A journal of two millennial gays moving from the East coast to Minnesota. Some day maybe I’ll make this into a real website, or give it a better title, but today I’m too busy unpacking.
In case you didn’t know, we’ve lived in Philly for the last four years, and are now moving to Minneapolis. We bought a house, bought a car, had all of our stuff shipped to said house, and then packed the rest, along with our very unpleasant cat, into the car and drove off.
Wide open plains of golden-green scrub and solitary leafless trees gave way to the grays and beiges of concrete and brick as we cruised into the Twin Cities. It was 3PM, the warm winter sun sitting low in the sky, its final rays glinting off our shiny new Subaru. Icy day-old snow crunched under our tires as we pulled up to the house, a true Minnesota welcome.
As we stepped over the threshold we were assaulted by the acrid scent of drying polyurethane. We’d had the floors refinished before we arrived, and without any ventilation, the house had become a chamber of noxious fumes. Zoey (the cat) exploded out of her cage and immediately started darting around the house exploring every nook and cranny. I, having just driven 15 hours, was less energetic. But there was work to be done, so we unloaded the car, dumping our stuff among the mountains of other boxes, and headed back out to get supplies. We found our Target, good; we found our Trader Joes, better.
Beep. Beep. Beep. That was the sound that greeted us when we entered the house. I punched some buttons on the alarm system (the supposedly non-active system) but no luck. We played Marco Polo with the chirping until we tracked it to our upstairs bedroom smoke alarm. Battery replaced, phew…. Beep! Damn. A few more minutes of searching and the sound appears to be coming from the bathroom ceiling, but it’s now late, I’m half asleep and my eyes are stinging from polyurethane fumes, so this is a problem for tomorrow. Beep.
With our main floor a de-facto gas chamber, and our bedroom filled with an incessant beeping, we take refuge in the basement. We’ve got the windows open to air out the fumes, so we turn the heat down to 60 to try to avoid a thousand dollar heating bill. Huddled around our microwaved Trader Joes soup, spirits are low. But nothing is ever that bad as long as we’ve got each other. We watch an episode of Parks and Rec, laugh, and when we go upstairs we look out our back window to an expansive view of the Minneapolis skyline, buildings twinkling in the night. It’s even more beautiful than we recalled, and we remember why we’re here.
I promise it looks better in person
At 5:30AM, Zoey wakes me up, cementing her reputation as a menace to society. I wake up on our new air mattress (pretty comfy!) in the dry frigid midwestern air (not so comfy!) We’re still pinned down in the basement, avoiding the stinging polyurethane fumes and chirping alarm. But duty calls, so we venture upstairs. The smell is a little better, so we start unpacking and I head upstairs for another joust with my arch nemesis the faulty smoke detector. I call an electrician who reminds me I can just disconnect it. I disconnect the wires and chuck the thing downstairs, “yes I can do this”, I think. Beep! …Fuck.