September 5–12, 2004 — Cuts and bruises

Now that I’m settled in with a bed and time to sleep on a more regular basis, I guess things are pretty okay.

The ceilings are very low here, and I don’t have access to natural light or fresh air. Those are the hardest things to get used to. But aside from that it’s great. Even with those flaws it’s pretty great. But going back to the flaws for a second: Low ceilings hurt. There’s one part where the ceiling becomes even lower, sort of separating my “office” from my “bedroom.” It separates the two areas by making me duck in order to pass between them. I’ve hit my head on this part of the ceiling at least a dozen times, and for the first week I woke up most mornings nursing day-old bumps on my head, only to seed new bruises later that day by standing up too quickly or not paying enough attention to where I was going.

I’m a bit better at it now.

The lack of light has taken some getting used to as well. It’s bizarre to wake up with absolutely no idea what time it is. My room looks exactly the same at noon as it does at midnight, and there’s nothing I can do to change this.

The first few mornings I woke up groggy and confused. I sometimes hear Mimi’s alarm going off above me, so that can be disorienting, too.

I’ve since learned to turn on the lights as soon as my alarm goes off. It still takes at least fifteen minutes after that for my body to wake up, but it works a lot better than what I’d tried the first few nights, lying in the dark even though it was almost 11:00 am, telling myself my body would wake up if I just gave it a bit more time.

And so I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easily my body seems to be tricked by artificial light.

My parents have helped a lot. I had to call my mom so she could tell me which cleaning products should and shouldn’t be used on which surfaces (and which ones under no circumstances should be mixed). My mom and dad drove down one weekend and bought me groceries and lent me more cleaning supplies. It made me feel a lot better during a week when I was pretty overwhelmed with work and with figuring out how to live alone.

Everything else aside, I’m very happy to be doing this. I think that in a year I’ll be in a much better position than I am now. I just have to survive until then, and there are all these common-sense things that I don’t seem to have the common sense to handle just yet.

For instance, while cleaning behind the fridge I found the lid for a disposable coffee cup with a dried raspberry on it and some pink powder underneath that had hardened into a clump. “Gross. Hardened raspberry dust and dried raspberries,” I thought.

Then I found another lid filled with pink powder while cleaning behind the stove. “What was the girl who lived here before doing with all this dried raspberry dust?” I thought.

Seriously, that was what went through my head: dried raspberry dust. Then I threw it out, lid, powder and all.

Then I found a third lid filled with pink powder and thought, “That is clearly poison. I probably shouldn’t have spilled so much of it while getting rid of the last one, possibly inhaling a fair bit in the process.”

I left the third lid. And I’m still alive, so I guess mouse poison isn’t as toxic to humans as it could be.

All of which is to say I’m not very good at this yet. And with that in mind I’m going to consult the internet to see what I’m not supposed to mix with bleach. Because I know my mom said something about that. Then I’m going to clean my bathroom.

I doubt such a thing is as complicated for most people as I’m making it out to be for me.