The boy tells me (on a daily basis) that I exaggerate too often. It’s true that I have a propensity for hyperbole. I freely admit it. But when I say this upcoming week promises to be crazy, I mean it. (All right, I am probably exaggerating. It will likely be busy but exciting, too, which is its own kind of positive crazy.)

Tomorrow night I have the opportunity to represent Carnegie Mellon at a college fair in Staten Island. The idea of representing CMU is exciting, but the idea of trekking an hour and a half to do it… well. I’m less enthusiastic. The boy says he will accompany me (as he’s also an alum) but he has the obligations of the office to attend to first, so he may not make it. Leaving me to brave the wiles of Staten Island and its transportation system alone. I am not afraid of the Staten Island Ferry. Nope. No sir. I’m not afraid of the Staten Island train and/or bus system. Noooope. Maybe anxious about being late. But I have optimistic hopes about my ability to navigate correctly! So long as the subways are operating and they can get me downtown in a timely manner, things will be all right. Is it weird to say I am valuing this experience as an adventure? As G. K. Chesterton said, “An adventure is merely an inconvenience rightly considered.” THUS. Adventure. In Staten Island.

In between the work I need to get done this week, I’ll have to finish packing. Friday we have the closing and other such wrap-up events, followed by our thrilling trip to IKEA Brooklyn in Red Hook (which, for those of you as almost unfamiliar with Brooklyn geography as I am: it’s far from Williamsburg). Once we buy up half the store, we’ll give it to them for delivery. Then we’ll go home, get a meager amount of sleep, then haul ourselves (with supplies) down to the brand new home and get to painting. Two rooms, one day of mayhem. I’ve painted rooms before (with help) but the boy hasn’t — not really. So it’s yet another inconvenience we must rightly consider to be an adventure. We’ve chosen the colors (yellow for the living room, blue for the bedroom — let’s call them that instead of the palette color names for them). My only sticking point with painting is that I must have a Home Depot painting hat. MUST. Even though it’s water based paint, I am paranoid. That, and a yellow glob in my hair will happen, given my nature, so I’d best be prepared.

At some point during the weekend, a fellow will arrive to measure the windows and attempt to sell us expensive window treatments. We may actually buy them from him. At another point, FreshDirect will arrive and bring us delicious groceries. See how I’m planning this? See how many ways this could all end up crazy? Or maybe you’re not like me, not looking for the possible ways everything could Murphy’s Law on us. Maybe I am, again, exaggerating.

Once we finish the weekend chores, it’s back to the rental for packing the remainders. The computers, the electronics, the clothes, the dregs. Monday morning, at the shiny hour of 8 o’clock in the morning, the moving folks will arrive and we’ll begin the day of mayhem. (I plan to wake several hours earlier, because I am a masochist, and finish the last-minute stuff then.)

That is, of course, assuming the potential doorman strike in New York City, planned to potentially start tomorrow, doesn’t happen. If it does happen — and if it continues all the way through to the weekend, we may have to cancel the move. The building may allow us to move in anyway — it’s up to management, regardless if there are building staff on premises — but I’d need to double check. So maybe if I wasn’t articulating the Murphy’s Law paranoia potential clearly enough, it’s clearer now? This whole thing is actually nerve-wracking. After all of the packing, the buying-a-condo stress… to have the strike happen, to complicate our move? Not that I am taking sides in the conflict, mind you, but I just really want some resolution so that life doesn’t get too interrupted for anyone. We can’t be the only ones moving this week. (Some buildings will not allow a move at all during a strike.) Insanity! Okay, not really, but you get what I’m saying. (See? I really have to work at overcoming my hyperbolic tendency, don’t I?)

The thing about the strike that’s been annoying me — the way it’s been handled in general by the media in New York — is this: it’s not about doormen holding open doors. That’s not really what a doorman, or building staff, is really responsible for, though it’s the most visible thing they do. They are behind-the-scenes miracle workers, really. The entirety of a building staff — and it’s not just “upscale” 5th Avenue buildings, mind you! — are involved in every aspect of making one’s life in an apartment a seamless living experience. The trash, for instance. That doesn’t get picked up by sanitation by itself. The recycling, the UPS guy, the overflowing toilet. These things get taken care of by the lovely people who work in our buildings. So when I hear people saying, “Open your own doors!” I get annoyed. I don’t live in an expensive building, nor are we moving to some posh ridiculous building. But these large buildings function much in the same way companies do, and the “little guy,” shall we say, is just as valuable in a building as he is in the corporate structure. Not to take sides, but really, I dislike when people misunderstand all the building folks do — or treat them as less than human beings (which I see happen! AHHH!). So basically I’m just saying I hope it gets resolved and everyone’s happy, because I hate to see these sorts of conflicts escalate.

So this is my week. Not too crazy by normal standards, but I’m still anxious it’s all going to work out. Not to mention the fact that I have queries and partials and fulls in the tubes, and I am worrying incessantly about them, too. But there’s nothing I can do now that my writing is in others’ hands except wait, so I may as well put my worrying energy elsewhere. Like into packing. Or reading. (Did I mention I have a ton of to-be-read books still on the bookshelf that haven’t been packed — because somehow I am convinced I might read one or two this week? Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs, Tales of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing V. II by M. T. Anderson, Senrid by Sherwood Smith… I really should pack a few of them up, huh. Not yet…