Where I Hang My Hat

Did you know that sink comes in several parts?

It's a serious question, because I didn't know. I guess I always figured that if one needs a sink, one need only go to Home Depot and buy one. Alas, a sink is really just one part of what we know as the sink. The spout, the knobs, and the drain are each entirely different entities, each with their own little parts that contribute to the function of the whole. Kind of like life. But I digress.

I'm learning these things as my girlfriend and I settle into our new place, which is definitely an old place by suburban standards. I've come to describe the joint as a craftsman townhouse, which is a fancy, distinctive way to justify its shortcomings. Indeed, the eight-unit complex, clustered with similarly seemingly dilapidated townhomes and condos, is in a back pocket of a cul-de-sac, close to our college town's downtown to enjoy the bars, restaurants, and antique shops if we ever fancied to walk, but just far enough outside of its scope to avoid the city council's sudden need to throw chic condos on top of everything in the good name of renovation. It's a forgotten part of town, for now.

Don't get me wrong -- I like the place. By the end of next week, the second bedroom should be suitable Fortress of Solitude, where my posters, action figures, and personal mementos will fully congregate for the first time in an unadulterated celebration of me, like some ongoing inanimate party twenty-eight years in the making. School should be out on all of the little man lessons I've had to learn these past three weeks, with the final project being a place we can call our own. Granted, all of this will be just in time for us to take off for a week, to visit my family in Arizona for the holidays . . . but I guess that's the ultimate "man lesson" in all of this. Timing is everything, and usually the only thing you can't control.

If only it could be easily assembled, the flow of it, controlled. Like a sink.