#Can A Landlord Throw Out My Belongings? (In Florida?) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ephemeradio-here-to-staydio · 6 years ago

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2018

January --

Trip to Florida with Grandma in the first week. Dark when we leave New York. The under-the-belly fly away feeling when the plane takes off. The loudness of the plane (I didn’t remember it being that loud). There is no forgetting that we are in a giant metal tube barreling through the air. Florida is strange. The warmth is unnatural. I realize I’ve finally come to accept New York winters and the beauty of rest. Florida lives in a state of constant temperance. The trees look exhausted.

We stay in a giant apartment complex next to eight or nine similar buildings on the same street that runs parallel to the ocean front. They stand unnaturally like giant dominoes, fifty feet apart. Boca is extremely cultivated. We go to Wal-Mart, we eat at P.F. Chang’s.

We go to the beach. There is no salty sweet smell here (like the one at the beaches in Jersey). Uncle (with whom we are staying) is unwell and has been for years. He repeatedly tries to get me to down alcoholic beverages and whenever my grandma isn’t around, talks about sex. He brushes my ass with his hand on the beach as we walk, and I ball my fists up in anger and walk faster. I don’t tell my Grandma because she is hesitant about staying here, and I want her to enjoy her time.

I fly back after two days, as was the plan. I am relieved to get back to the small, cold airport in Westchester, to see my little red Civic and rich, who drives it up to the pick up area.

On my first night back, I realize how good it is to be home, and also how much it feels like home, more home than original home, my little family with rich and crowdog. I ask him to marry me and he says yes. The next day he buys a ring-pop and leaves it on my nightstand.

February, March, April --

Back to School. I left in 2015, and am finally back. Spring Semester. I’m taking the Novel with Michelle Woods and Seminar in Critical Practices with Vicki Tromanhauser. I’m amazed how each class goes by so quickly -- I am always disappointed to hear that final tone-shift in the professor’s voice when she says that’s enough for today, we’ll pick up here next class. I read Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, The Master and Margarita, We, Lolita, The Waves by Virginia Woolf, The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, St. Mawr by D.H. Lawrence, a short story by Ursula Le Guin, and the eco-critical theories of Morton, Harraway, Derrida.

I’d forgotten how much I loved reading and learning. I raise my hand in class and talk to other people. We go on a field trip to the Nature Sanctuary for my Seminar class and take a class photo. I save it to my computer when I realize it’s full of friends.

I write two papers that I’m extremely proud of, one about peasant dreams in Anna Karenina, and another about listening to Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me as an eco-critical breakup album.

May, June --

My first semester ends, and my sister graduates from high school. I’m definitely old. I take an online summer class on Utopia/Dystopia with Cyrus Mulready.

July --

A trip to Long Beach Island, my place. rich and I stay crammed with my parents and my sister and her boyfriend in a two bedroom upstairs rental --the one that we used to stay at when I was little. We sleep on the pull-out couch, which was even less comfortable than that sounds. We stay for two nights. I eat oysters for the first time. My mom and I play kadima ball along the shore, and I eat a Spongebob Pop on a hot day, and his red pants drip down my hand. It’s a short trip, but enough. The year has been full but relentless, and here I have a few moments of actual content.

On the way back home, my radiator blows on the Garden State Parkway. We pull over and call rich’s cousin, and then we macgyver the shit out of it so we don’t have to get towed home from Jersey. The GPS decides to almost take us through the city instead of the normal way home, so a three-hour trip turns into seven hours -- but it was nice. We stayed fairly calm and worked it out, and it made me appreciate the shit out of our relationship.

August --

The dog days of summer. Everything is wet. We’re in the process of moving houses (something that I’ve done every summer for the past six or so years). Dealing with the old landlords in the final weeks is absolute hell. But we end up getting all of our security back, and we’re moving to a good house --it belongs to the Grandmother of the kids I used to babysit when I was in high school/early college.

We move in and I love the smell of the house. It’s a good place next to a stream. Everything is so wet that we start to notice mold on the furniture in the sunny room, and we fight it back.

September --

This is a very hard month. In late August, I wait and wait and wait for my period. It keeps threatening with cramps, but never comes. I take a pregnancy test and it’s positive. I make the decision that would be best for another human, not for myself. I can’t just have a baby because I want something cute, or because it’s “possible” to do so. We’re not ready for a baby, now or even ever --I’ve always been theoretically conflicted on if I wanted to bring someone else into this whole Thing against their will. And now I have to confront that hypothetical in my reality.

I make an appointment at planned parenthood after rich and I talk about it for a few days. It’s hard to get in, so I have to wait a few weeks. The house starts smelling awful. I get debilitatingly nauseous every time I go home. The smell of lavender dryer sheets (that I used to love) make me want to die. The world becomes a constant state of nausea. I get nose bleeds, I find out, because pregnancy changes SO MANY THINGS about how your body operates. Your body temperature goes up and your blood thins. Your teeth are more prone to infection and your body is circulating much more (like up to 50 percent more) blood.

At the appointment, the nurse is extremely nice and takes my blood without making me feel lightheaded. I find out I’m eight weeks pregnant and that I’ll need to schedule a termination procedure for the next week. I’m nervous but I want to get it over with. The doctor takes an ultrasound and shows me a picture of the “fetus” - it’s a small, black and white oval dot.

In the middle of September, I go to the Poughkeepsie planned parenthood to get the procedure. I decide not to take the sedation. I take four ibuprofen and they take me to the pre/post waiting room. I meet a woman who’s stocking up on granola bars, ginger ales and condoms, shoving them into her purse. She tells me this is her sixth procedure. “Are you nervous?” she asks. I say “no.”

It’s over quickly and it’s not more painful than some of the periods I’ve had. I get lightheaded afterwards and they keep me for an extra 20 minutes or so, but then I can walk out and go home. I tell rich to stop at mcDonald’s and we get burgers, and then I go home and sleep.

The first two days after the procedure I feel amazing. I’m no longer nauseous and I don’t have cramps. On the third day, the cramps start and so does constipation. I have extremely painful anal spasms at work one day. The bleeding and cramping stops around 2 weeks after the procedure, but begins again when I start birth control.

This all happens while my Fall Semester is starting, so there is no time to stop and rest and consider this whole thing. I keep going at the same pace because that’s what I have to do.

October --

My Fall semester is really great despite all the stuff of the previous month. I’m taking my Senior Seminar class about the Materiality of the Text with Mulready, and I’m taking The Epic Tradition with Thomas Festa. I read the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and Dante’s Inferno, Frankenstein, Hamlet, and a ton scholars that focus on materiality: Ong, Calhoun, Silverman, Sherman, etc etc etc. I’m energetic but anxious.

We have a housewarming party and it’s not a disaster. It’s mostly family and then some friends afterwards, but we’re old and tired and clean and go to bed pretty early, and I’m okay with that.

November, December --

Extremely exhausting and busy two months. Throwing myself into school work, I write two more papers that I’m fairly proud of: one on the materiality of Dante’s Inferno and the other about the myth of diaries, explored by looking at a few weird Frankenstein diaries.

Even New Year’s Eve was shot with a full day’s work followed by my first BioAnthropology exam (I’m taking a winter class), and I fell asleep at 10pm. Things will calm down in a few weeks hopefully (I’m done with classes after the 17th!!) and I can actually reflect on all the nonsense that happened this year.

Things are pretty good though, and I’m thankful for a lot. I challenged myself this year and it paid the fuck off. I made some new friends and wrote some things I’m proud of and I live in a pretty nice house with my family. I finally stopped bleeding, and I’m doing okay physically now too.

For Next Year:

- I want to bring my lunch to work at least twice a week!

- I want to stretch and do some type of exercise (so I don’t get winded so easily)

- I want to save some money and take a good trip.

- I want to stop scrolling so much!

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