Cheeky's Hideaway

Stuffed!

Holy crap, do we have a lot of stuff.

I kept thinking this as the second day of our pack 'n' move dawned last week.  The first day was an amazing feat of disassembly.  Before I'd finished shaking hands with the movers our walls were stripped bare, and I had to keep moving around the apartment to keep from getting stuffed in a wardrobe box myself.  At the end of the day I figured we were almost done and I could spend the afternoon laying under the trees at Shake Shack.

But on Day Two I went downstairs to our storage room where the unwanted detritus of years of cohabitation had been stacked and shoved.  The piles had been swollen with furniture and appliances we'd move to stage the apartment, and underneath lay the barrow of old tax returns, useless electronics and miscellaneous curiosities we'd ignored for what seemed like centuries.  I'd dreaded this moment, hoping that the task of organizing this would fall to some amateur archaeologist or distant unborn heir.

Nope. That's our shit. And it's coming with us.

This scares the living hell out of me.  We've spent the last two weeks arguing about what color to paint our bedroom (Benjamin Moore is naming a paint color after Oodgie as thanks for her patronage) and the prospect of unpacking all this unsorted debris in our sparkly new home together has about as much appeal as being a Kentucky census worker.  Oodgie is much better than me at giving things up than I, but this task may be beyond even her considerable skills. 

And just because we suddenly have more space doesn't mean we suddenly want to fill it.  Despite what our recent credit card statements might say.

But here we are.  We're committed.  On Friday an 18-wheeler will fight its way through ACL traffic to park in front of our new house, bearing our dead plants and enough cardboard to construct a scale replica of downtown Denver.  I can hear the conversation now:

"Armoires upstairs, couches downstairs, under-promoted business inventory in the attic.  If it sparkles or has frilly things on it it goes in the room that looks like this. Trust me...you can't miss it."

"And the comic books?  Oh, let me take those from you before Oodgie sees them..."  Whew.

Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is No Way to Go Through Life, Son

I'm frightened.  Very, very frightened.

I think there's some genetic engineering going on around here.  People aren't supposed to look like this.

Texas was supposed to be a thicker place.  I was supposed to arrive as a svelte, attractive New Yorker, there to draw envy at my boyish good lucks and sophisticated manner, at least in relation to the Buddy Garritys that I presumed were my competition.

But when I suit up, step outside and head to the local trails for a "run" I'm surrounded by physical freaks of nature, horrific mutations of humanity.  They charge past me, fueled by organic foodstuffs and the intense drive to make people like me look like panty-wastes. 

There must be a lab, perhaps in some abandoned underground nuclear facility, where average humans like myself are injected with serum distilled from the waters of Lake Travis and Lance Armstrong's urine and turning them into walking billboards for Triathlete Magazine.  

(It's worth noting, however, that some of these experiments are clearly working for the benefit of humanity.  I've discovered, however, that this subspecies is put off by the heavy panting and wheezing that interrupts my speech during these encounters)

I don't understand!  I'm eating the same massive quantities of barbecue, tex-mex, and Shiner Bock that everyone else seems to be consuming.  Twice as much, even!  And as I stumble and heave around Town Lake I try to tell myself, "You're an animal!  You're an animal!"  Perhaps I've picked the wrong role model.

Anyway I'm just warning you all (not y'all...not yet) that there's a race of super-humans in your midst, and should they migrate north and turn upon you you won't be able to outrun them. 

Or maybe that's just me.