(Isn't it interesting how one exclamation point can make it seem as if I am actually looking forward to moving everything we own across town in Austin's August sauna?)

We got the keys to our new apartment yesterday afternoon and headed over to the new place to check it out, picture where our stuff should go, and measure the front door to make sure our huge art table would fit. When we walked up, we heard voices inside the apartment and the oldies radio station blasting. Brad looked at me quizzically (I wish quizzically was my "word of the day" so that I could be proud of myself for working it into a sentence) and opened the door to find a dirty apartment and two people cleaning it.

Walking into your new apartment for the first time only to find that it's still dirty isn't the most welcoming feeling.

We still looked around, pictured our stuff, and thanked the cleaning people for getting our new place ready, but when I left I had that vague unsettling feeling similar to buyer's remorse. Brad was clearly excited by the new place, and I was clearly let down. I felt bad for raining on his parade when he asked how I felt about it.

"Is this place too ghetto for us?" I asked.

"C'mon," he responded, "We've both lived in places more ghetto than this."

I thought really long and hard, and couldn't come up with any place that I've lived that I thought of as ghetto. There's this cute duplex near Barton Springs that we are leaving today, the cute cabin-like apartment on the second floor of a house that I had in Lubbock, the house of very much pinkness and joy on 30th Street in Lubbock, the same house on 30th street but inhabited by a very different roommate that put the "CR" in CRAZY, and then - aha! There it was. The efficiency I lived in off 20th and Boston in Lubbock that I entered from the alley. That place put the "etto" in Ghetto.

It was also a second floor apartment, one big room with a bathroom and closet and the kitchenette conveniently located on one side of the bedroom/living room. There were three different colors of hideous carpet pieced together in this one room - a stunning palette of 70's brown, green, and orange. The walls were paneled with fake wood. I parked in the alley and fell down the crooked steps made of warped wood and cement at least three times. My downstairs neighbor had a son that lived in the efficiency with her, and one night I heard her ex-boyfriend outside, screaming and cussing and drunkenly stumbling around between throwing his full body weight onto her door. He finally broke through. A week later she was gone, with her son, although she never fixed the door or even really moved out - her broke-down car still sat next to mine in the alley, and everything in her apartment remained except for the clothes and suitcases.

That place was definitely more ghetto.

I only lived there for three months, and the one good thing I remember about the place is that I met Stella there. I fed her on my porch each day at the request of the previous tenants who couldn't take her when they moved. When it got cold and snowy that winter, I couldn't stand to think of her huddled under a porch somewhere, so I bought a litter box and brought her inside. When I moved out in January, we were so in love that she came with me, and we've been happily co-habitating ever since.

What's my point? Ah, yes - this new apartment is Not That Ghetto. It's not as beautiful as our current space, but it will work for now. I've got plants and pictures and ideas on how to Lucy-style the place, so I'm happy. (The fact that we will be saving more than $400 a month is also happy-making.)

Brad went to work last night after we got the keys to the new place, and I stayed at home to finish the last minute packing tasks. I started with the backyard, taking down the lovely candle jars and Japanese string lights. Last fall I made a canopy of twinkly blue Christmas lights under the porch, and was dreading the task of taking them down row by row, so I left that until I was happy with the rest of the yard. I finally motivated myself to get the stepladder and start the de-twinkling.

That's when it happened.

I got stung by bee. A motherfracking bee.

Maybe it's because I've been to the emergency room for more various self-inflicted and totally inane injuries (including burning my face off and piercing my leg with a tree stump) than anyone I've ever met, but I've developed a panic reaction to hurting myself. My reaction includes crying, thinking I'm going to pass out and die, cursing myself for my stupidity, and now - calling Brad at work and wailing incomprehensibly into the phone.

The phone conversation went something like this:

"Office Depot, this is Brad."

"I GOT STUNG BY A BEE! (SOB)"

"What? Where? Are you okay?"

"I GOT STUNG BY A (sob) BEE (sob) ON MY HAND."

"Well, are you okay?"

"(SOB) I DON'T KNOW."

"Is the stinger still in it?"

"I DON'T ... no."

"What does it look like?

"It's red. (sniffle) And swollen."

"Okay..."

"AND IT HURTS! (Sob)"

"I'm sorry, baby."

"What if I pass out? (sniffle)"

"Do you feel like you are going to pass out?"

"no. (pathetic sniffle)"

"Then you'll be fine."

"But I got stung by a bee."

"I know that, babe."

"And it hurts."

"Mmm-hmmm. It's a bee sting. It's going to hurt."

"(sniffle)"

"Get some baking soda and make a paste out of it, and rub that on the sting."

"But I have a bee sting."

"(sigh) You can do this."

"But what if I can't move stuff tomorrow?"

"BABY."

"Well, I did get stung by a bee."

"Get the baking soda."

"How do you know that works?"

"That's what Grandma used to do. Just try it."

"OKAY. But I got stung by a bee."

"(silence)"

Immediately after hanging up, I Googled "bee sting HELP" on the computer, and what do you know - baking soda is recommended for use on bee stings. I'm still impressed by Brad's knowledge on the subject. However, I had already packed the baking soda, so instead I got in the car, drove to Office Depot, and paged Brad to come outside. This made him really, really happy, of course. By the time we had repeated the conversation we had on the phone and Brad had inspected my wound and proclaimed, again, that I would be just fine, I felt better. And not so much like a three year old.

I went home and made various phone calls to friends, none of whom actually answered the phone, in which I yelled "I GOT STUNG BY A BEE" very dramatically on their voicemail and then hung up. In my defense, it seemed appropriate at the time. A few hours later, I felt good enough to continue the packing process.

Instead, I came upon a pressing arts and crafts project, so I dyed all of the Japenese globe string lights purple in the sink with RIT dye. Purple globe lights vs. packing ... hello, purple globes, obviously. I had already packed the dishwashing gloves, so I had no choice but to reach into the purple dye-water with my bare, bee-stung hand to retrieve the globes. The dye turned my skin a lovely reddish-purple color - a nice compliment to the swelling, I thought.

Brad got home after 2 a.m., and I was already asleep. He must have inspected my hand in the dark, with the light from the bathroom as a guide, because he woke me up by shaking me and saying "Lucy! Your hand is purple! Maybe we should go to the emergency room!"

Even in my sleeping state, I thought for one half-second about being like "Oh my god! I TOLD YOU I GOT STUNG BY A BEE!"

Hee. Don't worry, I realized immediately how cruel and insensitive that would be.

And that, my friends, is the story of my Friday the 13th, 2004. Now that I've spent an hour writing it, I should probably go and actually finish packing.

We're moving tonight. Did I say that already?

Lucy loves you |