ow... my cleaning arm hurts...

i hope not to have to move again in an extremely long time.

this past all-too-short long weekend was spent scrubbing, packing, moving, unpacking... we have so much crap. it's amazing how moving up two floors takes virtually the same amount of work as moving across town. our cleaning was also doubled by virtue of the fact that the previous owners of our new place weren't forced to clean the suite whereas, as vacating renting tenants, we were obligated to clean the old place. not that the owners left us with a sty or anything, but all of the shelves had to be wiped down before we could unpack.

i also spent about four hours cleaning the oven in our old suite and eight hours cleaning everything else. i defrosted the fridge, an action which led to a disgusting puddle of rusty water inundating the kitchen. i've talked to the property managers about what a piece of garbage the fridge is and with any hope, gerry and smorg can get a new one out of it.

we figured that we may as well take the opportunity to get some more shelving and furniture so that our books wouldn't be a disheveled mess in the new place. my sweetie spent saturday acquiring a new bookshelf, filing cabinet and wardrobe with SW's car and help. we were still trying to put together the BRANÄS (<-- swedish for 'piece of crap') wicker baskets at about 1:30 in the morning, hammering in stubborn plastic bolts that refused to go anywhere. we didn't realize that we actually shared a wall with our neighbour in the corner apartment, and after an hour of hammering, we hear BAM! BAM! BAM! from the other side of the wall. uh... we desisted immediately, of course, but now it's become this game of strategic avoidance; i stand behind the door and listen to see if the neighbour is coming or going, in which case i wait until he or she is out of the hallway before venturing out. i figure i'll be doing this for at least the next couple of months until the incident is forgotten. am i being paranoid? absolutely. but i can't afford to make -- or confront -- enemies so early in my tenancy. sunday saw the amazing adventure of us trying to get our queen-sized boxspring upstairs to the bedroom. turns out the distance between the stairs and the ceiling above the stairs is substantially shorter than the width of the boxspring. we tried pretty much every orientation and in each case the boxspring would jam into the drywall. 'i can repair holes in drywall,' says my sweetie. 'let's just try to get this thing up.' we now have a boxspring-shaped dent in the drywall above the stairs, where we'd wedged the boxspring to the point where it became apparent that there was absolutely no way to get it all the way up the stairs. you'd think that queen-sized mattresses are common enough that buildings would be designed with that in mind. anyway, we ended up hauling the boxspring with a climbing rope up the side of the building and onto the roof, then through our door to the rooftop patio. i was on the ground pulling to make sure the boxspring didn't crash into the building's windows while my sweetie hand-over-handed the thing up. some dude on the roof did ask, 'uh, just out of curiosity, what are you doing?'

'hauling up a boxspring.'

'oh. um, carry on.'

i spent most of yesterday cleaning up the old suite in time for this morning's move-out inspection. there are so many places that you don't even think about cleaning regularly. the undersides of kitchen cabinets, for instance, which, after two years, end up being rather repulsive. i also used an entire mr. clean magic eraser scrubbing marks off of the walls. it actually works quite well, but i guess that's the unfortunate consequence of these 'new cleaning technologies': now that they're on the market, you're expected to use them. at least i'll be getting all of my security deposit back.

currently, our new suite is a mess of scattered random boxes. our kitchen is hopelessly disorganized, and it'll take me a few days to figure out where to put most of the items that had been stowed in our previously abundant closet space.

it's strange: i still feel like i'm sleeping in a bed & breakfast. without the breakfast.