Woke up at 4am eastern time (1am Pacific time) to fly back to the left coast. Due to a coffee mistake (didn't ask and was served caffeinated at 8pm) I slept only 2 hours. Wow does that make for a long day. Arrived in Portland at 10:30am local time, and was grouchy by noon and incoherent by 5pm. Went to bed at 7pm and slept 11 hours, and I feel almost normal this morning. Phew!

So I woke up in the upstairs room here at Will's, which is to be my new home. The room that was the bedroom in this house will become my office. It is a pleasant room and will be even nicer once I can clear the old juju from it. From this day forward any time I use something from my old apartment it is moving to Will's house.

My old apartment smells like cat shit, has no toilet paper or paper towels on the roll, has vines growing into the stairway, has compost rotting in the kitchen, and is generally covered in cat hair and disgusting to me. It quickly becomes apparent how much energy I put into keeping the place clean, and how quickly things will decline in my absence. Emily's new boyfriend, the unemployed smoker from Jersey, is still hanging around. He avoids my eye. He may be the housemate she is thinking of having move in....a disaster in the making. The downstairs neighbors are very upset at her for making noise all night long every night, walking with heavy feet and moving furniture around at 4am. I don't know what she has been up to but I know that she is neurotic and the new boy is likely to aggravate that. I was a moderating presence.

So I have 9 days in PDX before I leave town for another adventure. In that time I am supposed to relocate my possessions from the apartment and clean it. I am leaving Kitten there until we return from Idaho. I hope she doesn't freak too much when the bed etc are removed. I will relocate her to Will's in June.

More later, hope you guys are well. I haven't read anything on LJ in a month or so, so if there has been some major happening in your life please let me know.

I'm in my office right now. It's a small room near the door to the apartment, adjacent to a closet which is likely to be our guest bedroom whenever we have a guest. Our new apartment really is at least twice as big as the Crow's Nest. And it is warm. It is the upstairs of a large house, with three of the four corners made into closets. The remaining corner has been made into a kitchen. This office and the main living area are wood paneled. The wood is pleasant and warm. The carpet in the living room is deep green. The bedroom is large. There is a laundry facility in the basement. And best of all, the kitchen has a gas range, and the heat is a gas stove with visible flames and stone for heat retention. There's something wonderful about FIRE in a dark and rainy city. This apartment actually gets and stays warm. That Crow's nest was entirely uninsulated. It was a very chilly place to hang out. We're still in the Brooklyn neighborhood, but we're in a warmer nest, close to the 17 line bus, and on a quieter street. There is no "mom thirty" here, when all the parents arrive to pick up or drop off their babies at the elementary school. We don't miss the desperate moms trying to park, nor the cascades of children on our sidewalk, nor the little man next door who put fish guts in his trash can. So I think the move was worth it. The expenditure is about the same, probably, overall. This rent is $100 more, but utilities and laundry are included.

Just finished NW Herbs class, skipping the Brons Organ Systems lecture, going to West Linn to pick up my essential belongings (bed, cat, shower stuff, food). Suzanne will be here approximately 4pm, will sleep at new place tonight. Phew. Hope the gas gets hooked up today.

Signed a lease yesterday morning. And about a dozen other papers. One that says I can be fined $250 if I take the batteries out of the smoke detector. Another that says it's my fault if mold grows in the bathroom. I'll be charged $50/hour for any repairs that need to be done. Basically what I have learned is that a renter in this market has no power. And if I did have any power, I just signed it away. I felt violated after going over all the "agreements" I had to sign to get a place to live. And that doesn't even address what I'm paying for another slummy apartment. This is fucked up. But at least I have a home. Suzanne will be here on Friday and probably Friday night will be the first that I spend at the new place. Move the cat on Friday too.
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Last my sweet Shakti pissed on my bed the second night in a row. I didn't understand why until I looked inside her (enclosed) litter box and saw that she has been quite sick, and the box was unusable by her standards. I think that was what she was mad about, mad enough to piss right on my sleeping bag after pissing on my comforter the night before. So I cleaned it....completely. But she didn't want to come back inside. I haven't seen her since she pissed on my bed and went outside.
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OK, so yesterday when my computer got fixed for free, and a few other things worked out to my benefit, I began to think that perhaps "my luck had changed". Only the way I think of it is more that I am cutting loose from a stuck place, moving forward in an energetic way. I think that going to a couple of yoga classes helped bust me loose. And cleaning my place. Washing my sheets and lighting a candle. I think playing the Boob Job Mix loud helped too.
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My computer died on Thursday. Or maybe Wednesday, but I didn't discover it for a while. Today I took it to the "Genius Bar" at the Apple store in downtown Portland and they fixed it -- for free! The power control unit on the mother board needed to be reset. That's it. Phew! When my machine chimed I told the guy "You ARE a genius!"

I had a lovely bike ride back up to NCNM from downtown Portland. The school is very close to town. I am going to start going to town one day a week after school, just because I enjoy the city so much. It hums, and I hum right along with it. I love to see all the crazy wild people on the sidewalks. There was a lady sitting on her jacket on the sidewalk, playing violin---wow she was incredibly good! Music makes me happy.
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Last night I couldn't find the kitten. It was the second time she spent a night out. This morning when I went to look for her, I saw the two dominant cats on the block sitting on a sidewalk just across the street from my house. I didn't think much of it until I had made my circle of the block, and back at that spot there was a noise up in the tree. My cat was up in the tree. I guess she'd gone up there to get away from the other two cats. They're ganging up on her.

No wonder she's not happy where she is.
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Moon slung in pink clouds as sun sets
Tears of joy and pain mix in my eyes
Can one have more broken hearts than cat's lives?
I think I have.
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Shakti is adjusting well. She knows where she lives. Just now she came in from outside and I had my bedroom door closed, and she meowed until I let her in. She has started pawing at the door when she wants out, and because the door is loose, she can make a lot of noise banging it around in the frame. A couple times now Brian has let her out of here, saying that it sounded like she was body slamming the door.
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