March 28, 1997

The Typewriter Bird

There's all sorts of uncatalogued wildlife here in LA.

The other morning, as I was waking up slowly and painfully, I heard someone typing, very, very slowly, on an electric typewriter.

Thwack.

I woke up and thought, Who the heck still uses a typewriter, and even if there is someone who does, why are they hitting one key at a time?

As the fog slowly crept away, I realized that it wasn't a typewriter at all. It was a bird with a very strange, deep tweet. And it tweeted very, very slowly.

Darin arrived yesterday and slept here last night. (Awful hospitable of me, don't you think?) I told him about the bird Thursday evening and wondered if I'd described it accurately. He certainly thought it sounded very strange.

He got to bed much earlier than I did; I couldn't fall asleep--

(Slight digression: at 11 last night, someone in another building was playing loud, thumping music that I could feel through the floorboards here; at 12:30, there was a raucous party going on somewhere on the street -- and noises conveniently echo up and down the concrete baffles of the buildings here. Darin said to me, You think you might not be sleeping because it's so damn noisy around here?)

--When I finally woke up, I heard the tweet/thwack. "Hear it?" I said. I hadn't dreamt it; there really was a typewriter bird.

In other news, not much going on here; how you?

No, just kidding.

We got the keys to the house today and walked around it. In my oh-so-typical stance of really enjoying the moment, I noticed every single mark on the wall and ever nail hole. We can't move in! I thought. We'll have to paint this whole place first! We have to redo the wallpaper! Call the movers! Stop the presses!

Well, okay...maybe not.

We walked around the house, seeing it completely and without hurry for the first time (and this is only Darin's second time seeing it -- is that nuts or what?), completely devoid of furniture for a whole day.

Then we went and picked up Darin's mom at her cousin's house and took her to see the house. She loved it. She took two rolls of film (to be developed at a one-hour photo place, two prints of each picture so one set can go to my mom) and ooohed and ahhhed.

Darin and I made lists of everything we noted had to be done to the house, whether now or some time in the future. Then Darin and I walked through it again and I pointed out where I thought our furniture should go, no matter where we had thought it should go before. (Here's a hint, all you wacky interior designers: know where the damn windows are before you plan anything.

Tomorrow morning, the packers arrive. Then the movers take all of the stuff in the apartment to the house and unload the truck. Then they unpack everything. Then they leave. I've warned Darin that I might cry. He said it's okay.