![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
You don't have to go back home at all
At those times when I missed my life in New Haven and everything that went along with it so painfully that I felt like a ghost in its aftermath, one of the things I would do to stave off the suicidal ideation was remind myself that my apartment on Lynwood Place was, all things objectively considered, kind of a terrible apartment. It was in a small brownstone from the 1920's; it was on the third floor and there was a flowering tree outside my window; it had very good light. I never bothered with pulling down the shades in the living room, where I kept my desk and my futon and my small round dinner table and the green basket chair which was the only piece of furniture from that place to survive the move back to Boston. I'm not even sure there were shades on the windows in the kitchen and the bathroom. I have fond photographic memories of moonlight too bright to sleep in falling across the floor as I went back and forth to my room at the right time of night. The floors were hardwood and the phone jack at the baseboard of the front hall hadn't been changed since the '30's, so I had to strip and splice my own wires in order to run a landline. (I am still proud of that.) It was the right size for one person with a lot of books and not a lot of other furniture and I hung art on the walls, mostly sea-related. I burned my Shabbes candles on the kitchen windowsill; my mezuzah just fit on the frame of my bedroom door. I could keep it on $800 a month plus utilities (I only bought the landline for the internet) and the rent never went up by more than $50 a year.
And it was on a street with two fraternities and muggings down at the less streetlit end and the washer and dryer in the basement were coin-op and broken often enough that I conceived a passionate hatred for laundromats and the basement itself flooded at least once a year leaving standing water at the bottom of the stairs for days and one year the heat failed to come on until December and I could never get it to turn off before April and my first winter I covered all the radiators with insulating foil and blankets because the thermostat in any case was broken and had no settings between heatstroke and zero and my bedroom window was permanently open because otherwise it was too hot to sleep and the air conditioning situation when it became relevant was a window unit in the living room that sounded like a diphtheria case and there were tiles grating in the kitchen floor and I had to put down a piece of carpet in the front hall because otherwise the grout would float off a kind of terra-cotta powder I really didn't want to breathe and no one ever fixed the hole in the wall beside the fusebox and the whole place had to be fumigated for cockroaches. Twice.
(Discovering last week that in the years since my departure from New Haven the building has become an expensive property and a desirable student location was something of a trip. I did not pay my rent checks to Pike International, I can tell you.)
In any case: it could yet surprise us and we'd be sad, but I am pretty sure the place I just signed a lease for in Somerville with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
adrian_turtle is better.
And it was on a street with two fraternities and muggings down at the less streetlit end and the washer and dryer in the basement were coin-op and broken often enough that I conceived a passionate hatred for laundromats and the basement itself flooded at least once a year leaving standing water at the bottom of the stairs for days and one year the heat failed to come on until December and I could never get it to turn off before April and my first winter I covered all the radiators with insulating foil and blankets because the thermostat in any case was broken and had no settings between heatstroke and zero and my bedroom window was permanently open because otherwise it was too hot to sleep and the air conditioning situation when it became relevant was a window unit in the living room that sounded like a diphtheria case and there were tiles grating in the kitchen floor and I had to put down a piece of carpet in the front hall because otherwise the grout would float off a kind of terra-cotta powder I really didn't want to breathe and no one ever fixed the hole in the wall beside the fusebox and the whole place had to be fumigated for cockroaches. Twice.
(Discovering last week that in the years since my departure from New Haven the building has become an expensive property and a desirable student location was something of a trip. I did not pay my rent checks to Pike International, I can tell you.)
In any case: it could yet surprise us and we'd be sad, but I am pretty sure the place I just signed a lease for in Somerville with
adrian_turtle is better.
no subject
no subject
We haven't got the keys yet, but we've got the lease! I am counting this worth announcing!
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
(And apparently I have amazing credit, which will have to come in handy someday.)
no subject
no subject
Thank you. I like all parts of this blessing.
no subject
And of course Amanda Palmer has a song called "Massachusetts Avenue."
We lived on the Somerville-Cambridge line for a number of years. I remember with great fondness shopping at Market Basket. So much fondness, in fact, that I still have their courtesy card, though it's been years and years since I had occasion to use it.
I wish you and
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
If there's any help I can give with moving...
Nine
no subject
You are providing furniture! That counts!
no subject
Yay!
no subject
That's basically how we feel.
no subject
May the new place be everything you'd wish for, and more.
no subject
Thank you.
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
May the move go smoothly and the apartment turn out to be a warm and wonderful home for you and
no subject
Thank you! If nothing else, it will be well-insulated with reading material.
no subject
Let us know when you are moving: I don't know if you want help OR if I could come down to provide it; I am sure, in any case, that there are many people nearer at hand who could haul the bookboxes. But it would be nice to help you move INto somewhere!
no subject
Thank you!
But it would be nice to help you move INto somewhere!
It will be nice to be moving into somewhere!
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
I'd totally forgotten about the times the Ferret of Inconvenience invaded your basement...
no subject
I really hate laundromats.
I will also enjoy not having to put all my spare change into the vending machine in the basement of Sterling Library in order to have enough quarters to do the wash in my own basement.
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
no subject
Thank you. It . . . generally has been.
no subject
(And I think I lived in an apartment on Lynwood Place once. Might have been Edgewood. Looking at a map, I know I lived on Lake Place for a while.)
no subject
Thank you!
(And I think I lived in an apartment on Lynwood Place once. Might have been Edgewood. Looking at a map, I know I lived on Lake Place for a while.)
Huh! When were you in New Haven?
(no subject)
no subject
no subject
Much appreciated!
The books are important.
no subject
no subject
Thank you! I think we will have it.
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
Your first apartment sounds like a close cousin to mine, though for some reason my first apartment was almost all kitchen. You could practically roller skate in it, except there was a post in the middle.
no subject
Thank you. It made us very happy to find this apartment. We were trying to measure the rooms almost immediately.
for some reason my first apartment was almost all kitchen. You could practically roller skate in it, except there was a post in the middle.
That's so inconvenient, I am oddly unsurprised.
(no subject)
no subject
(And you may be using movers, but if you need an extra pair of hands to haul things, I'm happy to help out if I'm free that day.)
no subject
Thank you! I'm certainly not planning on moving professionally, so if it becomes relevant, I will certainly put out a call for
suckersvolunteers.no subject
And yay for "Massachusetts Avenue", which is probably my favourite of her new album and worms its way into my head incessantly.
~Sor
no subject
I first heard "Want It Back" (via video) and that's the one that creeps up on me, but "Massachusetts Avenue" is probably my second favorite and the one that feels most apropos at the moment.
Thank you!
YEY!
no subject
Thank you! There are days of moving ahead, but I am looking forward even to those.