The Two Towers

I tend to get overwhelmed...  I like to think it's because I'm a person with big ideas, constantly moving on to the next thing, weighted down by my own genius.    But, it's just as likely I am only as capable as most four year olds which is why I bit my lip and did the sniffly, "I'm not going to cry thing," about five times while attempting to move myself out yesterday.

These past couple days I've been doing a lot of shopping.   Which, don't get me wrong, I'm BOSS at.   But I didn't realize the sheer mass of stuff one needs in an apartment.   I seriously would consider a marriage of convenience right about now just so I can have a shower and get people to pay for my dish towels and salad spinners.   Even with my graduation money--and everyone was VERY generous--this has been a huge dent in my pocket.   But, not to sound like Practical Pam.   Picking out my china patterns and buying wine glasses and choosing colors for my bathroom and browsing IKEA couches has been really fun. I'm imagining being that fun girl who hosts Sangria parties in her fun apartment.  And my apartment will be really fun, I have some good color choices (yellow and silver for the bathroom, silver and BRIGHT turquoise for the bedroom, cranberry red dishes in the bathroom) and equally great mixes of modern and classic inherited furniture from my parent's basement.   At a couple points during our excursions to TJMaxx, Target, and Bed Bath and Beyond, my dad has looked at me and gone, "Annie, you have really good taste."   Now coming from my father, the arbiter of all things tasteful, it's like being told by Ted Kennedy (may he rest) that you have a knack for drowning pregnant girls in the river.   Praise from an EXPERT.  

So needless to say, I feel good about my shopping decisions and usually I know what I want and what I like, so that hasn't been that hard... the stressful part?  Enter the two towers of Mordor:

There are some towers even brave men dare not climb...

Oh my gosh, and this isn't the bulk of it.   Or even close to the bulk of it.   I was talking to my boyfriend on the phone last night, telling him how stressed I was about moving.  He replies, "I love moving!   How  can you find it stressful?!"   Ok, bucko, you sort through 22 years of stagnant entitlement (I have WAY too much, of EVERYTHING) and attempt to pack it in tiny boxes and tell me you're not the least bit stressed.  Geesh.

  There are three epicenters of sheer, accumulate, shit in my house; my bedroom, the basement, and where I haphazardly stashed stuff from college during vacation thinking I would have more than two minutes to sort through it later...yesterday I spent 5 hours running between all of them, making difficult life decisions, deciding what to take and what memories to belittle by throwing them away.   Now, I'm usually good at making decisions, but "grown up" things stress me out.   So I have like, drawers full of warrantees and extra buttons and old iPods I could conceivably sell on eBay.    What if I need to sew on the button to that blouse?   Wouldn't it be good to have an extra?    Whatever, in reality, I don't sew, and would just take it to the tailor's if I really wanted it fixed.  Buttons can be pitched.   But it takes me a while to come to this logic and I feel guilty about throwing maybe important adult stuff away, especially when I still have a stuffed bunny.   And if anyone tried to throw HIM away?  They would be shanked.  

So that's how my days have been going.  I'm really looking forward to writing a blog about how great my new apartment looks and how great my new job is instead of one about how my eyes welled up and I screamed, "Literally no one could do this!" while trying to clean my 12' by 10' room.  I mean, come on, we're not reaching for the stars.