Nerd In Transistion: Moving (to) the Mountain

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a relaunched blogumn by Kelly Kaboom Lett (formerly of “Venice Flytrap“)

I recently moved out of Venice. Leaving behind my charming, yet falling apart duplex with its big fenced in front and back yard, vegetable garden, fruit trees, 5 minute walk to the beach and sweet salt air waking me up every morning. Where I landed is on the side of a mountain in East LA, homes. I have 47 steps to climb before I reach my front door, nothing within a quick walking distance, a yard that’s a mountain slope and the promise of a blistering hot summer. I am a happy happy girl.

While I may have left behind an awesome neighborhood by the beach, I gained so much more in exchange. Those 47 steps lead up to a small one bedroom house that I share with no one but Derby Dog. Said house is not only NOT falling apart but it has a lot of newness going on, like a  new foundation, kitchen, floors and so forth.

My new screen door and awesome landlord

My old landlord easily fit into lazy slumlord category with a building “manager” — that was a huge reason the place was falling apart. For example it took 9 months of phone calls and letters before I finally went out and bought a cheap new screen door, deducting the cost from my rent. This is a small example, don’t get me started on termites or leaking tubs. But the day I moved into the new place I asked for a screen door, a couple weeks later my landlord shows up with a nice wooden door he had hand painted himself to match the house.

While I always enjoyed the view from my old front door, here I look out over the blinking lights of a thousand homes, creating constellations that change nightly; on a clear day I can see both Long Beach and Catalina Island. While my current neighborhood has nothing but Mexican restaurants (kick ass ones), I am only five minutes from Downtown which has everything, including the best sushi in all of LA right in Little Tokyo.

My drive to roller derby practice has gone from an hour or more to 10 MINUTES! I had no real concept of just how much gas I was going through until now. In fact I’m so centrally located that I can get to Silverlake/Echo Park or South Pasadena or Hollywood or Burbank in 12 minutes. The Valley is about 15. The house is decorated exactly the way I want it. I only have myself to blame for all those dirty dishes. If I want to go to bed at 10 or even 9 there is nobody to keep me up. When I work out first thing in the morning there is nobody for me to keep up. Very close by there is a big park with a lake and rec center surrounded by many different trees just loaded with squirrels for Derby Dog to chase. And it is quiet, in fact as I sit here writing this, I am listening to crickets chirp. Quaint? Oh yes, very much so.

One of the great things about the move was that I got a nice settlement check from the man that bought my former building. Suddenly I had a new house and lots of cash. Target, Home Depot, Big Lots; I hit ’em all. I was having consumorgasms all over town. I now have a bathroom with a shower curtain that is covered in bright multicolored circles and a rug and toilet cover that are covered in bright pink shaggy polkadots. I smile every time I sit down to do my business. Even Derby Dog got a new bed. Luckily all the furniture from the old place was mine and it fit perfectly.

It’s pretty amazing that it all came together so well. I knew last fall that it was my final year in Venice. My feminine intuition is often off, but I can feel change coming from a mile away. Maybe this time though I was more sensitive to the need for change. Maybe I was already aware that this was going to be another transition in what has been a long, painful growth process over the last two years.

Beginning with an evaluation of my life and what has been holding me back from having a better one I came to understand that it was all me. It was not a new discovery, I’ve always known just how self destructive I was, but I’ve done little to combat it. Truth be told I have often indulged in my self destruction. With 30 approaching I started working on all the junk in my life. As more stuff got tossed I saw that there were other changes that needed to be made which were not removal of negatives so much as it was removing a comfort that had become stagnant. Moving was one. Leaving Venice with all it’s charm and quirkiness had to happen for me to progress.

So I moved up the side of a mountain where I am literally living on my own metaphor. Each day I will climb up those 47 steps to reach a safe, comfortable space shared with an adoring furry companion. Each day I will face a new transition and climb up it to find a safe, comfortable place inside myself shared only with an adoring shaggy haired companion, the clean me. And you, lucky reader, are going to get to hear all about it.