I am exhausted.

I decided to move to the garden level apartment in my building. It is a two bedroom apartment with carpet and a huge kitchen.

The apartment does not have air conditioning or fans, so I keep the windows open. Open windows make a garden-level apartment far too easy to burglarize, so I installed protection bars on all of the windows.

Of course installing the bars was not as simple as getting the bars from Home Depot and putting them in.

My landlord approved of the protection bars, but then had fire-code concerns, so I went to the Minneapolis development/permit office to figure out what the rules were.

They didn’t really know. Talk to the fire department they said… it was an adventure…

I also renewed the dog permits while I was at the development review office. What should have been a 3 minute renewal took over 30 minutes because the Somali clerk had problems understanding the renewal form.

I spent the majority of time re-explaining the form to the clerk. He got confused, kept asking me the same question…. he eventually called a co-worker… she repeated instructions to him several times. He would wrinkle his brow and re-ask the his question. We wantd to strangle him.

Public servant fail.

I eventually figured things out. The fire department was way more competent than the development review people and (three trips to home depot later) I installed the bars.

To further prevent garden-level burglary, and to spur the moving process, I moved my mattress and bathroom accoutrements downstairs. I don’t have my bed frame, or any clothes down here, so I feel homeless even though (through two apartments) I occupy far more space than any other tenant in the building.

The moving process is marked by my clumsiness and interrupted by dog walks and 10-hour work days. It’s a tragi-comedy.

I also haven’t decided on what to do with the second bedroom. I sort of want to make it a music/art studio, but a roommate isn’t out of the question. Preferably one that likes dogs.