Toilet Paper Capers

After a few months, Paul the Stomper moved on, taking over a friend's lease on a midtown studio.  Jake and I went back to craigslist to find yet another resident for our little apartment.  We found Tyler, a slightly pompous and full of himself Harvard grad who meant well, but could be a little much sometimes (once he came into the living room and announced, with glee, that he'd cleaned the bathroom!  well, congratulations, what do you want?  a cookie?).  Mostly the three of us got along well, but there were a few things (like the need for a gold star the one time cleaning was done by someone other than me) that got under my skin.  One of our issues regarded household supplies.

When Paul the Stomper lived with us, I felt like we were all buying our fair share of toilet paper, paper towels, soap, etc.  I bought things sometimes when they ran out, but there were other times when someone else brought stuff home.  After Paul moved I realized that this wasn't really the case.  I might have been buying 1/3 of the stuff, but Paul was definitely buying the rest.  After a couple of months of clearly being the only one buying everything our little place needed, I sent the following e-mail in reply to an e-mail Jake sent us about the bills :

On a related note . . . I was wondering if we could start a fund for apartment consumables?  I really don't mind picking up toilet paper, paper towels, soap and sponges for the apartment, but I can't afford to be the only one who does it.  So, I thought that if we each put $10 into an envelope, the next time we run out of something or need to buy consumable community property for the apartment we can use those funds.  I'm open to suggestions if you want to do something else.

Both boys responded positively and apologized for not buying more stuff.  I thought the issue was resolved and breathed a sigh of relief.  I'm not terribly confrontational, and I hate talking about money.  Even more, I hate asking for money -- even if I'm deserved it.  I was definitely happy to have this whole situation over with . . . or so I thought.

Despite their written positive feelings about the plan, the boys didn't act too quickly.  A few days later we ran out of toilet paper, neither of them was home and the "consumable property envelope" had yet to be fully established (and by this I mean that it existed, with my $10 in it, but no one else's).  I didn't quite know what to do, but I definitely needed some toilet paper, so I ran down to the bodaga and got some.  

After some careful contemplation, desperately not wanting to have to ask them again to pitch in some money, I came to a decision -- if they weren't going to pay for the toilet paper, they couldn't use it.  When I left the bathroom, I took it with me.  For a solid week my mobile roll of toilet paper was the only one in our apartment.  The boys were both home frequently this week and never said anything about the lack of toilet paper.  This turn of events raises a lot of questions:  1)  Why did it take them a week to do something about the situation?  2)  What exactly were they doing after going to the bathroom?  3)  What about going #2?  Were they saving it for the office?  4)  What did they think I was doing in the bathroom? (my secret stash kept a low profile.  I did no flaunting of the private toilet paper)  5)  Why are boys so weird? 

The Stomper

101 Thompson St was a revolving door of craigslist residents.  When I first moved in in the end of August 2005, I lived with Jenny and Jake.  Jenny was a couple of years older than I and Jake a couple of years younger.  They were both typical NYC white collar professionals, working in finance and PR, and both pretty easy to live with.  The girl whose room I moved into was a Michigan transplant who hated Manhattan and moved back home just six months after arriving.  The girl she replaced was a Turkish national who, after declaring bankruptcy (which was evident from the vast amount of correspondence we received for her from creditors and collectors), fled back to Turkey.

A month after I moved in, at the end of their year-long lease, Jenny moved out.  In moved Paul, who, like me, found the place off of craigslist.  Paul also worked in finance and seemed nice enough.  We all socialized on the couch while watching TV and occasionally grabbed a beer together.  The thing was, he was the loudest walker I have EVER encountered.  He practically stomped around the apartment.  To be at his job on Wall Street, he got up a lot earlier than Jake or I did and would routinely wake me up just by walking to and from the bathroom.

Initially, I couldn't figure out how a skinny white guy from Long Island could make such a colossal amount of noise.  So, I started studying how he walked through the living room.  After some careful observations I discovered the problem -- he walked like a tyrannosaurus rex.  Even though he was a small guy, he walked slightly tilted forward, putting all of his not-so-significant weight on the balls of his feet, producing a loud, stomping effect on our hardwood floors.

As much as I wanted to say something to Paul about the stomping, I couldn't figure out a way to say "Please walk more softly" without sounding completely crazy.  One night, when only Paul and I were home, someone knocked on the door.  It was our cranky downstairs neighbor, AnneMarie.  See, 101 Thompson was a coop building, even though we were renters, and most of our neighbors were older, cranky, and complete with a sense of entitlement.  I once got berated by the super because someone else left a futon downstairs and of course, only the renters could have done something so untoward as to leave furniture in the entryway.  Anyway, AnneMarie was pretty typical of our neighbors and had no problem complaining to us about our many transgressions.  

On this night, she came upstairs to tell us to buy carpets.  Apparently, Paul's stomping was waking her up too.  She stood in our doorway and, with a straight face, proceeded to tell us that for the past month or so, someone had been walking very loudly around 6:00 am everyday and she kept getting woken up.  We needed to buy carpets because she needed her beauty sleep.  Paul and I both apologized and said that we would take her suggestion under advisement, but couldn't guarantee that we'd buy carpets as we weren't bothered by the noise.  We also offered the very helpful comment that sometimes living in an apartment building was hard.

You might be thinking, "But Margaret, this was the perfect opportunity for you to say something about the stomping!  Cranky AnneMarie opened the door for you!"  The thing was, as soon as the words came out of her mouth, they sounded absolutely absurd.  Any concession that she might be on the right track would instantly make me look as unstable as she did.  The worst thing about it was that Paul suggested he not put his shoes on until right before he left the apartment, thinking (mistakenly) that his dress shoes made the noise.  Unfortunately, having shoes on actually made Paul's posture better and therefore lessened the sound of his lumbering.  My only consolation, while being woken up daily at 6 am by the stomping for the next few months, was that cranky AnneMarie who insisted we buy carpets, was being woken up too.

The Perks and Perils of Living in SoHo

Saying I lived in SoHo certainly sounds like I was living lavishly, but I assure you that I wasn't enjoying much of what makes SoHo famous . . . and desirable to live in.  Smashed into my 500 sq ft apartment with my two craigslist roommates, I couldn't afford to take advantage of many of the posh restaurants and bars in our immediate vicinity.  Despite loving shopping, I couldn't really shop at any of the cute little boutiques scattered around the thirty block radius below Houston Street that constitutes one of the most coveted neighborhoods in all of Manhattan, at least until I got a little infusion from my parents.  For Christmas 2005, my parents gave me an American Express gift card with money on it earmarked for a purchase from one of the shops in my 'hood.  I bought this shirt, which was marked down 75% to $95 because one of the little beads was missing . . . 

One of the perks of living in SoHo was that people who can afford to live there quite lavishly, often do.  It is a mecca of celebrity sightings.  I'm often pretty oblivious to who's around me while I'm walking, so I'm sure I missed many that sharper eyes would have caught.  As I was reminded yesterday when I took a little trip back to my old block -- walking in SoHo, celebrities or no celebrities, can be a bit perilous.  The sheer number of people, mostly slow-walking, map-waving, funny-pack-wearing tourists, makes it really difficult to walk at any pace above glacial.  I often end up (as I did yesterday) walking in the street rather than even dealing with the sidewalks.

But I digress . . . back to celebrities.  I've seen Debra Messing, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a whole slew of Saturday Night Live cast members.  My best celebrity sighting EVER, though, was Bon Jovi.  And not because Bon Jovi ranks higher on some list than the others, but because he filmed a video in the park right outside of my window!  There were screaming fans pressed up against the chain link fence, and yet, there I was, sitting in my open window enjoying the show for free!

The Saga of the Bed

One of the things I lacked when I moved from my parents' house to NYC was a bed.  It seemed to make the most sense to buy one in NYC, rather than lug one all the way up from the DC suburbs.  The room I moved into, let me remind you, was only 8'x10' and the closet stuck into the room, so space was at a premium.  My dad kept saying that I could take one of the extra twin beds from their house, but beyond the question of where I would have put it in the already stuffed-to-the-gills car, is the fact that I REALLY didn't want a twin bed.  Moving to New York City was the first real grown-up move I'd made, and I wanted to do it in a grown-up bed, dammit.

Now the question remained, how exactly was I going to fit a double bed in a tiny room with all of my stuff?  I thought about a loft bed, or a semi-lofted bed that I could put dressers under, but I really didn't want to spend a ton of money on a bed that would only be useful to me in this one apartment.  After a ridiculous amount of searching on-line, I decided that a platform bed with drawers in it would be the best bet.  I was meticulous about finding the best price, so I went with the one from Big Apple Futons.  Not only did it have the most space, but it was also $200 cheaper to get it from them than any of their competitors.  It didn't come with a mattress, so I ordered one separately from 1-800-MATRESses.

I thought it would be smart to put the orders in for everything before I moved so that they would come in as close as possible to the day I moved.  I ended up sleeping on my airmattress for about a week before my real mattress came in.  Then I had the real mattress on the floor while I waited for the bed.  Big Apple Futons said that the bed would take between five and ten business days to be ready.  They also said that delivery into my apartment was included.

After a week of sleeping on my nice, new mattress on the floor, I called Big Apple Futons to inquire about my bed.  They said it would be another 5-10 business days and could give me a better idea of the exact day later in the week.  Again they assured me that delivery was included.

Another week went by -- no bed.  I called again and spoke with someone different.  This woman said it would probably be another week.  She muttered some excuse about Labor Day, now two weeks in the past, as to why it was taking so long.

Finally, after nearly four weeks, Big Apple Futon called to say that the bed would be delivered the next day between 10 and 2.  I again asked about the delivery, since I knew my roommates would be at work during the day and unable to help me with the bed.  The person on the phone assured me the bed would come right to my apartment.

The next day I made sure to have all of my stuff out of my room by 10, to ease the move-in.  Then I waited, and waited, and waited.  I was supposed to be at work at an afterschool program at 3:00.  At 2:30 the delivery guys called to say they were downstairs and dropping off the bed.  I asked them to bring it upstairs.  They said they couldn't because I hadn't paid for delivery up the stairs.

WHAT??  I immediately called the people at Big Apple Futons, and they claimed ignorance.  No one would have ever told me that carrying the bed up two flights of stairs to my apartment would be covered.  It was an extra charge.  The free delivery was only to the door of the building.

WHAT??  Who ever heard of such a thing?  (yes, New Yorkers, I am now very familiar with this concept, but I'd only been in the city for four weeks at this point and was quite naive) 

After some yelling on the phone, and assuring Big Apple Futons that they were the worst company I'd every worked with, I calmed down enough to realize that I had to think of a way to get the bed up the stairs.  I offered to pay the guys with the bed (which, until then I'd refused to sign for, so they were just standing next to it on a busy SoHo street) to carry it up the stairs.  They charged me $15/flight of stairs, which was cheaper than Big Apple and probably more than they would have gotten if I'd paid through the company as well.

And then, finally, I had my dresser-bed . . . complete with four drawers and a storage compartment, it's extremely comfortable and lived through five apartments with me.  Excellent investment.

Big Apple or Bust

At the end of August 2005, right as Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I finally moved up to NYC.  I settled on a teeny-tiny little room (only 8'x10') in SoHo in a 500 sq ft three-bedroom apartment.  It was a small space even by Manhattan standards -- it had originally been a one-bedroom but had been gutted and converted into a three-bedroom for completely unknown reasons.  Once I acquired a bed, the door to my room couldn't open all the way, and the itty-bitty closet actually stuck into the room, sucking up more space.  My room did come with one delightful bonus -- a window overlooking a park.  It kind of made me feel like I wasn't so boxed in.

Before I actually lived at 101 Thompson Street, I had to move up there.  On a Saturday afternoon my parents and I, very carefully and meticulously, packed up every inch of their SUV with all of my worldly belongings.  We had to be pretty creative about it in order to get everything to fit, and I had to spend the entire ride from Virginia to New York with my feet on the front-seat armrest because there was absolutely nowhere else to put them.  Good thing I waited to buy a bed until I got up there . . .

Stuffing the car with my dad.

 Getting creative

Stuffing myself in the car.

 Every inch of space used wisely.

We stopped at my uncle's in Philadelphia for the night and arrived in Manhattan at around 11:00 on Sunday morning, which is probably the only time we could have gotten parking in SoHo.  We managed to park right outside my building, met my new roommate and the craigslist mover we'd hired to carry everything up the third floor walk-up, and got everything in in record time.

 Unpacking the car

The morning went by so easily that we figured my parents we would back on the road in just a few hours.  My mom and I headed off to Bed Bath and Beyond while my dad set about to put together my desk.  We were sure he'd be done by the time we got back.  Um, no.  The desk, which I am currently sitting at, turned out to be what we now refer to as the seven hour desk project.  Oh Ikea, you and your wordless directions and ridiculously complicated "some assembly required" furniture.

About four hours in . . . 

In the meantime, I tried my hand at putting together the desk chair . . . which resulted in me sitting on it for the first time and having all of the wheels shoot off and spin around the living room.  Clearly my dad's handy gene skipped a generation.

Finally finished around 8:00 at night.

During the putting together of the desk, my mom amused herself by taking countless pictures of every inch of my new place.  At the time it was pretty embarrassing, now I'm kind of glad I have them :)

 The mailboxes

  Climbing the stairs.

  The living room and my roommates' doors.

 My door and the living room window.

 The living room and kitchen

View of the little park from my window.

A Shared Studio and The Westin Hotel

Before heading up to NYC, I did sort of move out of my parents' house for a while.  I got a job as a glorified camp counselor at a summer enrichment program for high school kids called NYLC.  There were four eleven day sessions over the course of eight weeks in the summer, and for the entirety of each session we all lived in the illustrious Westin Hotel in Tysons Corner, VA.  The hotel itself was nothing special, but while working seventeen hour days teaching high school kids about the government and carting them all over DC to see the sights, any bed anywhere was welcome.  I basically spent my three days off between sessions sleeping for seventeen hours a day back at my parents' house. 

In the midst of this madness, I was preparing to move to New York.  I'd decided to live in NYU graduate housing my first year, since I didn't really know anything about the city and didn't have time to think about it.  I waited, and waited, and waited to hear where I was living.  My first choice was in a two bedroom apartment, but there were a couple of different buildings and I had some preferences.  A couple of days into my last NYLC session, I was notified that I'd be living in a shared studio.  A what?  Basically, a freshman dorm room.  Suddenly, in the middle of seventeen hour days playing tour guide, I had to cancel my university housing, get my deposit back, look through ads on craigslist, and maybe even go to New York to look for a place.  To complicate matters further, I had a planned, five day trip to San Francisco two days after I finished working.

By my last day at NYLC I'd basically decided that I would have to take a place sight-unseen because I didn't have anytime to go to New York.  My mom sort of freaked out about that.  Since my brother was working for an airline, I could fly standby for free, and my mother convinced me to just fly up for the day in between finishing work and going to San Francisco.  It was a total whirlwind -- I saw two apartments, and liked both.  I managed to grab a beer with friends somewhere in the middle as well.

Then it came time for me to go.  I'd gotten into the city without any issues and had taken the subway around all afternoon.  I thought I had it covered.  Just get on the A train and get off at Howard Beach.  It was 7:30, my flight was at 10:00, and I thought I was totally fine.  I got on the A train at West 4th street and read my book for half an hour until I thought it would be wise to start keeping an eye out for my stop.  We got to 80th Street, and then 88th, and then the next stop was to be at the Aquaduct, right before mine.  Only, it wasn't the Aquaduct it was 104th street.  It was at this moment that I realized that the A train forks out to two lines right before JFK.  At this point it was 9:00.

I managed to turn around and get back to where I was supposed to be in about twenty minutes.  I found the SkyTrain and raced to get on.  We went one stop and stopped and waited, and waited, and waited in the station.  Eventually they announced that there was a suspicious package on our train and they were calling in the bomb squad to dispose of it.  Honestly, the one time someone saw something and actually said something . . .

So I got off the train a bit frantic -- it was now 9:40.  Another announcement was made that no trains would be running through that stop until "the situation was contained."  I ran up to a SkyTrain worker and asked him if there was any way for me to get a cab out there, since I was afraid I was going to miss my flight.  As soon as he said no, I burst into tears and started blubbering about getting on the wrong subway and needing to get home because I had a flight to San Francisco the next day, etc.  This guy looked at me and said, "I'll drive you."  I weighed the possibility of getting raped and murdered by this stranger for about a second before I decided it was my only chance of making my flight.

He drove like a maniac and got me to the terminal in about five minutes.  I threw five dollars at him and shouted thank you as I ran out the door.  I flew through the terminal, trying not to knock people over in my quest to get to the security checkpoint as quickly as possible.  I was whisked to the front of the line, as irresponsibly late people frequently are, at 9:55.  It was at this point that I was informed that I was a selectee.  I was identified as a possible threat and wanded up and down, my purse was searched, and I got a pat down.  As they started the whole process I said to anyone who would listen, "It doesn't even matter now, because you've made me miss my flight," which luckily didn't get me into further trouble with the surly folks at TSA.

After the indignity of the increased security check, I was positive I'd missed the flight, but ran on to my gate anyway.  They literally closed the door as I ran down the stairs.  I could see my plane, but per FAA regulations, couldn't get on it.  There's a rule about opening the door after they've closed it.  At this point I was a blithering mess.  I got re-booked on the first flight the next morning, and went to find a comfy place to spend my first night in NYC.  I slid under a large sign onto it's concrete pedestal (which was oddly the most comfortable place in all of Terminal 4) for a quick little map before heading back to check-in for my new flight.  At 7:30 AM, after an hour and a half delay, I was finally out, not even knowing if it had been worth it, not knowing whether I'd gotten either apartment or would have to come back up again the next week.  Ridiculous.

Back to the Nest

 During my layover in London on my way back to the States!

The night before Thanksgiving in 2004 I landed back on American soil after twenty-six months living in Ukraine.  My brother and sister and I had conspired to surprise our parents with my arrival.  Peace Corps is a twenty-seven month commitment, but volunteers can leave within thirty days on either side of their official date.  Withholding this little tidbit of information from my parents meant that they thought I was getting home right before Christmas rather than Thanksgiving.

It was a pretty spectacular surprise.  My brother and sister concocted some scheme to both get out of the house in the same car to pick me up at the airport.  They greeted me with flowers and took tons of pictures, mostly because they knew our mom would be upset that she missed my official arrival at the airport (incidentally, she was a little distressed that there was no "Welcome Home Margaret" poster, which had been part of her plan).  Our parents saw us come up the front walk, past the family room window and my mom just thought "Oh they brought a friend with long brown hair home."  Then I walked into the family room and said "Hi."  It took a few seconds for everything to sink in and my mom kept saying "Margaret, what are you doing here?"  Later that night she confessed to peeking into my room while I was asleep to make sure that it wasn't all a dream and I really was home.

The first month or so that I was back was great.  It was a whirlwind of holidays, parties, and nights out to see friends I hadn't seen for two years.  I spent some time acclimating myself to American society as well.  One moment really sticks out from the first week I was back.  I was in the car with my dad when he said he had to stop and get some money.  To my surprise we went into the Safeway.  Since when were banks in grocery stores?  One of the things I missed the most when I was in Ukraine was good cereal, which is still my breakfast food of choice.  So I told my dad I was going to go grab some cereal and I would be right back.  Ten minutes later he started to get worried.  He found me in the cereal aisle, completely immobilized,  holding four boxes of cereal and staring at the endless boxes on the shelves.  In Ukraine, you were never guaranteed to find anything stocked in a store again -- particularly a western product like cereal, particular in a small town or village like I lived in.  I just couldn't make a decision about which box was the most important to me at that moment.  Eventually my dad made a decision for me and coaxed me out of the store.

As my reverse culture shock dissipated, the reality that I was unemployed and living with my parents at the age twenty-four started to hit me.  I was applying to grad schools and knew that I wouldn't be moving until I knew where I was going.  Within a few months I'd decided on New York and was substitute teaching, but I still felt somewhat embarrassed and inferior for not having my life more together.  I would meet guys at bars and they would innocently ask, "So where do you live?" and I would respond in one quick breath:

"withmyparentsinrestonbutIjustgotbackfromthepeacecorpsandI'mmovingtoNewYorkinAugust." 

Come again?  One of the hardest things about coming back from Peace Corps is realizing that while you've been having the adventure of a lifetime, everyone else has been going about life as usual.  Firmly ensconced in careers, relationships, apartments and driving cars they hadn't bought used in high school, most of my contemporaries seemed completely put together . . . which probably wasn't all that true, but it felt as if they'd all gained all this ground while I was gone.  Even now, I still feel the twinge of having "lost" two years of my life from time to time.

So, living with my parents again was a bit of an adjustment from being so absolutely alone for so long.  One of the things I found most annoying was my stuff not remaining right where I left it.  In Ukraine I would frequently dump shoes or my school bag right in the front hall and keep stepping over them until I needed them again (an annoying habit that's resurfaced since I've become roommate-less once again).  At my parents I would put something down and never be able to find it again.  When asking my mom about the whereabouts of the item, she would inevitably, irritatingly, reply with a vague and aloof "It's around," and a wave of the hand to indicate where "around" was.  Harumph.    

Also, after four years of college and two years of living at the ends of the earth, I had become pretty independent and self-sufficient.  My parents, however, still had a kid in high school and had some trouble distinguishing between appropriate parenting for my little brother and what might be best for their freeloading, but grown, adult daughter.  I wasn't so interested in describing my plans down to the last detail, no matter how innocent the activity. 

Having a deadline, or due date, for the end of my stay at the Hotel of Mom and Dad made it bearable.  Sometimes it was pretty fun too.  And you can't beat the rent.  Oh how I miss the rent . . .

 With my family in the front yard of my parents' house for brother's high school graduation toward the end of my time living there.

Rebecca, Mom, Peter, Dad, and me