose Bill because I lent a hand in his recent move and installed the Henry Ford method of getting his shit up five flights of steps, one person on each floor– assembly line. I chose, hmm what did I call him in a previous post– 12? Because hey he’s a big dude that can drive and he did a good job in moving us out of NY. So on the eve of my moving Bill says “I can’t make it, I got two tix to the MD/UVA game”. I go “shit”. Then the wonderful Bill goes “hey I wonder if 12 wants the other tick– he went to UVA”. Double shit. I can’t get mad at him Bill gave me tix to last year’s Cowboys/Ravens game and I ditched Micki’s second golf outing in a heartbeat. Jumped out the car on the way to the highway on-ramp and took a cab to the stadium.

So me the Baba man and Micki get in the truck– it’s little as shit, so little it’s funny, me and the Baba man are giggling like shit– Micki is getting upset, she thinks it’s her fault. Hell, we got a truck on the first of the month, that should be a task for teams on the Apprentice or some shit. So we go to drive off and these little urban kids yell “look at that little truck!” Me and the Baba man find it hilarious Micki is really upset. We get to the warehouse where the Baba man and his employer store their stuff for supplies (hand truck/dolly/etc.) and he shows me around a little. It had to be several million dollars worth of the most fine antique furniture I have seen in my life stored there. Baba moves stuff for rich fucks like the Heinze’s and major political figures up and down the coasts and even out to the Pacific islands. There was a set of chairs that someone paid $350K with gold spiraling the legs that someone was paying to store because they didn’t like them. Let’s look at that. Someone paid $350K for some chairs, paid an high price mover to move them, didn’t like them, paid same high price mover to move them to high priced movers storage facility– then paid high prices for storage. Gotta love rich folks.

So to make a long story short me, Baba, Micki and a friend of my youngest brother dismantled and packed all our belongings into a truck and moved them this past Saturday. Baba made it so easy as he said packing a truck is like a real life game of Tetris. He also unloaded in a placement factor– put things where they are going to go, that’s the reason the photos above show our place in livable fashion. Bill helped out on the last load of Tif/Micki moving/packing Sunday which wasn’t as resourceful as Baba moving. We bought a bushel of crabs and a heap of beer steamed ate drank and celebrated. Now if I could only find my shoes.