Out With The Old
Is there anything cleaner than a clean slate? Remember when you were in elementary school and they erased the blackboard with a wet rag or towel? I used to love that. Instead of streaks and smudges, the board was good as new. Consider your love life the same way with this move… Your love life isn’t just clean – it’s as good as new. So forget the lonely part and focus on the “I have a clean slate AND a kick-ass place to live.
Some things you might want to consider in your new place:
NEIGHBORS: Don’t even think about it. The LAST thing you want is to engage in any romantic or sexual interaction with some dude from 3B. When two neighbors get involved, the bar is lowered to just above ground level. “He’s OK… I mean, he’s not great-looking and he smells a bit and he’s not quite as smart as I usually like – but he’s right down the hall.” Only guys fall into that trap. We lower our standards all the time anyway, depending on how long the drought has lasted. Location, location, location is the rule of thumb in real estate – not romance.
LOCAL WATERING HOLE: Find one – immediately. Don’t make it too fancy, but it can’t be too much of a dive, either. It has to be the kind of place you can go alone, without feeling like a loser and without feeling like you have a sign on your forehead that says, “Make me an offer.” It has to be the kind of place that only plays sports on TV. Most important, it has to be the kind of place where the bartender watches out for you. For a good bartender, this is simply part of the job. It wouldn’t hurt if he was cute, either.
NOISE LEVEL: I like to play my music LOUD. It could be Sinatra, it could be Alice Cooper, but it’s always loud. I can’t do this where I live now, and it’s absolutely killing me. In your case, I’m not talking about music. I’m not talking about your living room walls… It’s the bedroom walls of your new place that you might want to test for reverb, and echo, and all-around flimsiness. The last thing you want to be known as in your new building is “that loud chick that gets laid a lot on the first floor.” Of course with your sex life lately, this might not be such a big problem.
Out with the old and in with the new, indeed… And though it goes without saying, I’ll say it anyway: Let’s make this new place a one-night-stand-free zone.
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Caution: Wet Paint
I know I say time and time again that I’m okay being single, I like being independent and the grass doesn’t always look greener, but there is definitely one time in your life when it is hands down, no question about it, better to be that illustrious “plus-one.”
Because there is nothing to remind you how truly alone you are in the world than when you are moving – by yourself.
You know when you said “moving is one of the most stressful things a person can do” (or something like that)? Well yes, it was stressful, but it also was sad. The process was a reminder that yet again, I am creating a new home – alone. Don’t get me wrong, I love my new place (and especially its perks and my new TV) but here’s what was missing yesterday – someone – ANYONE. Someone to say, “Where should we put the bed?” or “I think the wine glasses should go here so when we have people over they’re right there” or “Here, let me put that up since you can’t reach.”
I had none of that. Instead, I had 3 idiot movers who broke half my stuff and took 10 hours to move a one-bedroom apartment. But even with the stress of that, it was all about the after. After they finally left, I sat on my couch alone, marveling at my awesome TV, and there was no one to share the experience with. Granted, I had shared my day with about 8 men total between the movers, carpenters, phone and TV guys, but there was none of the sinking into the couch, putting your feet up, taking a deep breath and saying, “We did it.” And there definitely wasn’t “new place sex.”
Which leads to a whole other conversation in my brain. When you’re a single girl, and you move to a new place, it’s kind of a clean slate in the man department. You get to wipe the slate clean of your ex-boyfriend who broke up with you in the old place. You get to wipe the slate clean of the stupid one night stand of whom you actually were dumb enough to allow in your home. You get to wipe the slate clean of all the guys over the years who you thought could maybe be the one, and definitely, positively, were not.
So then now it becomes a question of whom? Who will be the person who I “christen” this new home with? I can’t help but be hopeful that the fresh paint and newness of it all will lead to someone new.
My man slate is now clean. Out with the old, in with the new.
