This Old House

Just a typical Saturday evening, relaxing at home. Cupcake, far right.

On Friday, I got an email from the PrincessofDarkness. It said something like, "Hey, woman who ignores. You have a package at the old apartment. Call them." and it listed a phone number. Seeing as how it was recently my birthday, I figured that someone had sent a gift to me at my old apartment. I didn't know who would know me well enough to send a gift, but not so well that they didn't know I moved seven months ago, but hell, there's not much I wouldn't do for a present, so I called one of the girls who lives in the apartment now and arranged to come by on Saturday night.

Saturday night I found myself once again making the familiar walk up Ninth Street, rounding the corner at Dizzy's and walking up to my old apartment. It was raining and my umbrella gave up the ghost on the walk over. The umbrella reminded me of a dumb story from when I was living in that apartment with POD and L'Ingenue that lead to a stupid fight. Man, I was thinking, I'm so glad I don't have roommates anymore. I rang the buzzer and was let in; I hadn't been back to the old place since I moved out.

Shortly after I moved out, L'Ingenue left. Then the girl who I found to sublet my room left. And finally last month, POD left for the Upper West Side, therefore making it safe for me to once again roam the streets of Park Slope. I didn't know anybody who lived in the place now. A girl met me at the door and I all but pushed past her to get a good look at the pad. Memories of nights with the girls came rushing back- L'Ingenue and I manoeuvering around each other in the bathroom, POD standing in the hall picking her toenails or something and going on about some crazy story. In the living room, I thought about the time we got back from a club at 4am and decided to order take-out from The Grecian Diner. We layed around in the living room and ate french fries and tried to sing in harmony (POD loved harmonies). Everything was the same, but everything was different too. L'Ingenue's room had been painted a brilliant shade of peacock blue, but my old room, which had a lovely blue shade that made me fall in love with it in the first place, had been painted white. Someone painted over the lime green hallway with an olive green, but they also repainted the formerly kelly green living room. I thanked the girls for making sure my package got to me, grabbed the big Amazon.com box and left.

I remembered a conversation I had with my brother around my birthday. "Happy birthday. Your gift is on the way. Uh, it was on your wishlist, so I guess you want it. Have fun!" I couldn't think what could be in the box, but I'm guessing my brother was the guilty party who sent the gift to the wrong address. I went to go visit with MommyCakes and MostFavoritePerson. I had just gotten news from them that the were moving out of the city and going to be renting a place upstate. They were leaving soon. They had a Christmas gift for me- this cupcake scarf, that amazingly kinda matches my cupcake mittens. I fear that I am becoming a parody of myself.

MFP is brilliant as always. She was playing with some toy animals and said, "Go baby, go" or something like that. She was holding two monkeys, presumably the baby and the mama. "You have a baby monkey," I said. Showing me the little guy she said, "This is a baby chimpanzee." Oh, right. Damn, I hate it when they get smarter than me. I opened the package from Amazon so I could donate the box to MommyCakes' packing effort. It was from my brother and it was a hot air popcorn popper. Hey, I did want one of those! Thanks!

After a nice visit with them, I went home. Back to my litten Muffin Tin- no roommates, no baby, no dog, and you know what? That's the way I like it. For now. Of course, I had to try out the Popcorn Popper. It kind of frightened me with it's instruction manual warnings and it's sound like a helicopter taking off in my kitchen, but it made good popcorn.

Cupcake to Popcorn Popper- Please, take the cash, take the cards, anything; just let me live!

Then it was time for some light home toilet repair. For all the times my father has said it to me, in that moment, after I had lifted the lid off the take and right before I was about to plunge my hand into the freezing cold water, I thought to myself, "You know, if I lived in Rhode Island, I wouldn't have to do this." But thinking back at the places I had visited that night, (the quarters shared with Craig's List strangers on 8th Street,constantly trying not to trip over a wound-up baby and dog and never finishing a sentence chez MommyCakes) I thought, I guess getting up close and personal with your toilet is not a bad price to pay for the freedom of living alone.