Want A Sip Of My Ice Cream?

So we've been here a full week, and Jennifer and I are fully on each other's nerves. Long gone are the care-free days of rooftop showers; we're ready to tear each other's throats out.

I don't know why, but my cluttery packrat ass just can't get anything done around the crib with her in the room. But since we're complete newbies to the town, it's not like sometime soon she'll say, "Oh, I'm going out with the girls tonight so you're on your own."

Jennifer's pretty logical and way more decisive than me when it comes to figuring out what to keep, file or throw away. And when you're a sentimental packrat who just moved to a tiny apartment in Manhattan, you'll have space problems. It's catching up to us.

But we're not without other problems. Of course, Juan the super -- let's just call him SuperJuan -- was supposed to come Monday or Tuesday to install a dead-bolt lock on the door. It's now just minutes before Friday, and we're still using a paper bag from the local wine shop to stuff the hole where the lock will go. Is anyone hiring engineers? I think I'm fairly qualified.

And another problem is that I noticed the refrigerator's contents weren't very cold several days ago, so I bumped the dial up to 6. The next day up to 7 and now we're all the way up to 9, the highest number available. The orange juice and milk are about as cold as you'd find such items to be after taking them out of a properly working fridge, then setting them out on the counter for about 40 minutes or so. Maybe 45.

The freezer isn't working well either, and when I joined Jennifer out on the fire escape as she smoked another cigarette, I had with me the pint of ice cream I'd bought earlier in the week. I got out to the fire escape, got comfy on my collapsable-bought at Target-perfect-for-white-trash-watching-fireworks-chair and opened the ice cream. I realized the spoon was hardly necessary.

"Want a sip of my ice cream?" I asked Jennifer, then without waiting for an answer, just chugged the hell out of that motherfucker.