In the Closet

This is the story of how Tiffany and I nearly paid $300 for a pair of shelves in our closet. Here's what happened:

We live in a very small apartment. Surprisingly, we have a lot of storage space, but most of it is accessible only with a nine-foot ladder that the tenants of the building share. The thought of having to climb to the top of aforementioned ladder every time I wanted a pair of jeans or a sweater was not appealing. So after weeks of living out of boxes...

(Okay, fine, we're still living out of some boxes)

...we decided we simply had to have shelves in our closet to accompany the bar for our hanging clothes. Tiffany dreamed of Perfect Shelves. In fact, I think she dreamed of a Custom-Built Closet because each day she came home with some more elaborate shelf system that required a set of tracks, lots of screws, and a Stud Finder, which at first I thought was an electric shaver.

After several failed attempts and returns of products, we asked a handyman to appraise our project. He quoted us a hundred bucks for labor. We nodded our heads. We had $100 worth of spackling to do to cover up the holes we'd already made, so this seemed reasonable. When he quoted us $200 for material, I continued to nod, but inside I was shaking my head vigorously from left to right.

"I don't feel good about this," I whispered to Tiffany after we had closed the door on our handyman with a tentative agreement.

"Me neither."

If we were still living in San Francisco, away from the wise counsel of our family, we may have paid that absurd amount of money. But when our New York uncles came over, Rob began to shake his head as soon as we said "handyman."

He told us what we needed, and it pretty much boiled down to:

1) A long piece of wood
2) A handful of nails

Our shelves cost us about $50 bucks. Labor was free, obviously, although it took its toll.

One of our shelves was slightly longer than the other (It's possible the scary-looking man at the hardware store who cut our wood hated us because we looked like we were enjoying life) and our walls are crooked. Before we figured that out, I blamed Tiffany for measuring wrong.

Also, we didn't take our hanging clothes out of the closet to build our shelves, so we were highly irritated with each other, sweating and smushed in among my work suits and Tiffany's going-out dresses, holding nine-foot pieces of wood above our head in a terrible home-improvement version of Twister.

When it finally dawned on us to consider how funny we looked, we started laughing, which made holding the nine foot pieces of wood all the more difficult.

"You should have seen us," I told Rob the next week as we bragged about our work over dinner. "We looked like..."

I paused. Everyone stared at me expectantly.

"Well, you know, we really looked exactly like two lesbians in a tiny closet!"

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep... Carefully

Tiffany and I lucked out with our new apartment. It's in a great neighborhood; it's got lots of great light. Oh yeah, and it's two stories.

Technically, the second story is our bed, but, because we have a set of stairs (attached to a ladder though they may be), I think that counts.

Back when we were looking for places, we got so competitive with our competition--other potential tenants--that we started carrying around blank checks and entire credit reports in order to be prepared if we wanted to put in an application.

When we saw this apartment, a middle-aged woman was seeing it at the same time. I was ready to hip-check her out the door while we applied, but she took one look at the ladder in the bedroom and spun on her heel.

"Oh no," she said, throwing up her hands. "I'm too old for this. It's all yours, girls."

(It's a good thing Tiffany and I don't look as old as we are.)

We could have put our bed underneath the loft space like the old tenants did, but having it upstairs means we get to have a second bedroom/office underneath. And when I say second bedroom/office, I mean a space big enough for our dresser, a desk, and a twin air mattress for whoever doesn't fit on our couch in the living room. But this is way more space than we've had in the past. So be it if we sleep floating in the air on a piece of plywood.

Anyway, so far it's working out. I've only hit my head once, sitting up too far, too fast. And the loft reminds us how much we love each other. Or maybe it's how much we'd rather not have to go to the emergency room.

Every time one of us gets out of bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, the other whispers:

"Be careful."

These Boots Were Made for...Not Me

I'm not ashamed to admit I'm not a good shopper. But even I'm embarrassed at how many pairs of rain/snow boots I've bought and returned in the last few months.

"Just get the tall rubber boots everyone else has," my friend Teresa keeps telling me.

But I can't bring myself to do that. I actually had a pair of the tall rubber boots everyone else has--10 years ago. They were as yellow as a bathtub duck, and I wore them exactly twice. Just long enough to figure out I don't like the suction cup-y feel of tall rubber boots.

I haven't needed rain/snow boots in a long time. It never rained in Los Angeles where Tiffany and I first moved together as a couple. And it rarely rained in San Francisco. But since we've been back in New York, already I'm fed up of stepping in puddles, sitting at my desk with soggy pant legs and stuffing my running shoes with newspaper when I get home at the end of the day. In fact, I was fed up with it the first time it happened, the day we pulled our U-Haul into Teresa and Bobby's driveway in August.

I bought a pair of boots right away. When I tried them on for Teresa and Tiffany later, they covered their mouths in horror at the puffy monstrosities on my feet.

"Peter loved them," I said defensively.

"Peter is two," Tiffany pointed out. "And a boy."

My dilemma is this: I can't bear the thought of buying one pair of boots for the rain and one pair of boots for the snow, but in trying to find something that works for both, I keep coming home with shoewear certified for the Olympic ski team.

I put my latest pair on recently with a pair of running tights and Tiffany refused to let me out of the house--to do laundry!

"I guess they are a little ridiculous," I said, rummaging around in my wallet for the receipt, which I had not dared throw away. "Maybe if we lived in Alaska..."

Three-Handed Couple

As you know, Tiffany and I were a little shorthanded these last few weeks. After I broke my right 5th metacarpal over Thanksgiving, we were down to three upper extremities between us, just as we were moving into our new apartment and assembling--my personal favorite relationship test--Ikea furniture.

We started off okay. Tiffany was willing to wash my hair and floss my teeth for me, and I accepted those kindnesses gratefully.

But pretty soon, I got grumpy. I couldn't do any of the things that would be most helpful, like carrying boxes up the stairs of our third floor walk-up. Instead of taking pride in the things I could do--like sit in the double-parked car and call all our magazines to update our address--I pouted.

Tiffany, meanwhile, was not upset that I couldn't do any of the things that would be most helpful. She was totally fine with taking on the brunt of our household chores and tasks. Until I started taking all my frustration out on her.

"How do you like the bookshelf here?" she asked one evening after I had been passive-aggressively second-guessing her decisions without offering any suggestions of my own.

"Whatever," I sighed.

"Alright, Eeyore, what is wrong with you?" she asked, throwing up her hands.

"I'm mad I can't do anything!" I screeched, throwing up my one good hand.

Tiffany darted her eyes around the room, looking for any task to appease me.

"Why don't you organize the pencil jar?"

"Don't talk to me like I'm a two-year-old!" I hissed, stomping away from her into the farthest corner of what suddenly felt like an exceptionally small apartment.

Later, I apologized.

"Maybe we're not a very good three-handed couple," I said as we walked to dinner together.

Tiffany nodded, reaching for my cast. But she was just being generous. The truth was, I wasn't being a very good one-handed person.

After I realized that, things got better. When we assembled the next piece of Ikea furniture, I organized all the screws, which is really the only part of assembly I'm good at anyway, no matter how many hands I have.

A few days later, still one-handed, I decided to go ahead and do something I'd been meaning to do for a long time.

I asked for one of Tiffany's hands.

And when she gave it to me, I put a ring on it.

Under the Category of Things Only Dentists Should Do

I broke a bone in my hand over Thanksgiving, and, I'll tell you what,
one-handedness has seriously cramped my style. And my dental hygiene.

After the first few nights of only brushing (with my non-dominant left
hand, so by brushing I mean limply swiping at my teeth and sometimes
my cheek), I asked Tiffany if she would floss for me, and she said
yes!

Alright, alright, it wasn't quite as quick a response as that, and it
really didn't warrant an exclamation point. It was more like:

"Oh my god, are you serious?"

But still, the end result was the same: she was willing to
stick her fingers in my mouth to pick out a stubborn piece of broccoli
from our first dinner in our new apartment.

Just like she was willing to wash my hair for me. I manage that on my
own, however. Sort of. With my right hand pseudo-casted and swaddled
in a plastic bag, I can't really work up a lather anywhere except the
part of my hair I first touch.

But flossing takes two hands for sure. And Tiffany provided them.

"You know what would be easier?" I asked. Since her fingers were in my
mouth, it sounded more like:

"Uh oh ut ould ee eaier?"

"Please don't talk while my fingers are in your mouth; you're gumming
my hands," she said, grimacing.

"Oss icks!" I cried, ignoring her.

Floss sticks.

Suburban Spiders

One thing I won't miss about the suburbs: spiders.

When Tiffany and I first moved in with our friends on Long Island in August, we encountered so many spiderwebs while running in the early morning that I soon took to holding my arm up in front of my face to intercept the sticky webs. Tiffany hit one spider full on and took off her t-shirt right then and there--arachnophobic-Brandi-Chastain-style rather than risk running with him in tow.

I don't know where spiders live in the city, but they don't have time to build webs. Too many people walking to and fro. Maybe city spiders have co-ops.

Anyway, I've learned to spot the tell-tale shine of the silk draping across my path and to watch out for spots where a web could be connected across the sidewalk: two bushes, a stop sign and a bush, a tree and a stop sign, and so on and so on. Rather than risk getting tangled up, I began walking and running in the street. Tiffany did too.

The other night, we were walking home from the train in the middle of the street and a car raced past us, driving much too fast for pedestrian traffic.

"Slow down!" I shouted, raising my arm up but keeping my middle-finger down (Tiffany does not like it when I am road enraged). I hoped I wasn't yelling at one of our hosts' neighbors. "I mean, geez, people are walking here!"

Tiffany and I looked at each other. Then we looked at the sidewalk. And, since we hadn't seen a spider since the temperature started to drop, we headed toward it.

Disorganized Chaos

Tiffany and I have been living out of suitcases and duffel bags so long that I've stopped even pretending to fold my clothes anymore. Except for my dress pants and shirts, my wardrobe (mostly t-shirts and capris since we moved here in August and haven't really unpacked our winter wear yet) is shoved onto a few shelves in our friends' basement. The majority of our clothes are still packed tightly in boxes. When I take a pair of pants to the dry cleaners, my lower-half options decrease by about 20 percent. Living in a state of such chaos can make my mornings very frustrating.

"I'm turning on the light!" I shrieked to Tiffany this morning after rummaging around in the dark for several minutes. She was supposed to have had the luxury of a later wake-up time than I did. "I can't find anything! I need the shirt-thingy that I wear underneath fancy shirts, and I have to leave in 13 minutes!"

"Mmmmm," she mumbled.

"I'm dumping all my clothes on the bed!" I cried, tossing things with both hands behind on me onto the comforter so I'd have more room to assess what I was finding. "I can't find that shirt-thingy!"

Sometimes I find repeating myself makes people more likely to do something for me.

"What shirt-thingy?" Tiffany asked, extricating herself from my growing pile.

"The one with the straps..."

"Is the shirt you're wearing see-through? Do you actually need the shirt-thingy?"

I looked at myself in the mirror and held my hand up inside my shirt. I couldn't see my hand... or could I? Now in a panic, I picked a regular t-shirt from the pile and put it on underneath my fancy shirt. Tiffany shook her head at me slowly.

"I don't care what it looks like," I said, lying through my gritted teeth. "I'm wearing it!"

Tiffany saved the day. When I came back downstairs from putting bread in the toaster for peanut butter toast, the emergency breakfast I make when I don't have time for anything else, Tiffany had my shirt-thingy dangling from her pinky. I put it on and then sprinted back upstairs again to eat. Still, I wanted her to know how much I appreciated what she'd done.

"Can you come upstairs to give me a kiss!" I cried. "I have eight minutes!"