Merge!

I officially dropped off the first box of stuff at Casey's- err, I mean OUR- apartment last night. Nothing grand or big but at the end of the night I LEFT IT THERE and I don't intend on taking it back. I'm going to start shuffling small loads here and there and pretty soon, my presence will be felt all over the place-ha ha ha evil laugh cackle cackle. The bachelor pad (and I mean bachelor people, with movie posters, hand me down couches, an N64 and leftovers from the 3 boys that have lived there this year) is about to get a surprise: a woman.

I admit it feels a little weird to be moving in to the apartment where the boys have roamed the last year. I felt kind of awkward leaving the stuff there last night mostly because I have always tried to be respectful of his space in the way he is of mine. But now (almost officially, we won't actually both be living there until after the 'moon) it is OUR space and well, I certainly doesn't feel like my space at all yet. It will, but not right now. Casey, bless his heart realizes this and bought cleaning supplies to spruce up the place (I'm sorry I'm neat and tidy and I realize its a sickness but I don't like dirty dishes piling up in the sink! Ahh, the horror!) and has promised to clean and move out stuff before I come in.

Which brings me to the real purpose of the post: the merging of the stuff. The question has become what do we throw out? What do we keep? What of his can't I stand and which of my stuff does he want to pitch before it ever even crosses the threshhold? How do we make two separate people's stuff into our stuff for our home? I can tell its going to take some negotiating. For example: the foliage.

I have been told that the plastic trees that have graced the apartment for the last couple of years must stay. Last night, I tried to gently ask whether or not the plastic foliage might be negotiable, in other words, honey can we maybe get rid of these? I might not have come across as subtly as I have hoped (though I am not sure what about "so do we HAVE to keep the foliage? I mean, really do we have to???" isn't subtle) and Casey was crestfallen at the idea of life without his trees. "But I like living things in the apartment. When I come home on gray Seattle ideas I like green things, it brightens my day." Great, so now if I take them away I am the mean lady who won't let him have the ONE thing that brightens his day. So the trees stay, although perhaps not in their current location.

In similar fashion, I have a few things the Musanator could do without as well. Case in point, last year I bought what I thought was a fantastic mirror for us. He took one look at it and said " It looks like the batman signal" which I would have thought was a good thing, but apparently not because the other day he looked at it and said with his nose crinkled up, "So is the Batman mirror making the trip?" in a tone that clearly stated he hoped not. I don't think my obsession with throw pillows is going to go over well either....

It all reminds me of the Friends episode where Chandler and Monica are moving in together and can't decide where to put anything or what to do with their stuff. But, hopefully, just like us, they work out with laughter (oh there'll be lots of that, I was laughing so hard I was crying last night when Casey explained how important the plastic was to him) and figure out how to make two lives into one, a merging of sorts:

Chandler: You know what I was thinking for the bedroom?
Monica: What?
Chandler: You know how they have those signs on the highway that say MERGE? Well I was thinking thats kinda like us, merging our stuff and our lives together. So we could one of those signs and put it over the bed, like MERGE. Get it?
Monica: Oh yeh, that's a great idea.
Chandler: Really?
Monica: No.

Don't get any ideas Musanator- I'll let you keep your trees but you can forget the MERGE sign.