Coming Unmoored

Arriving in Albuquerque last week, I hit the end of my adrenaline spurt from closing up my Tucson home and multiple cross-country trips, and simply crashed. The first few days in Albuquerque, I was pretty much a slug on the couch, watching unhealthy amounts of Grey’s Anatomy on my laptop, bonding with my very clingy cat, and attempting to eat my weight in white cheddar popcorn.

After a few days of that, and tiring of Meredith Grey’s fictional drama over a guy for whom I fail to understand the appeal, I got a little more productive. I unpacked and organized my belongings which will be living at Charlie’s (all my historical reenactment gear and a surprising number of bladed weapons). I figured out how to successful operate the hot tub and get into and out of it without shocking Charlie’s retiree neighbor or arthritic dachshund, Wilbur. Then I turned my Virgo eye to the bachelor squalor in which Charlie and his invisible roommate Josh choose to live. (Josh spends 95% of his time at his girlfriend’s.)

Charlie has a very nice house in the foothills of Albuquerque. But two early-30-something guys have lived there for the last two years without a female presence or a maid. It shows. I understand why Josh’ girlfriend likes her own digs.

When I arrived at Charlie’s, there was nothing but a six-pack of RedBull and a lonely Guinness in the fridge. (Well, that is, if you discount everything in a bottle that had an expiration date later than 2006. There was also something a mottled grayish-blue I never did successfully identify.)

There was no sign of toilet paper in the house. One bathroom had a few sheets of paper towel sitting on top a dusty pile of magazines with titles like “Twisted Throttle” and “Motor Cycle: Ten-Nine-Eight ARRRGH!”

The pile of unwashed laundry in the corner of the master bedroom resembled Marjory, The Great Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock. Dust bunnies the size of Rumi caromed in herds across the red birch floors. (Charlie insists he vacuumed just before I arrived. If he’s telling the truth, God only knows the size of the ones he killed.)

Anyway, you probably get the idea. So, last weekend and most of this week I’ve been trying to clean and organize enough so that I don’t feel the need to renew my tetanus shot if I want to pad barefoot to the kitchen while still allowing Charlie a few bastions of masculinity. I’ve left his “man cave” upstairs (translation: den) completely alone. Even if I wasn’t trying to not disrupt his natural habitat too much, I’m too big a wuss to know where to even start on that chaos.

Charlie has accepted the disinfection and organization of his world with a surprising amount of equanimity. However, I suspect he’s going to be quietly grateful when things return to normal in his house at the end of this week.

The orientation for my new job starts next Monday in Dallas. I fly out Sunday evening. I’ll still be crashing at Charlie’s on the weekends when I’m not up in Portland.  Especially until the construction is finished on the boatwell.  But this should be the end of the full-time cohabitation for a while.

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