Curbside Gathering

I'm managing to slowly clear away the debris that the hurricane that swept the apartment left in its wake.  I've put a Craigslist ad up for the dining room table and chairs that weren't being used for anything other than as a massive dumping ground for junk (Mounds of plastic bags, bills we didn't want to look at, old catalogs, extra bags of dog and/or cat food, and overdue library books are just a few examples.).  The very last thing we did at that table was eat, and the chairs were only put into use as hangers for wet laundry when our clothesline and drying rack were full.  So, as you can see, it was time to get rid of them.  Now I just need someone to actually buy them...

Anyway, I've moved the table and chairs into the bedroom until they're sold and I've recreated the corner - it's now my own personal book nook!  The "missing" chair I mentioned the other day turned out to not be - er - missing, exactly.  It happened to be in the hallway.  In my defense, I thought the giant box belonged to the couple that is moving into another apartment on my floor.  It took my non-English speaking super pointing angrily at the box and then gesturing wildly in the direction of me and my apartment for me to realize that the box was, in fact, mine. *headdesk*

Several minutes with a pair of scissors, a few garbage bags, and several curse words later, the chair and ottoman were unpacked and - this is the truth - it is the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in.  You can see it here.  When I sit in it, I feel like I'm sitting in a womb - warm, cozy, and enveloped in soft, fleecy, cushiony loveliness (I sure hope, for my future babies' sake that this is what a womb feels like).  It is so comfortable that I fell asleep in it the other morning for a couple of hours after I woke up at 2:30 AM.  Chair completed, the next step in creating the book nook was to acquire a bookcase.  I despaired of getting one soon, knowing it would take weeks for my father to build one, let alone get it 400 miles across New York state.  Now that I'm on a very strict budget as well, I further despaired over finding one I liked for an affordable price.  And then, the universe cut me a freaking awesome break. 

Because this morning, when I took Rupert out for his morning walk at 6:30, I stopped short fifty feet from my apartment.  There it was, my bookcase, calmly sitting on the curb waiting for the trash pickup.  I rushed Rupert through his bathroom routine, ran up the three flights of stairs, poured his breakfast in a rush, and stomped back downstairs and out the door.  I'll be damned if I was letting MY BOOKCASE go either to anyone else, or worse, the trash.  It was lovely.  It's about five feet long and three feet high, with thick, heavy outer boards and thinner shelf boards with an open back.  Excitedly, I hefted it onto my shoulder.  It didn't move.  Uh oh.  This was going to be harder than I thought.  Ten minutes later, I had reached my front door with it (fifty feet, remember?) while the line of homeless people waiting for the soup kitchen across the street to open watched interestedly.  I then spent another six or seven minutes navigating the bookcase through the obnoxiously heavy and too close together double door entrance to my building, politely turning down help from a passing mail carrier.  I'm sure I looked a sight: bright turquoise pajama shirt, flaming yellow sweatpants that say PINK on the butt, hair sweaty and hanging in my face, cheeks bright and eyes slightly maniacal with excitement.  Then came the fun part.  Okay, Cait, I thought, It's only three flights.  No problem.  Just in case you're wondering, the first flight has eighteen steps.  The second has sixteen.  The third also has sixteen.  Something about thunking a seventy pound bookcase up those flights kinda burns the numbers into your head.  Finally, I got it into the apartment, sanded a rough spot, cleaned it thoroughly, and set it up against the wall before gleefully calling my mom to tell her of my find (it's a good thing she wakes up early is all I'm saying).

It holds all the books that needed homes and get this - there's room for more.  There's even room for a certain someone to nestle into.  He seems to think that one cubby of this case was designed especially for him, which, of course, it was.

Here's the bookcase in all its glory (it kills me that this is blurry but I'm too lazy to try again):

Now, it's not a finished product.  I'm envisioning a colorful runner for the top, a different lamp, and some framed pictures (our apartment holds precious few and with this fancy new camera of mine, I'm determined to take some frame-worthy shots).  Decorating tips and ideas are always greatly appreciated!

Right now, I'm basking in the comfort of my new chair, admiring all my favorite books close at hand, and being grateful for the slow clearing of my home.  Wednesday, you've done well so far.  Let's keep it up, shall we?

Retail Therapy

Alix and I have big plans.  The logical thing we should be planning is our wedding, but that's not really happening.  Something about having it be more than a year away puts a huge damper on any excitement that we might have felt about solidifying plans.  After all, I can't even get my shit together enough to schedule an optometrist appointment so that I can order new contacts -- do you really think I'm forward-thinking enough to plan something that's happening in 2012 when I can't even schedule an appointment during the next two weeks?  And yet, every morning I wake up and think, "Man, these contacts sure are feeling scrubby in my eyes..."  Yeah.  Life fail.  ANYWAY.

The big plans we do have are for our bedroom.  We've managed to spruce up the rest of the apartment so that it feels like home: comfy sage green couch, saffron-colored curtains, three bookcases chock-full of books, a steamer trunk for a coffee table, a thrift store fruit basket (that holds Clif bars and a bag of coffee beans), and five (relatively) healthy plants.  We also have fresh flowers in old milk bottles on the table our counter-top on a semi-regular basis, and our new shower curtain is a bright addition to the otherwise very bland bathroom.  The bedroom, on the other hand, is stark and white and reminiscent of a not-very-nice hospital room.  The two windows look into air shafts, so there's no natural light, and the entire room is painted the kind of bright white that only picket fences should be painted.  We splurged on a nice sheet/duvet set for the bed and we have a giant hunk of furniture called a dry sink (it's a cross between a dresser and a cupboard and we drove it all the way from West Virginia half-stuffed into the trunk of my Honda Civic - that's a story full of foul language and should be saved for another time.).

This is not the best picture, but it does explain a bit better what a dry sink is.  Especially one with a cat in the top.

It was a longggg drive from West Virginia to New York.

Since there's no natural light in the room, we depend on the electric kind.  Our floor lamp that we've been using came with the apartment.  This should be indicative of the quality of said lamp - if someone actively left it behind when moving, it's probably not the best specimen.  But hey, it worked, and it made light.  We also had a bedside lamp that I've had since I was in middle school.  It's been with me all through college and it's here to stay.  The base and the shade came from two different places, but I love it.  It doesn't give off a whole lot of light though, and when the floor lamp that came with the apartment broke, it was time to buy a new one.  THIS is what we got:

Now, you all are free to hate it.  I, on the other hand, freaking. love. it.  It has globes.  It's pretty.  It's the perfect lamp for a girls' room.  We even charmed the hardware store into giving us a 10% discount on it.  (The truth is, we have no idea why they offered us a discount, but we're just going to pretend it's because we're cute and nice and not because they were just pumped to have sold something so big.)  Rupert only barked at the lamp for oh, about half an hour.  Other plans for the room include: painting it lavender, getting curtains, installing shelves on the wall, rearranging our pictures, putting down a throw rug, and decorating the shelves with some of the books that don't fit on our other shelves, as well as filling them artistically with pictures and pretty, meaningful tchotchkes.

Other than the hardware store (insert funny lesbian/hardware store joke here), we spend money at the nearest thrift store.  It is indicative of how much I love my two new dresses that I'm willing to post pictures of myself in them on here.  I know that I look like something chewed me up and spit me out.  Get over it and look at the dresses.  They each have pockets.

It got hot in the room (new lamp --> lots of heat) so I had to put my hair back up for the last picture.  And then the photoshoot ended and I put on pajamas.  Back to my natural state.