Well We're Movin' On Up

...to a deluxe apartment on the gro-ow-0wnd floor. Mo-oo-vin' on u-up...I don't know any more of that song. But I can finally write my own lyrics. We've found our new home. In Astoria. At last. Phase one of The Chrysalis Year Extreme Makeover Home Edition is officially in effect. Details will follow but first, a few props:

Thanks to the cosmic apartment Gods--those heavenly, lawnmowing, benevolent beings responsible for the assignment of empty spaces to empty people. They finally put us in our place (literally and figuratively). Thanks to George, our celadon-Jag-driving broker, and his negotiation skills. Never before have I seen such an honest attempt at wheelin' and dealin' on behalf of owner and future hopeful tenants. For three days he believed our shtick, we believed his, and that was all anyone needed to know. He: honest purveyor of fine vacated apartments. Us: honest couple in search of an upgrade. He did his job. He broked. We did ours too. We signed our first lease in a decade. It's a milestone of milestones in so many ways. Thanks to our three-legged dog and her pink bandana for being the picture of low maintenance gentility so that the new owner would consider allowing her to prance around on newly refurbished hardwood floors. Thanks also to our current landlord for taking her foot off the insanity pedal for a day so we could plead our case about pro-rating June's rent. And now, to our friends and family: thank you for tolerating endless philosophizing on how much the rental market has changed (duh) in the last decade, being patient while we mused on notions of gentrification versus renovation and borough identity, and helping us (me) locate Prospect Heights on a map. If we hadn't been able to hold in our hearts the vision of breaking bread with you at a table that doesn't have screw-in legs, in a kitchen with a floor that actually touches the walls, I'm not sure we woulda survived signing that two-page, single-spaced lease.

I reserve my final thanks for 35-08 33rd Street. Thank you, beloved chicken shack, for being my first home in a house-shaped home in New York. Thank you for having the kitchen we called all our friends from at 3:30 a.m. the night we got engaged. Thank you for hosting our rehearsal dinner after-party, a crazy drunken holiday cookie exchange, and countless intimate Thanksgiving feasts. Thank you for having just enough space in your living room for a beautiful Christmas tree filled with hand painted wooden ornaments. Thank you for being a private house--a private forum for the noise of living. You were (are) the home I walked out of as a single woman and back into as a married woman. You were (are) my shelter during one of the most significant periods of my life.

Of all the changes I've pushed to introduce in MCY, it stands to reason that this needed to come first. A lovely conversation I had last weekend reminded me of something: outside is in. Inside is out. I talk a lot on this blog about changing the exterior to yield results on the interior. I don't think I ever could've realized how much of a metaphor our living space was becoming. The darkness of living on top of one another was starting to feel like every empty space inside of me was really just a small, dusty hall closet. I have these applications for school sitting in a bag on the living room floor. I haven't been able to touch them. It's because I've needed a clear, new, open space on the outside so that I can make that same space on the inside and actually create something.

It's funny sometimes when things finally shift. It seems like they happen all at once. To me it's a sign that needing to move was some sort of a block. Once it opened opportunities could finally push through. In the same week that we signed the lease, all my remaining transcripts came through so that I can formally apply for school, we started editing Off the Radar and I got my first freelance writing job.

So, I've officially sworn off Craigslist and its hotbed of apartment huting deception and am now knee-deep in modern furniture catalogs instead. I'm in the market for saffron-hued dining room chairs because orange is the color of gratitude.