Cleaning in Cali with one Crusty Cat...Oh My!!!

So I'm sitting on not-my-bed about to be picked up to go to a run about 30 miles away.  (My bed comes in 2 days, THANK GOD!) Being in California (do I call it California? LA? Venice? I'm in Venice) has been like slowly waking up in an unfamiliar place and the time between becoming conscious and actually realizing where you are after a groggy couple of minutes.  You kind of have to make the decision to confront where you are, and until then you are totally lost.

I feel like I have to physically let go of something before I can feel at home here.  Let go of what,  I'm not sure.  But I forced myself to walk around today and yesterday and they were significantly better than my first two days here, which I spent cooped up in our apartment which somehow, impressively, neither I nor my roommate realized was a decrepit level of disgusting neither of us could deal with.  I pinpointed the problem immediately.  The woman living here is at that point where she thinks she can still clean the place herself, but is too blind/oblivious to realize that there are bits of food on everything, dust everywhere, and a layer of dirt on all surfaces.  So off to CVS we went.

Armed with latex and a vat of bleach, we tackled the bathroom and kitchen first, and then Swiffered the crap out of our rooms so we could be in them without getting an allergy attack.  Now that everything is cleaned, I feel about 10000X better about being here.  My next mission is to find a way around Mitzy, the 17-year-old crust queen in residence that lounges on the otherwise lovely couches we have on the patio, rendering them unsuitable for human use.  Another fun nuance of dealing with old people--pathological lying.  Apparently, "The upstairs neighbors will take care of her" means "You will be responsible for feeding this abysmal creature while I'm gone."

But flea-infested felines aside, as I was biking around the beach I witnessed an eclectic dynamic that not even New York can quite match.  You have your wealthy authors and directors, celebrities and well-to-do looking artist/media types mingling with vagrants of every sort.  Kind of surreal but also comforting in a strange way.

Maybe I'm scared to admit that I can see myself loving this place.  I start my job on Wednesday and I know that will bring twists and turns, hopefully in the right direction.  I guess all I can do right now is to NOT anticipate...so far I think I'm doing a good job. 

More to come soon...