No bed, no boyfriend, no clothes, no apartment

Memorial Day weekend was supposed to mark a weekend of fun. My best friends from college were all coming into town for a girls' weekend. We made a pact when we graduated that no matter where we lived, every year we'd all reunite for the weekend. Since all of us are new to the 'real world', we decided that New York would be a good first endeavor. Three of the five of us already live here, so only two had to pay airfare. There was plenty to do and see, so there was no fear of boredom. Plus, when it really comes down to it, all we need is a place to crash (and preferably a liquor store). We can make fun wherever we go.

The night before my friends' arrival, my team from work decided to all go out for a drink together after work. We occasionally do happy hours, but it's rare that the entire team makes it out. I had outstanding plans with another friend, but they weren't until later, so I decided to join in for a few rounds. I was looking forward to just relaxing for the night before the girls weekend. My boyfriend and I had decided to take a break the previous weekend and I was doing my best to put it out of my mind.

Breaks to me in relationships don't make any sense. When you're with someone, you don't have to see them every second of every day. You can give each other space without formally announcing a "break". In my mind, "breaks" are excuses for someone to hook up with someone else and not have it count. This is why I never call breaks. If I'm with someone, i'm with them, and I think you're asking for trouble by throwing the "break" card into the mix. But I had agreed to the break out of kindness (with absolutely no intention of cheating whatsoever). In our last conversation, I had given my boyfriend an ultimatum. We'd only been dating for about 6 months. If he wanted to break up (for real) that was fine, but we couldn't do this whole "break" thing for more than a week. His family was coming into town for the weekend, so we had agreed to wait to have a follow-up conversation until they left on Monday. I didn't want to have to put a damper on my friends being here, nor him to be distracted during his weekend with his family.

So I went to drinks, trying to relax and put my mind at ease. While at the bar, my phone died. I had lost my charger a few days earlier, but didn't particularly care. I would just buy a new one the next day, plus my plans with my friend were easy to coordinate phone-less. There was no one else I needed to contact by phone for the night, so the lack of communicability was rather appealing for me. When the rest of my team from work moved from drinks to dinner, I opted to venture back to Brooklyn to meet my friend.

Back in my own borough, I spent the night downing beers and watching crappy television at my friend's place. I would routinely crash on her couch when it was too late for me to want to take public transportation back to Williamsburg. It got to that point on this particular evening, so I set an alarm to go to the airport to pick up my friends and passed out on the pullout.

The next morning, I checked my messages on using her phone before heading to the airport. There were two messages from the boyfriend.

A summary of the calls -

Message 1: "Hey, it's me. I wanted to talk before my family gets into town. Please call me back soon."
Message 2: "Hey, well, I didn't really want to do this over the phone, but my family is coming soon and I want to tell you this before they come. I can't be your boyfriend right now. But I hope we can be friends. Let me know if you still want to hang out with my family."

I'm upset, but can't even begin to fathom this because I'm late to pick up my friends at the airport. I hop in a cab and decide I better buy a charger at the airport so I won't miss anymore calls. Somehow I end up having a bit of time to spare before my friends' plan gets in, so I buy a charger at the travel store. I find a outlet near one of the cafes and start juicing up my cell. The second it's plugged in, I get a new voicemail notification.

"Hey, it's S (my roommate). The guys from Gothic Furniture came to drop off your bed. There wasn't any room to put it together, so they just left the pieces in your room."

AWESOME. My new bed was supposed to be delivered no earlier than 11am. It was 8:45. I knew my mattress was the only thing in my room in the way (I was planning to move it right after I went to the airport), but it wasn't any use to try and deal with it while I was still picking up my friends. I focused on trying to find them in the crowded airport. 15 minutes later we were all reunited. There are only a handful of people in my life I would have wanted to be with that morning, and it just so happened two of them had just arrived in the airport. We headed to Williamsburg to assess the damage.

When I first moved to New York, I had a lofted twin bed that my sister used in college. It was easy to bring cross-country in a car, plus it allowed for a ton of storage space underneath. And it was free. By May though, I was ready for a big kid bed. I talked it through with my roommates, S & J, and couldn't find any reasons not to finally put some money into my room. I wasn't planning on moving anytime soon and now that I had a 'real' job, I had the money to spend on it.

Enter my brand new full-sized bed. This was a thing of beauty. Oak with two giant rolling drawers underneath, it was sleek and ready-made for storage. When I got home though, my dream was sitting in 6 pieces on my bedroom floor. I called the furniture store immediately.

"Hi, my bed was delivered this morning in pieces."
"Ah - yes. You were not home."
"That's because it was supposed to be delivered between 11-4. It was dropped off before 9. And no one even called me to tell me it was being dropped off. You were supposed to call."
"Ma'am, what is your number?"
"612-"
"You have an out of town area code?"
"Yes, so does almost everyone nowadays."
"We don't have long distance on our company phones. There was no way to call you."
"You can even use pay phones for long distance. Are you serious?"
"Very, ma'am."
"Fine. I have a long distance number. My bad. Can you please send someone back over here to put it together for me? I'll pay for it."
"We can send someone out on Tuesday or Wednesday."
"That's almost a week away. Is it possible to just explain to me how I can put it together myself?"

The conversation lasted another 5 minutes, where it was told how I could assemble my bed. I'm a fairly handy person, so I preferred putting it together myself rather than waiting for these guys to come back. I postponed the building project until my friends were out of town and instead set my sights on picking up my clothes at the laundromat.

Drop off laundry places are one of the great offerings in New York. I don't mind doing laundry on my own when I have the machines in my apartment, but when I have to lug my clothes to the laundry in the first place, I really prefer giving it to someone else to take care of. They do such a great job - the folding is impeccable and it frees up a few hours in my day to do other things. I usually wait 3-4 weeks between trips, which is a product of my work schedule, coupled with my laziness. On this particular laundry excursion, I literally had sent 6 weeks of clothes to the laundromat. I had no clean clothes left, with the exception of a few random outfits that don't fit into my regular rotation. I made one of my friends go with me to pick it up out of fear that I would need an extra hand lugging the load back the 6 blocks to my apartment.

Oh, if that was my only concern. As with all trips to pick up my clothes, I handed my slip to the laundress, then waited for her to dig my clothes out of the piles and piles of giant bags with perfectly folded apparel. A few minutes go by and she still can't find my stuff. She looks at me apologetically, then continues her search. Another 5 minutes go by before she musters up the courage to tell me that my clothes are MIA and asks me to come back later. They may show up by then. Strike 3 for me and it's not even 3pm. My luck has certainly run out.

The remainder of the girls weekend was fun. I did my best to sort my life out. One of my friends came over on Sunday and helped me put together the bed, the laundromat came through with finding my laundry, and I was handling the breakup with as much grace as possible. Fast forward to a week later. The tape holding together my life was somewhat flimsy, but it was doing the job.

Enter my roommate, S. (See the "push it" entry for reference.) When we originally agreed to be roommates, it was decided that everyone living in the apartment would have to be there for an entire year. Everyone could stay as long as they liked, but a year was the minimum. We didn't have a lease - S had signed one a few years earlier - but hadn't resigned in quite some time. The lack of lease didn't really bother me. We all seemed like rational adults, I didn't need a piece of paper to prove that I was living somewhere. Over Memorial Day Weekend, S asked me what I planned on doing for the next year. I cheerfully responded that I had just gotten a new bed (which we all had discussed and decided was a good decision), and wanted to stick around for a while. Then she asked what I would do if she moved in with her boyfriend. She assured me that there was no rush in their decision. They would take their time with moving in together.

Me: "Well, ideally, I would move into the bigger room. [I had the smallest room by far in the apt] Then, we'd find another person for the third room."
S: "Yeah, okay."

I was psyched. The one downfall of my current room was its lack of space. S' room was about 2x the size of mine, and she paid only $80 more a month. I started to dream up possiblities for my new room and started telling my friends the good fortune. One of my friends was debating a move to New York and offered up taking the room if it ever became available. She was in no rush to move, but whenever the opportunity presented itself she could pick up and leave her current situation. This seemed like a perfect remedy to a possible roommate search, so I shared the news with S the next day.

Me: "Hey, I know there's no timetable when you move in with your boyfriend, but I have a friend who's interested in the place whenever you would want to make an exit. I'm not pushing you out, but that might help out you guys with a little flexibility with moving."
S: "Oh...yeah. Umm, well, when I was talking about moving in with him, I didn't mean that WE would move out."

I knew I was about to be kicked to the curb. Now that tape was completely ripped off from my breaking psyche. No real dignity was left, but now I did have my clothes and a brand new bed. Thank god for that bed.