What doesn't kill you makes you pissed off and exhausted: or Moving!

So, we moved.

Like how I said that like it was no big deal?

Ha.

The only reason I haven't been blogging about the long, drawn-out home-buying-and-selling nachtmar which has dominated the better part of a year is because it is so unthinkably BORING I wouldn't want to punish you people with any of it.

Of course now that its over, I can punish away.

Here's the short version: The five of us were living in a one bedroom apartment. Before baby came, when it was just four of us, somehow it was OK. Not great. Pretty stinking miserable, but OK. For some crazy reason, during my pregnancy, I thought it would STILL be Ok once Baby came. I blame the hormones. That, and who, given any other alternative, even living with three kids and a husband in a one bedroom apartment, would ever want to tackle the misery of moving?

But as soon as Terza touched down, it became exceedingly clear that we would not be faring well if we stayed in our tiny place. Maybe if all of us, or even any of us, were more low-key, it would work. But all my kids, and David and me most of all are high-maintenance, loud, inflexible people who it is frequently hard to share a room with. And when you only have two rooms, total, and five people to share them, this means unpleasantness. It wasn't even that I minded so much hissing incessantly "Be QUIET! The baby's SLEEPING!" Or that I had to listen to the kids bicker non=stop or play the bongos or sing Phantom of the Opera for two hours straight. I have a high tolerance for stuff like that. It was nighttime that made everything unbearable.

Because my children, despite the fact that they have been doing it every night for 8, and 5 years respectively. STILL DO NOT KNOW HOW TO GO TO SLEEP. Also, they'd don't know how to stay asleep. The entire sleep department needs serious work. And, by the way, its not for lack of my trying. See old blog posts for evidence.

So the kids couldn't manage to quiet down at night, and thier ruckus threatened to wake the baby, and me, who -- deranged from sleep deprivation with my newborn -- wanted to turn in before 11 occasionally. Then, in the middle of the night, the baby would, of course wake, since she was a newborn and all, and then often, she'd wake one or both of the others, or they'd wake first nd get her up.  The first person to wake up in all these different scenarios was me, of course. It was a three ring circus. A shitty, cranky circus no one would ever pay to see with no tricks at all and just lots of screaming and under-eye bags.

It was so bad, in fact, that it made selling our apartment, finding a bigger one we would afford, buying it and then moving palatable. That's how bad we're talking.

Of course, we're here now and all's well that ends well. I got my Christmas present early this year and its called Deliverance from Moving or Return to (relative) Sanity.

A-B-C. Always. Be. Closing

So here’s a piece of news. I am now a homeowner.

I have been keeping this huge revelation a secret from you blog readers because as you may or may not know I am a highly superstitious woman and though I have been consumed with financing, appraising, title clearing and the like, I haven’t wanted to leak a word for fear it would cause the whole precarious deal to fall though.

But now I am have the keys, and have moved in my wedding china (that terrifically essential part of our life that has been used twice in five years) and I think I can say with assurance that that glorious one bedroom is mine, all mine. Well, mine and David’s and Seconda’s and Primo’s.

Yes, it may be surprising to hear that with two children, we opted to buy a one bedroom rather than a two or three bedroom but beggars can’t be choosers and freelance writers and literary fiction writers/ secretaries are definitely beggars.

It’s a LARGE one bedroom, I tell people to get the look of shock off their faces, larger even than the two bedroom we are in now. By about 90 square feet. Sure, the total size of our apartment equals the size of the living and dining room in my sister-in-law’s sprawling home in Tennessee. But this is New York, baby, and I wouldn’t care if you offered me the deed to the Taj Mahal – I’m not leaving. I’m not even leaving the Slope. How could I continue Slope blogging otherwise? How could I persist in complaining of santimommies and ice cream fascists and aggravating dads who let their kids piss in the sprinklers? So no need to bid me adieu. I’m staying right where I am. I’m just moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky.

And, incidentally, my grandmother will be moving on up herself, up up up to live five floors above us. In the very same apartment building.

Kind of a wild turn of events but my grandmother had to move our of her place, where she’s been for over 35 years, since her landlord graciously hiked up the rent 30% overnight, in the middle of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Classy move. My grandmother has no legal recourse for a number of reasons and besides, she’s getting on, as they say, and doesn’t need to deal with a walkup at her age. So it was that my parents began searching for a place for her – so that she too could be a homeowner, because it’s never too late to get into the real estate game, and they wanted her close to one of us, and bingo! It just so happened that there were two apartments remaining in this newly-finished building, one for me, and one for my Nonnie.

She has a balcony with a view of the grassy park and play area behind the building, she has granite countertops, stainless steel fridge, a gym in the building and a doorman. She has hardwood floors. For the first time in nearly thirty decades, my grandmother has a dishwasher. A dishwasher, for God’s sake. You’d think she’d be happier than a pig in clover or my mother on no sales tax day. But when people tell her how great it is that she is buying a place and moving close to me, she actually snorts.

“Oh, yes, really great!” she snickers, “It’s very small, there are no places to buy vegetables and you ask me -- too expensive. I like my Brooklyn.”

But despite her notable lack of enthusiasm, we’re all moving forward, into a brave new world of home-ownership and, one can only assume, co-dependence.

These are the parts of the equation I try not to think about too much, though. Instead focus on just how much Ikea shit I can afford to fill the house with because I don’t know what they pump into the air in those stores, but once I enter Ikea, I feel calm and happy and desperately in need of everything they are selling. Some people might buy nice furniture from designer places or even Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn, but for us, purchasing furniture from Ikea is a step up, because up to this point, we’ve just been using every mismatched hand-me-down anyone has ever thought to offload on us and our house looks like a college dorm room in which lawless toddler and preschoolers are squatting.

And so dear readers, forgive me if I lag in my blogging responsibilities this week – it is only because I’ll be wrapping dishes in newspaper and sealing boxes like its closing time.