I am mid-move and it makes my head hurt. Though truth be told, what really makes my head hurt could be the cup of coffee, cup of green tea, can of caffeinated root-beer and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich I’ve consumed today, all of whose life-giving powers have now exited my system.

Also: lack of sleep due to a panicky kitty-cat who commences to wandering the house, meowing, at 4 in the morning, to notify me of acute changes in furniture and smells.

New people have started moving their things into the house in earnest. It’s a gay couple, and as they were moving things in a few days ago, one of them—whose name is Blake--cornered me and accused me of hoodwinking them into living there. Apparently, they’re now getting three calls a day from CrazyLandlady.
“You looked happy,” he informed me with a crazed glint in his eye, “when we told her we’d take it. Too happy.” I swore innocence. Really, before my married-couple-roommates left town, I had no idea how constant Landlady’s little phone-call communiqués really were. And I’m truly sorry.

Days before that, Blake and I developed a camaraderie -- I had thought -- by joking about Landlady’s continual chatter about her fondness for particular household items, such as that beautiful wallpaper in the dining room--you know: Textured, with metallic silver stripes.

Then I came home Wednesday to find that Blake and what’s-his-name had placed on the mantel, a gold-flecked wooden crucifix, complete with suffering, bleeding Christ. Flanked by twin orange and gold Victorian terra-cotta bouquets of some azalea-like flower. Since then, those items have been joined by not one, but numerous sketches of fox hunts, coppery-painted Roman cornices -- and my friend Marshall’s favorite: the three-foot wall-hanging of a disembodied hound’s-head presiding over a twin rabbit corpses. It’s somewhere between Spanish Cathedral and Remains of the Day. I’ve started thinking of it as “Jesus Goes a-hunting.”