god bless the ex-boyfriends

I don't even know where to start. Today was resoundingly suckacious, and if I can't make it interesting there's no point in talking about it. So at least I'll explain my title.

Today was the day I'd set for moving the bed into storage. So last night, after the flash mob, the Josh show, and some lovely gelato (on top of the No Protein I'd had all day, wheee) ArchitectX and I came back and moved the bed into the van I had so carefully rented yesterday. He was really a good sport about it--I may have underestimated him--I sort of thought that once the physical side of our relationship was terminated, he'd be historical, but such does not seem to be the case. He also remembers that I came to his office one night and helped him put together his insanely complicated, military-level-engineering desk until one in the am (after working a full shift), and figured he owed me one. So. Part One, easy.

I should have known.

Part Two, dreadful. The new storage facility is subpar, especially after the lovely storage paradise I had before (SafKeeps, if you're looking; run by angels and glazed with heavenly frosting), but I needed something quickly. This is what it is like: when I went in to the new place to rent a space, the two guys behind the counter got into this whole thing with me about the lock I'd brought. It's a perfectly good lock, strong, heavy, long hasp. I'm very fond of it. BUT it's a combination lock, because I'm bad with keys. And these guys explain to me that combo locks are like "asking for someone to break into your unit." They're relating gleefully how easy it is for someone walking down the halls of their facility to pick out the units with combo locks and let themselves in. So I ask how often the place gets broken into, and suddenly it dawns on them that maybe, just maybe, they are not making their place seem so appealing to a potential customer who has yet to sign the contract. "There hasn't been a break-in in the whole time I've been here," one says.

"How long have you been here?" I shoot back.

"Well, he's been here two years," the guy says, pointing to the guy sitting at the computer. "And I've been here, uh, six months."

"No break-ins in my time," says desk guy helpfully.

Uh huh.

But I'm desperate, and I don't really care that much if someone steals my mattress, and I'm paying extra for insurance that covers almost every possibility besides nuclear radiation or fallout (seriously, I turned the contract over and there it was on the back: nukes and insurrections, not covered) so I signed.

Which brings us back to this morning, and yours truly sitting outside the place in my U-Haul, waiting for LabRat to meet me. He shows just after the gate has opened, coffee in hand. He's got fifteen minutes to help me before he has to leave for work. How hard can it be?

Pretty damn hard, if you go to the second floor instead of the basement and can't find the unit, and then get split up and the elevators only work a certain way, and one must go up some stairs (avoiding a large puddle of crystallizing urine) so that one can yell through an alarmed fire door, "Hey, LabRat, you're on the wrong floor! Get back in the elevator and meet me on the first floor!" and there isn't anyone in the office to help and one imagines one's friend and ex-lover lying on the floor in a puddle of cold coffee, bones gnawed clean by savage storers, surrounded by one's boxes and shreds of mattress and boxspring.

We got it sorted out, through no skill of my own. I'd had three hours of sleep and was completely useless and whiny. LabRat, to his eternal credit, did not escalate with me. We finally got to the right unit, offloaded the gear, and then I realized--

I didn't have the key to the lock yesterday's bozos had sold me, after the stern talking-to about combination locks.

I was going to have to go back to the place I'm housesitting for my other keys.

My stuff was going to have to sit in the hall until I got back.

"I wouldn't worry," said LabRat, eyeing a pile of discarded boxes sitting in a corner. "If the halls are any clue, you don't need to worry about anyone taking your stuff."

Fortunately, he was right. I released him to work, I went and got the key, got the stuff in, returned the truck, etc. Grateful the whole time that there are two men in my life willing to help me out in my life in a pinch, two men who I've been with and with whom I am still capable of friendliness. It's a good feeling.

Which is good, because the rest of the day pretty much went straight to hell.

I did see "Urinetown", though, which I thought was pretty good. Made me wonder what would happen with Emerald Rain's Young Zombies in Love if they had any money to mount a big sexy professional-like production. There's a moment near the end that obviously did not sit well with the well-heeled ACT crowd, when a character made a pointed statement about how we cannot continue to live the way we do, at our rate of consumption. I could feel the ripple of discomfort, but I loved it. I see so much theater and so much of it has no teeth. I am all about teeth.

Then I had to explain who Malthus was to my friends. But that was okay.

Also spent a great deal of time on the phone with PRobot, who had gone out tonight with a woman our mutual friend thought PRobot might like. It was kind of weird--we both think that it's too soon to worry about exclusivity--but I had felt strange when I learned that he was planning on following through with meeting this woman. I've been in the situation a couple of times now that a man I'm just starting to date has some kind of unfinished business with another woman, and has articulated to me that he might still hook up with her. Happened with Fusion when I was 20, and then a few years later with BowlCut. In both cases, the man in question decided to focus on me, and in both cases things went pretty well from that point forward, but it still makes me nervous. I don't like feeling like I'm in the "pick me! pick me!" position; I don't believe in competing with other women or trying to make myself look like a better option. Maybe because I'm so convinced other women are better at the woman thing than I am? Worth thinking about.

Anyway, I hadn't really said anything about it at the time. My experience has been that at the beginning of a new thing it's best to make as much room as possible. But I was a little concerned, though I didn't give it a whole lot of brain space.

It seems I needn't have worried. And while I am totally sympathetic to the fact that PRobot had a less-than-satisfying first date with this person, I'm not feeling all THAT bad about it. The fact that he talked to me about it made me feel better too.

I also got another 30-40 bottlecaps glued while we were talking, which was satisfying. I now have about a hundred ready to be resined, as soon as the glue is dry, so I think I pour tomorrow. That should give them time to set, time to drill holes, and then if it comes to it I can thread jumprings while Almeida drives us to BRC. I'm very excited, but nervous; I'm not sure how to give things away to strangers. This will be a good lesson for me, I think. Also a chance to Use Up Beads, which is all to the good. Not that it makes a huge dent in my backlog of little weird crap, of course, but it's a concept.

It was good, the talking and the gluing. Made me forget the two dreadful work-related emails I'd gotten today that left me feeling like a totally incompetent putz. I am getting a lot of messages right now, I told one of the friends with whom I went to see Urinetown, between being evicted and having all this work stuff come down the way it is; I just need to listen closely to what the message IS. Right now it's sounding suspiciously like sell all your junk and move to Europe, but then I hear that voice a lot and generally squelch it.