Note to self: stock up up on bandaids (Wednesday, September 19)

When you live on your own you seem to need a lot more bandaids than when you live with your parents.

First night in new place not at all relaxing. Nothing like the visions I had of sitting on my terrace, drinking wine and writing an opus magnus. For starters, having paid a month of rent, a broker’s fee and two months security deposit I am unable to afford luxuries like wine for the time being. Secondly it was too hot to sit outside the terrace, which is also not looking its best since the men who came to put in the air-conditioner left a lot of sawdust, crumpled newspapers and a bottle of hydrochloric acid (believe this intended to be used for general household cleaning. And to think I used to pay four dollars a bottle for special ecological cleaners in that other universe called Brooklyn). The maid starts next month so the cleaning is up to me for now, but it is too hot to clean the terrace until the sun sets but once the sun sets will be too dark to clean, etc., etc..

Anyway, there is a lot of cleaning to be done inside.

Actually not much progress made on inside cleaning either because for a while I was engaged in what turned out to be a Sisyphean exercise with the broom, which was of the rustic type --- a bunch of reeds tied together – of the sort used in Little Houses on the Prairie and still in use in most Indian homes. The more I swept, the more there seemed to be TO sweep. I cursed the air-conditioner men wondering how they had managed to generate so very much sawdust. Then, horrors! Looking more closely, I saw that each flick of the broom was producing a little shower of particles which was not sawdust but reed dust since the reeds were still green and shedding. I threw the broom away (on to the terrace).

Then I thought I better have some dinner. I just had the cord on the toaster oven that we have had since my grandmother’s time (no, really) changed and the electrician had put on the largest plug he could find. After playing musical appliances with all the electrical outlets, I found I could only plug in the oven if I unplugged the fridge. Since not very much food in fridge because of penurious state a short time of unplugging seemed acceptable. I put in the toast in the oven part, since the toaster part dudn't seem to be working. I hadn’t bought any poison potassium permanganate to wash the fecal residue off the vegetables so I could eat them raw so I washed the tomatoes with dish soap and drinking water. But what is the point of eating raw fruits and vegetables, I wonder, if one must first bathe them in something clearly labeled poison? Also should point out tomatoes taste very bad after being washed in Vim.

That was not the end of my kitchen woes. My first lot of drinking water had all drained away since the base on which the bottle had been put had a leak. I started chopping the tomatoes and immediately cut myself. Went away to the bathroom and tried to stanch the blood and find a band-aid. When I got back to the kitchen the oven was on fire.

Then I forgot my budgetary constraints and started making long-distance phone calls to the United States for moral support, after which I took some anti-anxiety medicines from Nepal, washed them down with a good amount of beer and reeled off to bed. Best move of the evening. Think will tell parents am moving back with them this. What really is the point of independence and fleeing the nest if it will only result in bodily injury and starvation?

Post-script from Thursday: When I woke up in the morning I realized I had forgot to plug the fridge back in.