Thursday, June 23, 2011

Home, Sweet . . . What the Hell?

Oh, my God. You have got to be kidding! How is it that it is so difficult to actually find livable space in Charlottesville?! This is the first strike against my new home - the fact that, though I will be leaving in FIVE WEEKS, I do not yet actually have a home.

Wait, you ask. What about that place you scored when you were visiting in April?

Excellent question, I answer. Let me explain.

When I went out in April and scored my little apartment with its postage-stamp kitchen, I fully intended to live there, at the very least for a year. It wasn't paradise, no, but it seemed like it would be fine. Of course, since I knew nothing about the area, I was taking it all on faith, and I have since discovered that faith can really screw you over if you trust everything to it (pay attention, radical Muslims). While I'm there I'm in such a frantic panic that I secure the place without thinking, terribly afraid that someone else will get it if I dither. Once I get home, my brain switches on, and I think, hey! You know what? I bet there are probably reviews on the interweb about what it's like to live there.

There were. They were terrifying. Thank you, www.apartmentratings.com, for keeping me from being potentially murdered in my bed.

So, this apartment complex had marketed itself as a graduate-student-friendly housing solution to noisy party-hungry undergrads, which are what usually infest campus, or near-campus, housing. This marketing plan even included strict Nazi-like warnings about sound, such as, anything louder than 55 db (which is pretty freakin' quiet, let me tell you), will be punished by firing squad, and any "gatherings" larger than 5 people will be punished by lampshade-making. I thought, hey, all well and good, I'm in this place to study and learn and be a successful grad student, not party. I won't be in any danger of lampshades!

Well, they did a great job marketing, but apparently fell through on the follow-through. Reading through the reviews quickly assured me that if I did live there, I would fall prey to fallout from neighboring domestic fracas, drug deals, and the always-delightful case of mistaken-hooker-identity. Comments like "scary, gross . . . worst year ever", "dirty, noisy, and over-priced", or my favorite "run, run, run", were just a prelude to statements about how, well, dirty, noisy, scary, and gross it was, and how I should run, run, run away. So it seemed like the most prudent thing to do, despite the fact that I had signed a lease and given them a $450 security deposit, was to pay attention to the 15 (of 16) negative reviews, and run the hell away.

So I did.

In the process of relinquishing that lease, I found a charming post on my new English grad student listserv. Boasting a darling 1-bedroom apartment in a "geographic hot spot" (still not sure what the hell that means, actually), I started to talking to a fellow incoming English grad student who was full of promises and excitement, and thought, "Hey, this sounds like a good idea." So began two months of broken promises, confusion, and downright irritation and legal-inducing action. I will not bore you with the details, since they're not really that interesting; suffice it to say that apartment #2 is now no longer a home-sweet-home, and I am looking for apartment #3. (I will tell you, though, that the landlord wanted the rent 10 days before the first of the month. Yes. I'm serious.)

Third time's the charm, right? I certainly freakin' hope so!

So I've spent the morning desperately searching Charlottesville's few housing websites to find somewhere to live. It's a small town - 40,000 people, swelling to 60,000 when school's in - so there aren't a whole lotta options. So far I've found 4 potential places (all significantly more than I expected to spend ($150 more a month is significant when your estimated income is about $1,400/month)), none of which are really ideal. One of them requires an hour bus ride to get to school (no car, remember?), one is definitely closer, but isn't on the bus line, which means I'd be walking in the winter, and one of them is just tiny (400 square feet). The best - and closest - place is cute, reasonably affordable, and available now. So I've submitted my application, and it's all just a matter of waiting to see if they'll approve it, and then start that whole lease-signing-security-deposit thing again.

Call this a learning experience. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have learned, but I'm sure I'll take something from it, if only an appreciation for how truly lyrical some people can be when describing housing horrors. If you're interested in some fun reading, here are the reviews for apartment #1.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Getting Ready to Say Good-Bye to California

I think it's time to start the good-bye process. That's the nice thing about having a few months before you leave somewhere for an extended period of time - you can do all those "last things" that will allow you to create a series of lovely memories to take out and handle when you're feeling lonely and homesick. This last weekend - Father's Day - I enjoyed what will probably be a last Father's Day for awhile with my family in Pasadena, starting at Louise's Trattoria with my mother, father, and brother, and then (when my parents had to go to a badly-timed baptism in LA), began an evening of drinking and poorly-played pool in a pleasant drunken haze with my brother, starting at Lucky Baldwin's in Pasadena, and ending with an impromptu dinner at Barney's Beanery (Irish-Style Omelette and Newcastle was a new - and delightful - combination for me) and the always-fun atheist-full conversation which inevitably accompanies beer and eggs.

Last weekend was my nephew's first birthday, which was wonderful, and beautifully orchestrated by my sister: a taco bar, monkey piƱata, scores of friends and family, and a monkey-shaped cake which Lindsay and I were up late frosting with squishy pastry bags and tiny star tips, smoothing buttercream frosting with toothpicks and milk . . . oh, never again. I don't know when I'll be here for his birthday again, and it was very poignant, knowing that it was his first, and probably the last I'll see for awhile.

Next weekend is the Fourth of July weekend, which means the lake and sun and the boat and all sorts of enjoyable, hedonistic delights (probably including more beer). Then the weekend after that is a good-bye to Little Tokyo, with sushi and drinking and ramen, oh, my! And the weekend after that is the annual family jaunt to the spectacular gem of June Lake, nestled in the Sierra Nevadas, although I'm hoping sincerely that I won't miss it next summer, since it's something we've been doing for almost 30 years now, and is a sacred tradition. Then . . . after that . . . I have one more weekend, and then I'm gone. At 11:30 AM PST, July 30th, I'll be flying out of Ontario International Airport, and then at 9:10 PM EST, I'll be flying into Dulles International Airport, for the start of something new and wonderful and utterly exciting.

It's almost terrifying how few weekends there are left, and how much I'm going to miss everyone. But, to be perfectly honest, there's so much that I won't be missing. California is a great place, but despite the fact that I was "born and raised" here, and have even spent 5 years here as an adult, I've never really loved it the way some people do. There are parts of it that I like, but, well, I'm not in love with it. Aside from the fact that there are so many people, and I am not a crowded-city kind of person, there is so little of the natural beauty left in the populated areas. I miss the open, green spaces of Ohio, and when I was in Virginia, and saw it again, I got homesick for the green. I hate the traffic, and the fact that it takes ages to get anywhere. Life is so fast-paced, it's as though there's never any time to stop and think, as if you're not doing something at every minute of the day you're wasting your life. I could go on, but why? Mostly these are just things that I say when people ask me why I don't love California. I've never really loved it, and there's no easy way for me to explain why.

People do keep asking me when I'll be coming back, as though there were ever any question that I wouldn't. It's funny the assumptions they make - as though this time in Virginia was a brief period in exile, and that I can't wait to come back. Of course, when I moved to Ohio, that's how I felt, too. I had never lived anywhere other than California before then, and I really did view my time in Ohio as exile. I remember on a visit in 2004, in fact, 2 years before we moved back, we went to the beach, and I wrote in the sand, "I WILL come back." When a sure-thing job opened up in California, I didn't hesitate a minute, and ran back as fast as I could. And what did I find? That everything I had left California to escape was waiting right there for me, with open arms, to drag me back down into the muck and unhappiness I thought I had left behind for good.

It's one of those painful things you have to learn when you're "growing up". It's not that you can't go home again; it's that you shouldn't go home again. Well, maybe not you. But certainly me. Essentially, I won't be coming back to California. My family knows, too. Not in the obvious, let's-talk-about-it kind of way, but in the sad, quiet way you know things. They've all alluded to it a few times, and in a desire to be honest, I haven't contradicted their allusions. My father was very sad, actually, when he heard that I would be going to Virginia. When he heard how long it would be, it was quite cute how he said, "Well, that's too long. We'll have to talk about it." I think they all know that it means that once I leave, I won't be coming back except for visits.

On the train a few months ago, coming home late from work one night, I started talking with a German professor at one of the Claremont colleges. She's from Germany, but has been here for many years. I asked her if it was hard being away from family, and she said that when she was younger, it wasn't quite so hard, but now that she was older - and they were older - it was especially difficult. I also know that spending your life away from your family is difficult. My aunt has lived on the East Coast for all of my life, anyway, and I know that the isolation from her family - despite the fact that she's built a beautiful life for herself there - has been hard on her. She's very excited, in fact, that I'll be out there, and I'm actually pleased that she's so close. She's in Annapolis, which is only a few hours drive from Charlottesville (and which takes you through some of the prettiest country), so I envision many little trips back and forth.

I'm digressing. The point is that I know that it is difficult to be away from my family - I was away for 5 years! - but that at some point, I have to make a decision: to live my life for my family, or for myself. It's a difficult decision, but I know that, ultimately, I'll decide to live it for myself, and that I'll have to keep my relationship with my family strong through mediums other than frequent visits. I'm lucky that things like Skype and Facebook and email exist; they create ways to interact on a personal and intimate level with people, and while they certainly aren't the same as a face-to-face visit, they can't still be wonderful. Even the phone! My mother and I aren't 45 minutes away from each other now, and we can still spend 2 hours on the phone - easily - though we'll see each other the next weekend, or we saw each other a few days before. So I know everything will be okay; we'll get by.

Still, it isn't easy to say good-bye. I know that I'll shed many tears when it comes time to leave, and probably many before then. But at least I get time to say good-bye, and time to do a few "last things", so on those nights when I miss my family so much it hurts, I can think of them, and feel like I'm home with them, even though I'm 2,600 miles away.