Moving Block

I haven't been wanting to write lately because of my foul mood this week. When I'm in my pit o'despair, I tend to isolate and avoid the things that make me happy (go figure). We're in the eye of the moving storm and I'm surrounded by boxes and Ikea crap and a massive pile of paraphernalia to drop off at Goodwill. It's so sad, whenever I bring out the tape-dispenser now to close up the boxes, Addie looks at me and her eyes start twitching, she cringes, and then she covers her ears in expectation of the loud ripping sound. Breaks your heart, it does. Thank god this will be over soon and we'll be in the house by next week, because we are so very sick of this apartment. Sick of waking up every hour to dogs barking outside, sick of sleeping on an air mattress in the living room, sick of our neighbors slamming their door as hard as possible, sick of not being able to flush the toilet at night because it will wake up Addie (gross, but necessary). 

So my apologies for the ranting and the lack of entries--I am trying to commit myself to at least three a week once we're in our new place and the internet is up. The birds will sing once more, Addie will sleep through the night, Zoe will frolic in the yard, Zach will delight in installing his patch panel to provide high-speed internet in every room, and I will feel creative again. 

xoxo, A.

Grateful (gritting teeth) Mondays

I knew that living in a house would be more work than an apartment, but moving in and making a few upgrades, all while hoisting a babe on my hip, is getting to me.  Also not helping that my car thermometer read 94 DEGREES outside when it was 4:30 in the afternoon as we were heading over THE HOUSE WITH NO AC to unpack some more. To make things even more super-duper-fun-time, I realized that I had forgotten the house keys just as we were arriving, and Addie was already getting fussy in the back, totally unsatisfied with her water bottle, giraffe, personal car keys, rattles, and book (too many choices, mayhaps?).  WIET H)PQQU# *U#@* WOEIH. That's what my head feels like right now. 

Zach is still over there (it's 10pm), wiring Cat-6 cable within the walls and being all manly with his dremmels and drills and full-on bodysuit/goggles/headlamp he wears to go underneath the house. God, I wish I could post this photo I just took of him right now, but I took it with my iphone* and am way too lazy to transfer it now. Later, though... 

Back to business. Let's see how the list goes...my mind is currently blank. 

1. There is a tub of Scharffenberger chocolate pudding from Whole Foods sitting in the fridge, but it won't be there for very long. 

2. Zoe and Addie love the new house. We sat in the backyard tonight as the sun was disappearing, listening to crickets and watching birds fly overhead. Playing with the grass and laughing. Zoe zooming across the driveway, spinning like a black fire-cracker, and then taking off again. 

3. My mother is visiting our family in Japan--she gave my grandfather and grandmother each a photo album of Adeline. I miss my family a lot, but I'm grateful that they are hanging in there (health-wise) and we will be visiting them at the end of the year. 

4. My order from Urban Outfitters came in the mail today and I'm in love with the canvas prints I bought for Addie's new room (she has a room! With butterflies and pink robots and a little sheepskin rug!).  Here's one of them. 

5. I got a shower in today. 

*I've realized that owning an iphone makes you waaaay too dependent on a single technological device--yes, it saves me from having to carry around an mp3 player, phone, planner, camera, Zagat guide, constellation map, and my ocarina, but it's also making me forget to take quality photos with my REAL camera...hence, the skimpiness of the cute pics lately. Here, I'll distract you with this July photo of Addie meditating/doing yoga: 

Namaste.

Homes Sweet Homes

I removed the previous post for a couple days in fear that someone (i.e.future landlord) would miraculously find my blog and think we would be unfit tenants, but I figured it didn't reflect too badly on me that we have unfolded laundry and some crap on the table. I mean, really, I bet a lot more houses look like ours than I previously assumed.

I remember three apartments ago when we lived in a g-h-e-t-t-o one-bedroom in Aptos, there was suddenly an enormous water stain that appeared on our bathroom ceiling. It was like a gray, dingy cloud that pissed dirty FISHTANK water onto our heads. A smaller, but no less annoying, patch began dripping in the bedroom.  I don't remember the how's or why's of the matter, I just remember going upstairs to found out what the hell was going on, and being shocked by what I saw. 

In a space no larger than ours (550 sq. ft), there resided two adults, one child, four birds, three rabbits, two tanks of fish, a couple snakes, and a guinea pig. Not only did it house (and smell like) a small menagerie, the place was PACK-RAT central. The family had lived there for at least ten years, the entire life of the child, as she so ruefully explained. There were piles of newspapers, empty aquariums (who they housed, I'll never know), dilapidated children's toys and bicycles, bags of pet feed, a massage table...it made my head hurt and my body instinctually shrink into itself to take up as little space as possible as I shuffled through the tiny alley between the couch and wall to enter the bedroom. Two double beds, a plastic crate with a small television, and more aquariums. 

"We clean out the fish tanks by ourselves in the bathroom," the mother said. 

These were hefty tanks, with a variety of large, exotic fish--the kind of tank you should have professionally cleaned, or least done in a space bigger than a public restroom toilet stall. 

"Uh, did you happen to spill most of it on the floor instead of the tub?" I asked this with genuine confusion, because we never actually figured out what it was that made the nasty sagging ceiling. Just that it happened the day a lake of fish-poo water was emptied into the tub above ours. 

I'm also reminiscing about this incident because we're moving again in two or three weeks, and it's inevitable I look back at the gradual improvements of our living arrangements.    

There was Zach's college pad with his two roomates--the kitchen counters strewn with empty pizza boxes and Smirnoff bottles; stacks of wrinkled Maxim, Popular Science, and Snowboard Magazine on top of the toilet; the musty smell of unwashed man-clothes hanging in the air.  I remember sitting in the bathroom, mesmerized by the assortment of crushed insects on the walls, and realizing that we were out of toilet paper again. Ah, college. 

Then there was the daylight basement of a Jordanian family's house. Our bed shared the same (very thin) wall as their washer and dryer. Twice, the entire shower head/connecting pipe shot out at me and Niagara Falls appeared in our bathroom. Another major pipe leakage situation soaked our shelves of food. Our postage-stamp sized kitchen.

Yet, wherever we've lived, we've made it home--hammered nails and hung smudged photos on the walls, created science experiments atop stoves, left rust rings from shaving cream cans in the bathtub. We may not have loved the places themselves, but we loved what we created inside of them. 

Wow, this has turned into a long ramble. I'll write about the new place we'll be calling home another time...