Oh Topher…you should know better than to trust a woman. Hi everyone! It’s Topher’s friend Lesley. He told me is password (Lesleyisawesome69) and well…I’m taking advantage and venting on his blog. This past weekend I moved in with my charming, kind, intelligent boyfriend; an exhilarating experience to say the least. As many of you probably know, moving in together is so much more than the combining of furniture and sharing a closet. It’s taking a huge leap of faith…like the Steve Martin movie, but with less crying Jesus statues.
If you’ve ever moved in with a significant other or spouse, you know the routine. First, you have to find your new home. It starts out with this grand, romantic ideal. But “It doesn’t matter where I live babe, as long as I’m with you,” quickly turns to “Uh, we’re NOT living here. The next door neighbor looks like Rasputin.” Yes, I actually said that. I also quickly rejected another gorgeous, otherwise perfect home solely based on the fact that it was clearly…haunted. I should have known something was wrong when Zelda Rubenstein was the realtor. Creepy clowns for under your bed sold separately.
But I wasn’t the only one being crazy, oh no, my man also was quite vocal with his preferences. To be fair, most of them were solid, logical requests, but it quickly became clear that our priorities were not the same. For example, my deal-breakers were ghosts and creepy neighbors. He scoffed at me because, ehem, “ghosts aren’t real” and “who talks to their neighbors anyway?” Clearly this was my fault, as I forgot that he is a Capricorn, who isn’t social, especially with ghosts. Psssh.
As the home search continued, I freqently turned to friend Lindsay (who happens to be my boyfriend’s former roommate) to discuss some of his objections to homes that I liked. Our favorite to make fun of was his distaste for fruit trees, which he stated was a “con” for him because when he was younger and mowing the lawn, he was pelted repeatedly in the ankles by rock hard peach pits, traveling at the speed of light. I can’t identify with this kind of torture because, well, I pull the “woman” card to avoid yard work (my apologies to the feminists) and therefore have never mowed a lawn. However, this experience scarred him for life and is likely the only reason why he isn’t a professional football player; fruit pit related injuries. But I digress. Since the fruit pit trauma came to light, Lindsay and I have been using this as the gold standard example of trivial things to be mad at. “It’s hot today and you know why? Because of those God DAMN fruit trees!” “Jersey Shore was cancelled! F**kin’ FRUIT TREEES!!!” My point is, during your search, your special someone begins to look like a picky pain in the posterior. Er...Hi honey. I love you. So stoked that we’re living together. Muah!
After finally finding a place and compromising (which is code for being equally unhappy), we began the really fun part of the nerd merger: combining our possessions. This is fun, but tricky, for several reasons. First, you’re going to have extras of some things, like beds, dressers, Spice Girls World Tour dolls, etc.; so you have to do that awkward “which one do we like best” dance, without hurting your partners feelings and telling them that their 100 thread count Batman sheets are indeed awesome, but are inferior to your 1000 thread count sheets, which were handmade by blind monks.
Sometimes, neither party is willing to get rid of their things, which is what happened with Topher and Jason when they moved in together. They have similar taste in tv and movies and therefore had a lot of doubles, specifically with their TV on DVD. I believe Jason was quoted as yelling "It's like you're asking me to give up one of my children!!" before he tearfully flung himself on the bed. That's what Topher says anyway. Sometimes you just have to call a truce and get out the labels. That’d be a great gift for a new couple….label maker!!! Hmmmmm…….
The fun thing is, no matter how much you think you know about your partner, some of there stuff is going to make you do that squint…the “what the hell am I looking at?” squint. And you need to find a way to tastefully display your hodgepodge of pop culture items, even if it means mixing genres in your curio cabinet. Princess Leia Organa may just have to co-exist on the same shelf as Zatanna Zatara. Life goes on, brah. La la la la life goes on.
To illustrate this point, here are some of the actual items that were combined in our new home this weekend:
· An Elvis Presley lamp…that appears to be of Korean decent
· A Mace Windu master replica light saber
· Three large desks
· Five dressers
· Over 1,000 Pez Candy Dispensers
As I looked at our variety of funky items, I was reminded of that scene from When Harry Met Sally when Marie and Jess, played by Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby, are moving in together, and the group is ganging up on Jess, telling him how ugly his wagon wheel coffee table is. Harry launches into a rant about this “stupid, garage sale, Roy Rogers wagon wheel coffee table.” I love Bruno Kirby’s character in this scene because, despite the fact that nobody is on his side, there he is, huge grin, with his arm is around his girlfriend as he defends himself. He’s all smiles and says: “I like it. It works. It feels like home to me.” And THAT my friends, is what’s really important. At the end of the day the ghosts, the neighbor that looks like Rasputin and Korean Elvis lamp don’t matter. When I walk in my house, my Greg is there, and it feels like home. Even with the damn fruit trees.
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