knew there was a problem when Time Warner told me my apartment didn't exist.

"Our records show that there's no third floor in that building," the person on the phone told me.

"But I'm living in it!"

And yet, you have to expect a little inconvenience in Brooklyn. This is a place where restaurants don't take credit cards, where you can't catch a taxi, where getting to another part of the borough actually requires taking a subway into Manhattan and back out again. The point is: Sometimes, when you call Time Warner, shit takes time.

In my case, shit took two weeks.

Forget the luxury of cable television; I needed wireless internet just to do my job during the hours when I wasn't at my desk. During that period, I was the first person to arrive at my neighborhood boho coffeeshop each morning at 8am, where I would wait for the hungover barista to roll up the metal gate with a cigarette dangling from his lips. And sometimes, I would go back to that coffeeshop after work and stay till it closed at 10:30pm. To make a short story shorter, let me just say that I spent a lot of time in that damn coffeeshop.

Anyway, Time Warner came today. The guy arrived at 11am on a cold and soggy May morning, rain pouring down. I was so happy to see him I could have given him a hug. This was it: my liberation! The day my house becomes a home! Well, the day my shitty, disheveled apartment gets Comedy Central, anyway.

"This is bad," he said, when he came into my apartment. He rubbed his temples, paced the floor. "This is not good."

The apartment, so recently renovated, had been stripped of its cable wiring. Contractors had sliced the cables, which now dangled like dead seaweed in the limbs of the nearby tree.

"I don't think I can do this today," he said, and sighed. "I'd have to have access to your backyard," he said. "I'd have to climb onto your neighbor's roof," he said. "I'd have to shimmy up your fire escape with a cable that might or might not even work," he said. "And I'd have to do this in the pouring rain!"

I don't know what look I gave him, but it must have been good. Because for the next two hours, that is exactly what he did.

Honestly, I do not how he did it. I suspect it was not entirely legal. At one point, he stood on a nearby fire escape and threw me the wire, which I caught by leaning out the bathroom window. At this point, my television had been moved next to the bathtub. It was a crazy afternoon.

The good news? I have internet. I even have Comedy Central. The bad news? In all that time it took to get my cable installed, the poor guy got a parking ticket.

didn't want too much in a new apartment. I wanted a bathtub. Maybe a tree outside, instead of the gaping hole in the ground and occasional jackhammer I'd been staring out in Williamsburg all these months. I knew I'd have to sacrifice space -- the apartment I'd lived in for two years was a palace by Manhattan standards, a rambling shotgun with one entire room reserved for books, a desktop computer I rarely used, and red glitter platform heels -- but I just wanted a place large enough for my cat to run. He had taken to sliding across the rugs, sometimes in the middle of the night. An annoying habit. But it was bad enough he hadn't touched paw to wet earth in three years. To be robbed of his gallop seemed like too much cruelty.

At the time, I wasn't having the greatest run of things. They say April is the cruelest month, but to be honest, March was pretty shitty, too. I didn't want to move -- or, more precisely, I wanted to move, but I wanted someone else to do it for me, to slog through the Craigslist pages and huff it on the subway to meet with realtors, to pack up three years of belongings and ephemera, to scrub behind the toilet tank and wipe down the grimy hood of the refrigerator. Agggh, weren't we promised robots for this shit?

But I found a place, and it didn't even take that long -- a cozy one-bedroom in Clinton Hill, six blocks from my buddy Bryan (and his Wii). My block is in what you would call a "developing neighborhood" -- mostly, this means I wear ear plugs on Saturday nights to drown out the parties and the domestic violence, and I have to walk further than I want for good coffee. Oh, they're filming the Biggie Smalls movie down the block, and it is, in fact, the street on which the rapper grew up. But there's also a glass condo rising up into the horizon right behind me, so before long, I'll probably be living across from a wheatgrass store and Pilates studio. Good luck, crackies!

Anyway, I was excited about my new place. My old place was too big, one of those drafty old crumbling apartments that was impossible to keep clean. (You should have seen it after I moved out the furniture. Cat hair drifted across the floor like tumbleweeds. It was like Morris the Cat in the Wild West.). This new place is tidy, with all new appliances. Of course, the front door is dented badly, looking for all the world like someone bashed in the door to break in. But I try to concentrate on the fact that, for the first time in three years, I have a dishwasher.

I moved on Wednesday -- and yes, thank you, it was hell -- although thanks to my parents, hell was quicker and kinder and involved more dinners paid for my someone other than me. And so I write to you now from a room full of boxes, piled halfway up the wall. My cat is dozing on top of the boxes. What was I going to tell you? Oh, yes, the tree. This is important.

When the realtor showed me the place, one of the deciding factors for me was this tree. Like I told you, it was one of the only things I wanted in a new place. I had this vision of a spring morning -- breeze cutting through the room, cat curled beside me -- and a bedroom window that looked out onto some branches. But when I moved in, the tree had yet to bloom. While the rest of Brooklyn flourished, the tree was bare, stark, a bony candelabra.

"It's dead," I told my friends. "Just my luck. I move into an apartment for the tree, and the tree doesn't bloom."

This morning, I woke up at dawn. The tree was backlit by the streetlight, and I could see something i hadn't noticed before. Practically overnight -- and I know everyone always says that, but I swear this is true -- blooms had sprouted. Purple flowers like trumpets. Clusters of green. Not only is the tree NOT dead, it is gorgeous. Just my luck, right?

while ago, a graphic artist named Greg Williams contacted me and asked if he could turn one of my blog entries into a comic strip. For the record: You can turn the entries on Sarahhepola.com into anything you want. You can turn them into slam poetry. You can turn them into a delicious blueberry pie. You can turn them into winning lottery numbers. Whatever you want. They are like the duct tape of the internet -- cheap, readily available, and they make a nice, gratifying ripping sound.

I never actually thought Greg would do anything, however. And then, I saw this. It ran in Greg's "Blogjam" strip in the Tampa Tribune on April 4. It is a comic book depiction of a very famous day in my family's lore -- the day my cousin's teeth got knocked out while riding the corkscrew ride at Wet N Wild. This comic makes me feel all famous and tingly. Thank you, Greg. Usually, I need several shots to have so much pride.

Oh, the second coolest thing in forever: Kitty wigs!