Not Dead Yet

For the time being it seems the walls of the house are not white plaster but a strange brown cardboard-y texture with the words "Moving Box" painted everywhere. And we don't have a living room and dining room, we have one gigantic storage area that is the new home of our dishware (glassware, pots, pans, food, cookbooks, placemats, remote controls...). And yes, Darin and I have exhibited short tempers with each other, and I know that my temper is shorter than his.

Darin has been consulting this great book on organizing entitled Getting Organized and he wants us to follow the principles in that book before putting stuff away, which is a good idea. However, every time I walk into the house and see the condition of the kitchen/dining room/living room, I wish I were Samantha Stevens and could just snap my fingers to clean the place up. The big bear of the job is the kitchen, because although there are lots of closets, they go straight up to the top of the 12-foot high ceilings, which mean that I need to get a ladder to get up there. (We currently have a step stool in the kitchen, but it's not high enough for me.)

We began making a map of the kitchen cabinets and deciding what went where, based on frequency of use, proximity to dining room, kitchen sink, and stove. We couldn't finish because Darin got a monster migraine headache, and then Harry came over and the three of us went to Jerry Maguire, which gave me a monster migraine headache. Darin and I went to bed after the movie, and then I woke up at 4a.m. to go register for classes (see below). I came back at 9:30a.m., sacked out, and got up at noon to begin tidying up the den, which is going to be "my" area as much as the adjoining office is "Darin's" area. Meaning those are the places where we're going to do most of our work. Then at 6p.m. I went back to USC for Directing class, came home at 10:30p.m., and went to bed. Today, I've been trying to get some writing done before going to class from 3p.m. to 9p.m.

Darin said, "When are we going to finish the kitchen? This afternoon?"

I said, "No, I have class until 9 tonight." Then I thought about it and said, "Tomorrow I have class all morning and then I go to Babylonian in the afternoon." Organizing the kitchen did not seem like a pleasant prospect after a day of work. "Thursday morning."

Darin said something like, "I want you to know the consequences of that decision is that nothing will happen in our kitchen until Thursday morning."

Consequences sounds like a loaded guilt word to me. I started screaming.

He didn't mean it that way. We've had nothing but misunderstandings over the past couple of days, and tempers are running short. It'll be nice when a couple thousand of these boxes are out of the way.

Monday morning I woke up at 4a.m. and drove to USC to get in line to get classes. Darin thought I was nuts. I thought I was nuts, but I knew which thesis advisor I wanted and getting up at 4a.m. seemed like a small price to pay. This wasn't even for registration, mind you, but getting D-clearances, which is the archaic manner of writing on paper with pen that this person on this day applied for this class. Registration is next week.

Rant on.

Yes, it's crazy; I think it's all about power, myself. Every single student who wants to take a class in Cinema/TV has to file into this office and get a D-clearance for that class. That is, every Cinema/TV grad student, every Cinema/TV undergrad student, and anybody else.

I was Number 10. The first 9 were all GSPers. The first 20 were all GSPers. What does that tell you about how well our program is being run, if we were the only ones who needed to be there at some ungodly hour of morning?

Rant off.

I arrived just in time, however; there were 6 students per thesis class, and I was number 5 for the advisor I wanted (Len Schrader, Paul's brother and writer of films such as Kiss of the Spider Woman). Good fellow students in the class.

So I know what my schedule next semester is going to be like. I'd just like this semester to be over already.