Settled in. More or less.

Posted on | 3 years ago, mid-afternoon | 1 Comment

Yesterday I met up with a pair of cleaning women from a service recommended by Ellen; and for the first time in my life, I paid people to clean up after me. It’s not something I ordinarily do, but for a variety of reasons I wanted to make sure that our former apartment sparkled in our wake.* Now the place quite frankly looks better than it did when we moved in, and I am relieved to consider myself formally, officially moved.

We no longer have even a single packed box hanging around the new living room. Everything has been put away, and we absolutely live here in this beautiful building.

Speaking of the building itself — this is the oldest joint I’ve ever called home,** and it’s been an adjustment filled with wonders and new considerations.

For example, our bathroom sink has two faucets … one for hot, one for cold, in the tradition of plumbing that followed closely on the heels of simple basins without running water. This means that if you want any water other than FREEZING COLD or BURNING HOT, you have to plug the sink and mix the water therein (as was the original intent); or if you cup your hands tightly, you can swing them back and forth to collect a good temperature blend. This is working just fine for me. Likewise, I’m growing accustomed to the sound of hissing steam and the occasional din of banging pipes (which is never really very bad).

[The average temperature in here is about 75 degrees -- as opposed to 63 degrees in our previous abode. I don't care if the pipes harmonize and howl like a barbershop quartet every hour on the hour, so long as they continue to keep me this comfortable.]

The cat is terribly torn by the radiators. On the one hand, they’re so warm … and on the other hand, they sound so angry. Yesterday I watched her sit beside one, staring it down, for about half an hour before she decided that the scary factor outweighed the warm factor. She then wandered back into the bedroom to hang out on the windowsill.

Kitty Onna Windowsill

Speaking of the pets, Howard the Fish scored himself a cool new set-up. We have less counter-space in this kitchen and I wanted to bring him out into the living area; so I found a small, unfinished wood table at a swap shop and took a pretty red stain to it. Now his tank sits atop it, out of immediate sunlight and back where he can watch all the household goings-on.

If you don’t believe that a fish can sulk, then I would suggest that you put a sociable little betta into an out-of-the-way kitchen area where he can’t watch people all day. Then, I promise, you would see sulks.


Howard's new digs


Next time I clean his tank, I’ll move the heater so that the cord hangs alongside the bookcase for camouflage purposes. I’d do it now, but I figure I’ve traumatized the poor dude enough for one
week.

Anyway. If you’d like to see a few more pictures of the new apartment — feel free to go poking through my Flickr page. And if you’d like to take a gander at a brand new LOLSPAINY, just click the jump below and you shall be indulged.

PERIL.

new apartment 005

Spainy has always had this weird little fixation with walls and corners. She likes to lie down and paw at them, and peek around them between naps. Well, now she has all new walls and corners from which to peer.

the peril around our new apartment is pretty damn cute

Anyway folks, that’s all I’ve got for now. I must wrap this up and head to the bank, then make another interminable series of phone calls and fill out yet more paperwork for a variety of things. But I very much hope (hope! pray!) that tomorrow I can let myself relax a little bit. You never know. It could happen.


* In short: We don’t trust management, and I wanted to have a receipt to demonstrate that yes, we did IN FACT leave the place very, very clean. Also, I am SO FREAKING BUSY right now that it was a relief to leave it to someone else while I stayed home and worked; and Aric has been pretty sick for the last few days, so I didn’t want to hand him a bucket and a broom and abandon him to the task.
* By only a couple of years — but the last old building in which we lived had been extensively restored in the 1980s, so it had central heat and air conditioning as well as all new fixtures and appliances.

Category: misc

Comments

One Response to “Settled in. More or less.”

  1. CE Murphy
    January 23rd, 2009 @ 3:37 am

    I love your LOLcats. :)

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