Stranger in a Familiar Land

Posted on August 19, 2013

I’ve shared my thoughts about moving over the past couple of weeks and I may have even done some bitching about it. I say this as a warning because I may just do a little bit more today. Yes, I’m feeling the itch to bitch. Between me and you, I just started laughing because I realized we’ve only moved about six miles away. Six miles. It’s hardly the move my husband made to Chicago all those years ago, then back, then Kansas City, then back, then Phoenix, then back, then Chicago, then back, and now the Virgin Islands. I’m moving our household six miles. And let me tell you, it’s a pain in the ass!

First, people are friggin’ nosey. I called to cancel my Comcast cable and they wanted to know where I was moving. I’m sorry, but is it your business? No. So I fibbed and the person on the other end informed me they don’t offer service where I said I was moving. And no, it wasn’t what first came to your mind. I thought of that, too. Dirty! I chose another place, only a real place, just far way. Problem solved. Then there’s the matter of having mail forwarded. The Post Office likes this set up online these days…because it costs a dollar to do. I have to forward the mail for three names. Naturally, when the credit card company see three single dollar charges come through, it alerts their fraud unit, when means you then have to call them.

Which brings me to this point; I’m doing all the damn typing putting the information in instead of them doing it, so they ought to be giving me three dollars in free postage. They’re not. I suggested it. The teller eyed the security button.

The apartment complex wanted to know my forwarding address. Nope. I gave them my cell phone number. We received the lease renewal in the mail Saturday and they’re raising rent by $30 starting October 1st. So sorry. We’ll be gone by then, so take your rent hike and shove it where I almost told Comcast I was moving. Love you, mean it.

Meanwhile in the midst of all this crap, I’m bringing boxes over and unpacking things that can immediately be put away. The truth is I miss the apartment. It was home for a decade and if it wasn’t for the complex taking a dive in terms of who they rented to—cause and effect of the economic downturn—I’d have been happy staying. But I’m at the house now and there are many new things around me. There are many things around me that belonged to my father-in-law. There are a few of my and our things here and there. I’ve known this house for 21 years, so it’s very familiar. Yet, so many things around feel extremely foreign.

My health is a source of irritation, too. I recovered from surgery at the apartment and that was comfortable. When things went wrong a couple of days ago and I wound up at the emergency clinic because of a urinary tract infection, they went wrong at the house. If I’m going to be writhing around on the floor in a cold sweat while in intense pain, I’d rather it have been where I’m far more familiar. The experience was simply further realization that I’ve not adapted to the new place yet. I admit it; it scared me. Being here by myself scares me. The nurse at the clinic scared me.

When you explain to a nurse that when you’ve gone to pee, feel an intense pain that starts in your back and wraps around your body to the front, brings you to your knees and onto the floor, and takes 20 minutes to dissipate after a mere drop or two comes out, one might think this nurse would have listened to the exact words coming out of your mouth. My nurse? She looked at me, wrote the information down—I’m guessing in shorthand—reached up, opened a cabinet, and handed me a plastic cup.

“I need you to give us a urine sample.”

You fucking sadist.

That’s what I felt like saying. I didn’t. I’m confident I gave her one of my famous “how can someone so intensely and potentially stupid possibly remember to breathe?” looks.

“You do realize if I give you this sample, I’m going to be in intense pain again, right? I’m talking the same exact pain I just spent the last several minutes describing the agony of to you.”

“Yes,” she replied with no misgivings about what she was asking me to do.

“If I give you the sample, will you give me something for the pain?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Then I don’t think I can give you the sample.”

She went to check with the doctor and he did indeed give her something to give to me for the pain. And I was in a great deal of pain when all was said and done and they had their sample. Not only did she make me wait several agonizing minutes, but instead of giving me the shot in the arm, she gave me one in the ass.

“Gee, it’s like the husband’s home,” I turned to her while she was prepping, “only half the fun.”

Then she jabbed me.

And here I recovered at the house. If it’s not one thing, it’s the other. The other is cancelling out the uncertain feelings of the one thing, though. Ah, the webs we weave…

________________________
Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the recently re-published novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.

13 Responses to “Stranger in a Familiar Land”

Monique says:
August 19, 2013 at 8:59 am
Wow ok well on that note great post ..talk to you after the big move. Feel better Mr.Gair.

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Kris says:
August 19, 2013 at 9:04 am
Are you kidding? If I don’t say good morning to you online each morning, you’d just send out a search party for me. But that’s one of the things I like about you. =)

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Dorien says:
August 19, 2013 at 9:01 am
I think I have diagnosed the mental and physical symptoms you have described. You are suffering from the chronic…and I fear eventually terminal…condition called “Life.” (Fortunately, we do not need a urine sample for confirmation.)

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Kris says:
August 19, 2013 at 9:05 am
Thank God for small favors, D. I swear, if my arms had been cut off, she’d have asked me for a signature.

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CR Guiliano says:
August 19, 2013 at 10:32 am
Give yourself time sweets. You’ll get used to the house, and soon enough, it will feel as familiar as the apartment. I will be going through the same thing here soon when I move back to Missouri in October.

As Dorien said, it’s life and it can suck sometimes. Just remember, you have Monique to say good morning to, Patti to be the boil on your bum, J.p. for intelligent verbal duels and…me.

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Kris says:
August 19, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Mo-Mo and Patti… Dear God…euthanasia never sounded so appropriate. 😛

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CR Guiliano says:
August 20, 2013 at 6:32 pm
But sweets, you wouldn’t have nearly the fodder you have now if they were to up and disappear. *snickers*

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Kimber says:
August 19, 2013 at 11:06 am
*hugs* UTIs are a bitch and I have definitely felt your pain. (Yes, the pun was intended. You know I love you!) Cranberry juice…not the cocktail crap, but real 100% juice. Works wonders. Nature is amazing.

The more you get moved in, the more the feelings will fade and it will become home. Just give it a minute.

…

How bout now? How ya feeling? Too short, huh? Yeah, I thought so, too. Love ya tons!
Kimber
(I think the nurse was a heartless bitch, too. Oh, and sadistic…she kin to Red? Ya shoulda asked. LOL)

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Kris says:
August 19, 2013 at 3:00 pm
I think when Mo-Mo is stalking me in Detroit one day, I’ll have to arrange for her and the nurse to meet. Mo will cut her down to size in no time flat gnawing at her knees like she does.

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PromoHomo says:
August 19, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Having seen both places, I believe that you will certainly enjoy the new home better. Give it time. For me, I would love to walk along the beach and trails meditating on the grandness of it all. For you, I can see you plotting the next Gaylious novel and creating a secret cubby to hide in during the next Hong Kong grandmother attack.

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Kris says:
August 19, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Or to hide any new Blu-Rays… Those are important.

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Jenn-Jenn says:
August 19, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Ahhhhh….. I almost feel good knowing you have suffered like 1 millionth of my monthly pain. But I can manage to feel a little sorry for you.

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Joelle Casteel says:
August 20, 2013 at 3:15 pm
venting is good for the spirit 😀 yeah, it floors me what people seem to think it their right to know. hopefully moving and setting up is all done for you soon