A New Home

Part of the radio silence around here is due to the fact that my roommate and I were offered the opportunity to move to one of the downstairs apartments in this place. Like the other units in this old Victorian (there are six in total) it’s old and wacky and has weird nooks and crannies. Unlike the one we’re leaving, it’s a one-bedroom (and I’ve got the bedroom!), but unlike the one we’re leaving my bedroom isn’t also a pass-through to other parts of the apartment (my former bedroom had three doors, one to the bathroom — which had another entrance from my roommate’s bedroom at least — and also the only entrance to the sun porch which is where we store(d) all sorts of needed things).

Anyway, this place is just different, but it has some things we like better about it. One, almost a whole wall of built-in shelves in the front room (the roommate has about a thousand books); two, the kitchen is awesome; three, I get a real bedroom, and the closets are better. The roommate has claimed the “dining room” as a bedroom etc., and it has two closets with good shelving. Also we have a proper back porch so we can sit outside and get some fresh air, instead of a useless sunroom with a weird sloping floor and windows you can’t see out of if you’re sitting down, and can’t open anyway because they don’t have screens.

I had to get rid of some things, but I love getting rid of things. I made up for it by purchasing this awesome teacher’s desk made of solid wood. Unfortunately it was an inch too wide to fit through the weird tiny hallway to my room, so it’s in this alcove between the dining room and the kitchen. That will be my official “office.” Well, half mine — some of the roommate’s furniture has to be squeezed in there.

The place came with an air-conditioner in the “dining” room, and I wonder if it’s powerful enough to cool down the whole place. I’m not sure, as it’s just a window unit, but we have two others. (I bought one of my neighbor’s units when she moved out and it’s been so cold this year that it’s still on the floor of my old room! Go figure.)

There is the usual lack of outlets, and the fun of finding out how things work (some of them don’t, like the shower — either I’m stupid, or it’s got some sort of problem that needs to be fixed because the thing that I thought switched the shower on did nothing; and the toilet runs). And there is bringing the cat to the new place — she is freaked out, of course, because  now she has to smell a bunch of new stuff and figure out where the enemies are and find new hiding places and so on. She hates moving, like all cats.

As usual I’m at that point where “okay, I like the way everything looks right now” and then realizing I have ten thousand more things to move. Technically I wasn’t going to actually be moving anything because I said I’d clean the old apartment, but of course I had to move things — I couldn’t just sit there. So I’ve been up and down the stairs five hundred times, and my feet and legs hate me.

That’s all I can think of to write now. Stay tuned for more exciting news about my life.