I moved this past Saturday. All the way from my temporary apartment to my “new” townhouse (new to me, and new only because I spent tons of money adding wood floors and having the whole place repainted to cover up the garish colors and the ooh la la on the bathroom wall).

Krissy helped me move. Her job was to arrive at the apartment and wait for Victor et al, the Mexican moving guys, to show up. Her job the day before was to give directions to a neighbor who is bilingual (doesn’t that always sound suggestive?) so that she could translate them for Victor. Krissy botched that job by giving the directions to her father, who somehow added to them the townhouse address, causing Victor and crew to show up there instead of the apartment. Well, they didn’t actually show up there. They showed up somewhere nearby, and called me on a staticy cell phone to say, in espanol, that they were lost. They kept handing the phone to each other to tell me, in espanol, the same thing. Finally I said “STAY … WHERE …. YOU … ARE” really loud, and really slow, because that’s how we speak to people who can’t understand us. Then I got in my car and drove around looking for three Mexican guys with a truck.

While Krissy was at the apartment she loaded up my clothes in her car. I was at the townhome because the cable/DSL guy and the suck-the-ducts guy were coming. No problem with the cable guy. The suck-the-ducts guy called from a cell phone. He was lost. He apologized for his problems with English. He was from Africa. He spoke French. He called me mees Lo-etta. I stood out in the street with my cell phone guiding him to the townhouse. “OK, where are you now?” “I theenk Alameeeeda.” “OK, turn left on Fairmount. No, wait, which direction are you going on Alameda?” “Pardon? Can you repeat?” And so on.

He said my ducts were very dirty. Not only would it cost a whole lot more than the original estimate, but for an additional $99 they would sanitize them. He shook his head in pity for me, when I declined, imaging me festering in my unsanitized house. (Can’t I just buy Lysol spray?) Oh, and he found a petrified peach in one of the ducts, and showed it to me sadly, saying mees Lo-etta, thees is why you need sanitize.

The next round of cell phone calls was from Krissy. After I led Victor and crew to the apartment, and they loaded up my meager belongings, she was to lead them back to the townhouse. She was lost.

Did I mention that while all of this was going on, my dishwasher was sending a tsunami of soap suds all over the new wood floors in the kitchen? Seems some liquid dish soap got in there from a couple of plates in the sink (details unnecessary). With cell phone to my ear, fielding all of the calls, I was bailing soap suds and mopping up the floor with the only linens I had at the time, my sheets and two towels. I was prepared to strip naked and use my clothing if necessary. The floors are 10 days old. They’re babies. They were drenched. Soaked. Sodden. Ready to heave up at any moment. Five dishwasher cycles and two gallons of vinegar later I was bailing out the remainder with a spoon. Did you know that there is no such thing as a professional de-sudsing agent? Not from Lowes, not from Home Depot. Not from Linens ‘n’ Things, not from Maytag. Well, there may be such a thing out there, but those calls were the only ones I had time to make, between all the lost souls calling me.

So I’m moved in, and here are the things I know:

1. I have too many clothes. Way too many. And too many shoes. I could give up shopping for the next 10 years and never run out of knee-hi nylons.

2. Never, never, never let liquid dish soap get into your dishwasher. Not even a drop. Don’t even store it near the dishwasher. I wouldn’t even buy them at the same time at the grocery store.

3. I need to learn Spanish. And maybe relearn French.

4. The guy about my age who lives behind me is gay. Very gay. With very gay little gay shorts. He works out in his garage and stretches in the driveway between the garages. Krissy loves his vintage thunderbird convertible.

5. My word processor won’t let me fix #2 above so it’s properly indented. I am still computer illiterate.