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The weight of this world is enough
I appreciate that our front porch is being constructed with skill and solidity and mindfulness of building codes, but the punctual arrival of the contractors at what we have come to term the crack of legality is really destroying my ability to sleep in any more substantive fashion than a couple of wolf-hours and a total failure to doze through the use of wall-vibrating tools. I am trying to comfort myself with the fact that the steps have almost been rebuilt to the point of railings, although the front door itself is still technically nailed shut. Thanksgiving was good but intense: it seemed to come up faster than usual and leave a sort of whiplash. I finally managed to review one of the movies I had stared at in the evenings, which took what felt like the mental effort of the entire weekend, and otherwise I am so tired that I feel barely here.
I am sure we will discover all sorts of idiosyncracies about this apartment as we settle into it and especially after the upstairs people move in, but right now I am marveling at how many of its features cast an even grimmer light on the shortcomings of our previous address. The ability to do laundry in our own home rather than having to take it elsewhere. (Eight years I couldn't do laundry on site!) The ability to set the thermostat to a normal temperature for late fall rather than always having to blast the heat because it bleeds as fast out the windows. (The heating bills this winter will no doubt be agonizing, but at least not wasteful.) We don't have dust and drafts constantly leaking under unsealed doors from the landing of a shared stairwell and I like to think that even if our upstairs neighbors turn out to be stoners, they might not give me asthma attacks on the regular because our apartments are actually separated by more than a gentlemen's agreement. The fan in the bathroom works. It feels dangerous to become fond of this apartment: we don't own it; it's not like we moved into the last one imagining that it would damage my health. But we are slowly reducing the number of boxes and I am trying to convince myself it is a place to live, not just a place to stay, because it feels like a very long time since that has been true. I may always miss the view from our back deck, but I still miss the dogwood outside my window in New Haven, too. I really do not believe that housing should be so fraught and awful that I have become gun-shy about inhabiting a space.
We took advantage of the commencement of the consumer season to purchase a small cat tree, which now sits to one side of the couch; I have seen both cats on it at different times, in Hestia's case particularly attentive to the prospect of birds in the street. I missed them so much when they were not always wandering through the same rooms, climbing imperiously into my lap, delicately scratching for attention. Our little predators. It is very important to have them underfoot.
I am sure we will discover all sorts of idiosyncracies about this apartment as we settle into it and especially after the upstairs people move in, but right now I am marveling at how many of its features cast an even grimmer light on the shortcomings of our previous address. The ability to do laundry in our own home rather than having to take it elsewhere. (Eight years I couldn't do laundry on site!) The ability to set the thermostat to a normal temperature for late fall rather than always having to blast the heat because it bleeds as fast out the windows. (The heating bills this winter will no doubt be agonizing, but at least not wasteful.) We don't have dust and drafts constantly leaking under unsealed doors from the landing of a shared stairwell and I like to think that even if our upstairs neighbors turn out to be stoners, they might not give me asthma attacks on the regular because our apartments are actually separated by more than a gentlemen's agreement. The fan in the bathroom works. It feels dangerous to become fond of this apartment: we don't own it; it's not like we moved into the last one imagining that it would damage my health. But we are slowly reducing the number of boxes and I am trying to convince myself it is a place to live, not just a place to stay, because it feels like a very long time since that has been true. I may always miss the view from our back deck, but I still miss the dogwood outside my window in New Haven, too. I really do not believe that housing should be so fraught and awful that I have become gun-shy about inhabiting a space.
We took advantage of the commencement of the consumer season to purchase a small cat tree, which now sits to one side of the couch; I have seen both cats on it at different times, in Hestia's case particularly attentive to the prospect of birds in the street. I missed them so much when they were not always wandering through the same rooms, climbing imperiously into my lap, delicately scratching for attention. Our little predators. It is very important to have them underfoot.
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Thank you! We just keep wandering around and saying things like "It's been three weeks and none of the ceiling lights have blown yet . . . We can run the microwave and the toaster oven at the same time . . . The heating doesn't smells like trash juice . . ."
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*hugs*
(I got to watch bricklaying done on the front steps. That was cool.)
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We didn't even have to nip-bait it for them to begin to investigate, and leap, and scratch.
(Right now they are still enjoying stacks of boxes to perch on, but someday, not so much.)
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I am delighted to hear that your new apartment is behaving like an apartment and not like a torture device.
O,
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A low and yet crucial bar!
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Thank you. The cats help very much. I have been waking with them piled around us.
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Thank you! Getting the art up on the walls should help, too. We could hang almost none of our pictures in the old place.
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At every opportunity! Especially during the preparation of meals!
I am delighted to hear that your new apartment is behaving like an apartment and not like a torture device.
Thank you! It has problems, because it is an apartment, but so far they have all fallen within the normal scope of human occupancy (my office door sticks, we have contacted the property manager with a plumbing question, we may eventually need to replace another doorknob), not Victorian garret horrors. Knock wood.
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Thank you.
*hugs*
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Thank you!
There were just things about the old apartment that never worked and were never going to. We couldn't fix the electrical wiring that meant that if we used our microwave while the upstairs people were vacuuming, the fuses blew. That was just ridiculous.
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He did have a concrete saw because he was doing something with the slate risers, but still. I am not sure I had ever seen it live before.
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So! Am glad it is within more reasonable parameters. Plus, cats.
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In the meantime, I had a slight audio diversion to listen to two random David Collings episodes that were on BBC Sounds currently. In one of them he murdered people (and recited nursery rhymes at one of them) and in the other he was terribly shy and wound up dead in the canal, suicide implied.
Me: well, I see nothing has changed here.
(Meanwhile audio Martin Jarvis hasn't died once, although the bodies are mounting up around him when he's not being a Meme, which, I suppose is worrying in its own way...)
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What a good term for it!
I really do not believe that housing should be so fraught and awful that I have become gun-shy about inhabiting a space.
*hugs*
It is very important to have them underfoot.
Yes, yes it is. And it's such a calming thing, watching the cats watch the birds.
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Thank you! It looks much, much sturdier, for one.
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Thank you!
I hadn't realized how stressful the laundry had become until I was just putting up a wash and all of a sudden it was no big deal.
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Thank you!
two random David Collings episodes that were on BBC Sounds currently. In one of them he murdered people (and recited nursery rhymes at one of them) and in the other he was terribly shy and wound up dead in the canal, suicide implied.
Yeah, that sounds extremely on point!
(Meanwhile audio Martin Jarvis hasn't died once, although the bodies are mounting up around him when he's not being a Meme, which, I suppose is worrying in its own way...)
Does he do anything to cause it, or does it just happen?
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Thank you!
Yes, yes it is. And it's such a calming thing, watching the cats watch the birds.
Both of them chatter when the channel is especially good.
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Thank you!
Always cats.
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So far, it's just happened and he gets upset about it. (Then I was trying to think if he'd been murdery or died in anything I'd seen so far and really, only in Taste the Blood of Dracula and even then the death bit is highly ambiguous. Like, we can probably be 97% sure he's dead or will be soon, but there's a small chance he might not even be. If David Collings had been in a Hammer, he would have ended up way deader than that.)
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I can't believe David Collings was never in a Hammer. What a Renfield he would have made.
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ETA: He would have made a good Renfield, though.
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Because of the availability of different patterns?
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ETA-- Although my favourite brick pattern is herringbone, which might be something more akin to weaving, at least in the finished effect if not the structure?
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The man who was rebuilding our front steps just finished and the company for which he works just ran a short blog post about different kinds of brick bond, so I thought of you.
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