I have an office. This is quite the new concept for me. Abby and I decided to rent a two bedroom apartment because with her being a teacher and me being a writer we’d both have lots of computer-related crap. And we didn’t want all that stuff crowding our living room. Hence a two bedroom apartment and the second bedroom became our office. Of course Abby lets me call it my office.

For the first time in my life my computer isn’t in the same room as my bed. For the first time in my life everything I own isn’t crammed into one room. What a concept. It amazes me that I can afford all this. I keep waiting for the floor to crash in and the realization that my paycheck won’t go as far as I think it will. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

Another joy of married life is the ring. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never worn a ring for extended periods of time, so right now it’s a bit of a novelty. If you’re not married I’d recommend not wearing any rings until you are. That way you’ll have this crazy novelty to remind you that you are married. If your ceremony goes anything like mine did, it’ll all feel like a dream, and you’ll need that ring of metal around your finger to remind you that it really happened. You’ll be washing dishes and it’ll clink on the new glasses from your Aunt Margaret and you’ll remember that now you’re married. You’ll strum your fingers on a countertop and hear a clink–you’re married. When that nervous feeling overcomes you and your fingers search for something to fiddle with, they’ll turn to your ring and start spinning–you’re married. That’s my new nervous habit.

Another cool thing about being married is filing cabinets. Big, metal, four-drawer, filing cabinets. The kind they store secret documents in that should have been shredded. The kind that make me look like a real writer–if only they were filled with rejected manuscripts.

The sole purpose of college is so you have friends to help you move. Today we bought two filing cabinets. The really big ones with four drawers. The kind no person should ever have to carry up three flights of stairs. Unless of course that person is one of your roommates from college. Seriously though, I don’t know how we would have moved without our college friends. The worst part is since we moved in our rate of stuff accumulation has skyrocketed and we now own four to five times as much stuff as we used to. We’ve decided we’re never moving again. When we have kids we’ll just rent the apartment across the hall.

We have our own address. Our own furniture. Our own bedroom. This weekend we got the keys to our apartment–and I have to keep telling myself that. Never before has something been so intrinsically mine. My parents didn’t pay for it. Loans aren’t covering it. I won’t have to move out in nine months. We’ve been moving furniture and stuff in and my fiance and I keep stopping and reminding each other that this is our apartment. We’re not living in it yet, but our stuff is. We have two weeks of school to get through first, then a wedding, and then we can officially start living there. Until then we’ll keep dropping stuff off, putting boxes and books away, and reminding ourselves that we have a home. Wow.

I just wrote the biggest check in my life for an apartment that is mine. The money behind the check is money I earned, the apartment is one my fiance and I found; this is our place. For the first time in my life I’ve done something that’s wholly mine, separate from my parents. It’s not a loan that Dad applied for and I sign off on. It’s not a dorm room that these amorphous loans pay for. It’s an apartment that is my responsibility. It is my home.

This is at once a grand, majestic, and happy feeling; and an overbearing, immense, and powerful feeling. Of course I still had to have daddy co-sign the lease. There was no way around that. But I feel like for once in my life I’ve done something on my own. I’m becoming independent. When the rent check is due, it’s my responsibility. My dad will have nothing to do with it. And if he does, I’m in big trouble. It’s a tremendous sense of responsibility, and it leaves me with one thought; now all I need is a job.

I bought a bed today. Actually, my fiance and I bought a bed. There’s something strange and hindering and burdensome about buying a bed. I don’t think I’ve ever owned such a large piece of furniture before that was wholly mine. I’ve owned Salvation Army furniture, but it just doesn’t have the same feel. When you lay down a majority of a pay check for a piece of furniture, there’s something substantial in that. The sad thing is I don’t have the bed. It’s not leaning up in some hidden corner of my apartment. I won’t have it until December, when we actually get an apartment to put the bed in. Crazy, isn’t it? There’s something wild and strange about it that I just can’t explain. But it’s good. There’s something about knowing we have a bed to sleep on that I find encouraging

Have you ever done something and had absolutely no clue what you were doing? Your only recourse is to fake it. That happened to me this afternoon. In an attempt to solve my summer housing situation, my fiance and I went on a tour of a potential apartment. In the past three weeks I’ve learned more than I’ve ever known in my entire life about renting an apartment. I’ve looked places up, made several dozen phone calls, and made multiple calls to my parents in one week.

Today I took the big step and actually toured a place. As the manager lead us across the property and towards the empty apartment we were going to see, a dull silence descended on the three of us. The multitude of questions I was prepared to ask had somehow all slipped away. I had a sheet full of questions you were supposed to ask before renting an apartment, all sorts of odds and ends like where can you do your laundry, how much does it cost, and are there specified hours when you can do your laundry. All kinds of in depth stuff that you probably wouldn’t think of until the situation actually arises–if it ever does.

As we walked across the property I forgot everyone of those questions and could only listen quietly while the manager rattled on about this or that insignificant detail, punctured by awkward silences when I felt like I was supposed to congratulate her on her complex. As we toured the apartment all I could do was poke my nose into every corner and nod, as if I knew what I was looking at. Yep, that’s an empty bedroom. I don’t see any holes in the wall. Yep, that’s a linen closet. It has shelves. Very good. What am I supposed to say?

Near the end of the tour I managed a better showing, actually asking several questions and procuring a copy of the lease, something that’s certainly not necessary at this stage. But it made me feel like I knew what I was doing.

Why do I feel like I’m going to be faking my way through the rest of my life? If you look at every major area in life–I probably have experience in none of them. So what am I going to do? Fake it. I suppose eventually you get good at faking it, and by then you know your stuff. See what college does to your perspective on life?

Dropping the basket on the floor I began pulling out shirts and random articles of clothing and draping them across the back of my chair so they wouldn’t wrinkle. I dumped the remaining socks and what not in the seat of the chair and started folding. First came a soft yellow t-shirt, worn from too many washings. Next came a plain white t-shirt that still had that stiff new feeling. I folded each shirt carefully, being sure to smooth the wrinkles and uncurl the sleeves. There’s something about folding someone else’s laundry that makes you take extra time. There’s something about doing someone else’s laundry that makes you stop and think. This isn’t my shirt. I don’t know where it came from or how long the person’s had it. I only recognize it as something they wear. Now here I am folding it and placing it back in the basket in a neat and orderly pile. Next comes a pair of jeans and I’m tempted to read the label and see what size they are. She always avoids the issue like it bothers her, when really it doesn’t. I resist the urge and fold the jeans in thirds, adding it to the pile. You can tell a lot about a person from doing their laundry. What kind of stains do their clothes have, if any? How threadbare and worn is the fabric? What are you folding when it all comes out, dress clothes or scrubby t-shirts? What kind of underwear do they wear? Do they even leave their underwear for you to wash–that in itself says a lot, either they’re saving you the trouble or they don’t quite trust you. What kind of socks do they wear? Are they all different styles of white so you have to spend twenty minutes matching them all? Or are they goofy designs and anything but white, making the matching process a colorful game of memory? It’s also kind of humbling to wash someone else’s clothes. It’s usually the kind of job reserved for your mother or a servant–ironic that the two are paired together. It’s an interesting clashing of social norms. Or maybe I’m just thinking too much.

You crunch the numbers, the bills stack up, and you hope the bottom line is a positive number. You have to remember to pay for this, but you just got this check in the mail to cover half of it, and don’t forget that extra money over here. But you also have to pay this new bill, and you need to pick up one of those. And don’t forget about the money from the bike you just sold. You also owe Joe money for this. You owe some, you get some, you pay some. Sometimes I just want to crawl in a hole and hope money takes care of itself.

The funny thing is that I don’t have to worry about it. God’s watching over me, and he’ll worry about it. Now I’m not naïve enough to think that the money just takes care of itself. I don’t sit on my butt and watch the bills get paid. But somehow the ends meet and you scrape by. And it doesn’t come without sacrifice. I’m fretting over money and whether or not I have enough to pay my bills—and I certainly do, I’m just worrying too much. But then I sit there thinking about how much I want a pop. Which is exactly the problem in the first place. If we want stuff we really don’t need, we’re going to have problems with the dough. Believe it or not we can get by only on what we need.

Why all the talk on money? You’d think I just finished school and had to pay the rent, the phone bill, the gas bill, the electric bill, the insurance, and all that. Oh no, I just had to pay my Christmas Visa bill. I think I worry too much.

I stand in the middle of the shell of my bedroom. A quiet and empty monument to days gone by. Quiet and empty because I’m away at college, and now seldom come back–not even for the summer. The room is even emptier and less my room because the bed is gone–taken during my parents’ separation–leaving behind an empty and discolored patch of carpet. That’s probably the color the rest of the faded, off-white carpet is supposed to be. Memories and treasures are all that remain–the stuff too important to throw out, but not important enough to bring with me.

Continue reading Shell of My Bedroom →

It’s laundry time this week on Kevin’s Summer Away From Home. You watched him cook for himself and not burn the place down, now see if he can get his clothes clean. So I went down to the laundry room today to see how much it would cost me. I looked at all the machines, and I couldn’t find the quarter slots. Then I realized–there were no quarter slots! Free laundry? At a college? No way. But just when I thought I had discovered the best part about Judson, I turned around and saw a credit card machine on the wall. You need a stinkin’ credit card to do your laundry at Judson. Well, I guess the plus side is I don’t have to save up the quarters. Now I just need the plastic.