triv.org

There is no better place to look for the fundamental divide between man and woman than moving day. A man will move the furniture, the appliances, stack the boxes, get the cable television hooked up, and call it a day. A woman will put stuff in logical places, hang art on the walls, and turn a house into a home at such a clip as to make your head spin.

Then there is my sister.

We moved my sister into her apartment this weekend. She's up in Lansing for law school. Her apartment is in a neighborhood just south of downtown, an area that your realtor would call "pre-gentrification." The building is the older sort, built when a two by four was two inches by four inches, brick was red, and windows moved up and down. The elevator is somewhere between "old" and "death trap o' horrors." It's Emily's sort of place.

I drove up to help shlep stuff up to the fifth story. Boxes, a bed, furniture, a couch; that sort of thing. My father and I started to put furniture together, and my sister did the exact same thing that she did when she helped me move in: she started hanging stuff on the walls.

The next day my sister calls me, "How do I get the cable to work?"

Sometimes I wonder if there is a man in my sister. She's not always centered around the same sensibilities that a typical woman is. Does that mean there is a woman in me? I have been told I keep a very neat house for a single man. I do like romantic comedies. I'm the guy girls call up when they need to a shoulder to cry on.

Meanwhile, my Uncle Mike has been in hospital for an aortic dissection. He had surgery, and things were looking good. Then he was getting restless and whatnot, and the decision was made to put him under for a day or two. This would give his body time to heal. This was last Monday and he was to wake up that Wednesday. As of today he still hasn't woken up completely. As my father put it, "This is starting to be a concern."

The light in my kitchen has broken, though I do not know how it is broken. My TV stand should be in soon. I'm redoing the electrical in the house soon. I've started very early work on a complete redesign of this site. I have to go now. The man in me is getting restless.