karl's new digs

karl and his roommate alex used to work at a (now bankrupt) .com in king of prussia, pa. now, karl works in center city (17th and market), and the commute from k of p is a *bitch*. so, to ease the commute (and be nearer to me!), karl's moving to center city. he and alex gave their current apartment 60 days notice 2 months ago, and so their lease ends on 12 november. and karl, the silly boy, hadn't started looking for a new place until this week. and of course this new job is very time demanding (his brother is his boss, and thus expects extra hours out of him). sooooo, i, being the procrastinator that i am (and thus having much time on my hands), volunteered to go round looking at apartments for him, and spent today looking. looked at about 12 places in 7 building from 3 landlords. karl eventually chose one at 22nd and walnut: a small one-bedroom on the nw corner of the third floor, with hardwood floors and a newly redone kitchen.

the interesting part about this all is not so much the apartment hunting or the place karl eventually chose, but part of the conversation we had over lunch (chinese: i had my favorite, chicken with cashew (have you noticed that they never put the 's' on at the end of 'cashew' in chinese restaurants? chinese must either indicate plurality differently, or perhaps consider 'cashew' to be a mass (rather than count) noun [later: after a guestbook conversation with oddcellist, i've learned that in chinese, plurals are indeed indicated differently than in english (i.e. lexically rather than morphologically), so it's not at all surprising that english written by native speakers of chinese exhibits exactly this error; when speaking a non-fluent second language (L2), speakers often use the grammar of their native language (L1) as the model into which they place lexical items from L2. thus, the grammar of L1, whatever that may be, affects how speakers produce L2. psycholinguistics is SO COOL.]) and karl had his favorite, lemon chicken. karl is strangely averse to all nuts (i know, i know, cashews are technically legumes, not nuts, but still. it's like the whole tomatoes fruit/vegetable confusion. speaking of which, karl also hates tomatoes. i didn't realize how *many* foods have tomatoes in them until i started going out to eat with him.) and even smelling them (nuts, not tomatoes) on someone *else's* breath turns his stomach. but i asked before i ordered the chicken with cashew, and he said it was okay to eat it. i guess cashews aren't that offensive a nut, as nuts go.).

ANYway, back to lunch conversation. karl was weighing the apartment options, and i brought up another possibility, which was that he could live somewhere other than (expensive) center city, like either west philly or one of the immediately surrounding suburbs. as i predicted, he didn't want to do either of those things. but after i mentioned it, he got all hedge-y and disclaimer-y and started several times to ask me something but kept avoiding looking at me. he asked if i knew what he was getting at. i thought i probably did, but i said no, in case i really didn't. (i did, as it turns out--do you?). he finally got out that he was [insert long disclaimer about how he wasn't really suggesting this for now, *really*, and how i shouldn't take this in any particular way, or as a request, exactly, here] considering the idea of the two of us moving in. together (for those of you who are slow on the uptake). he's funny, he's considering the idea of moving in, but hasn't yet said "i love you" (don't know about *you*, but the former seems to me to be bigger and more scary-committment than the latter. but what do i know). um, right, where was i? oh yeah, moving in. so he was (understandably) all hedge-y and disclaimer-y about it. he asked if i'd ever thought about it. of COURSE i have. i am, after all, a 26-year-old woman with no immediate reproductive prospects. not that i am *consciously* concerned about this whole biological clock issue just yet, but millions of years of evolution have programmed into me that i'm gettin on in years and that i really ought to have had several children by now. so i think about it. when i was in my teens, i figured that it'd be good to have my first child (assuming i decided to have children at all) by age 30. that's only 3.5 years away, now. if i want to be married when/if that happens (and i do), and i want to have some time with my husband before we breed, and i want to know my husband for some time before we get engaged/married, then really i should have already met the father of my future children. and maybe i have. but maybe i haven't. in any case, i doubt i'll be able to keep to that age 30 thing now. so. i've thought about it. i think living with karl would be nice. i think it's possible that i could live with him for good. (borogoves, you DO remember that you've only been seeing him for 7 weeks, now, right? the novelty hasn't worn off yet.) but, no matter how nice i think it would be, (a) we've only been dating 7 weeks and (b) he's my first real relationship after john. i'm nervous about going too fast. i DO NOT want to go through what i went through with john again. so. i've thought about it, but it's too early. he agreed.

okay, so the rational arguments out of the way, it gave me the (good) shivers that he was even thinking about it, much less that he brought it up.

back nearer to the beginning of our relationship, i asked him what he wanted from life, what he thought was most important in life. his answer was company. my first (private) reaction was that that was very unambitious--i was underwhelmed. but as i thought about it more, i think he may be right. i mean, for some, very few, people, there are Major World Contributions to be made. history. people like galileo galilei and vincent van gogh and isaac newton and ludwig van beethoven and albert einstein and martin luther king jr and napoleon and vladimir lenin and fyodor dostoevsky and socrates and even adolf hitler and osama bin laden. those people often give up love/family/whatever to achieve their goals. but for the rest of us, for whom there are no major contributions to be made, it's possible that love and family ARE the most important things. it's hard for me to admit that i'm part of that category. i've always wanted to be one of the Great Ones. i'm not, though. i don't have the talent or the drive (it takes both).