There is no other way to put it. I have been neglectful as can be. In my defense, however, the past few months have been the nutty-est of nutty. Big life changes. New job, moved to Williamsburg (and am obsessed and never going back to manhattan ever, ever EVER), among other life changes, such as now being a quarter century old. It has been a giant adjustment period and I am still working out the kinks, finalizing details, plotting decorating ideas and hopefully finding serenity in my new place before spring. In lue of an actual post, which I am brainstorming but haven't gotten my place up to photo-ready quality for y'all, let me share with you at least some fun facts about my new place. We will go from least exciting and or shocking to most exciting and or shocking:
1.) the space is huge. I mean the rug that used to take up my entire living room now only takes up less than half of it. This is exciting but in the end just boils down to more places for me to put things when I dont want to put them away, and more places for Toby to get his snooze on.
2.) the sink is huge, and there are 2 of them. Anyone who loves to be in the kitchen knows that a big sink is a serious luxury. My old sink used to be 6 inches deep and would look piled high with dishes every 3rd day. This new sucker is over 1.5 feet deep and has a separate sink for the drying rack to go in. I mean really, this is ideal. Except sometimes I let it go for a scoach too long.
3.) There is light!! My old apartment had 5 windows, 3 of which were teensy and faced brick walls, and none ever let in any sunlight except at around 2pm in the summer months when for about 15 minutes the angle of the sun allowed a crack of light down the breezeway between my building and the neighbors. It was such a sad state. Now I have 2 big windows in the bedroom and one in the kitchen that face South and get amazing light all day, 2 in the living room that let in light but not glaring, obnoxious light, and one in the bathroom that is weird and covered in ivy and I cant open it because its too cold but if I close it the steam from my shower never leaves....its a conundrum window.
4.) I have a squirrel. His name is Arthur. If you've seen Disneys "The Sword in the Stone" you get it, if not...well go watch it, its cute and slightly historical and Merlin the wizard is in it. Anyways Arthur has kind of set up shop under my air conditioner, on top of my window sill (outside, of course). He rustles around under there and Toby gets confused and scared. I like arthur because on weekend mornings I roll up the blinds by my bed, let the morning light in and just chill there for an hour or so, and then head to Marlow & Sons for an iced coffee and a scone with Toby, and I get a bag of roasted nuts for Arthur. I leave the nuts on the fire escape outside of the window and he comes and munches and says hi and I think he's peachy.
5.) There is room for all of my clothing. ALL OF IT! Previous apartment had shoe boxes stacked in corners in an attempt at organization but it just looked like I'd outgrown my space. New apartment has a coat closet, a regular closet, and I was able to fit an 8 drawer dresser along with a wardrobe in there. I mean come on. There's an entire closet space in the wardrobe just devoted to my shoe boxes. Como se dice: ideal?
6.) Pantry. PANTRY, PEOPLE!!! Now if only I had time to go to the grocery store.
7.) It's haunted. Thats the shocker one. This is an actual picture I took of the stairs up to my door. Juuuuusst kidding I stole it from wikipedias "Ghost" page. But whoever the spirit is, they seem ok with me, though slightly mischievous My first encounter was watching a movie in bed. I need some sort of dialogue going on in order to fall asleep, something to distract me from whatever dialogue of my own I might get consumed in that will keep me awake. So I was listening to a movie with the screen off trying to fall asleep, and all of the sudden the screen comes back on. I didn't press any buttons, no function was going on with the computer that it needed to alert me about...nada. Turned it off again. 5 minutes later its on again. Repeat this 3 times over several nights and color me suspicious. Then Toby started sleeping weird. He's always growled in his sleep or done little barks, but ever since we moved in here he will now wag his tail in his sleep. I mean full on, smacking the ground like it's a drum, no way that doesn't hurt a little kind of tail wag while sleeping. I don't know how he doesn't wake himself up with such loud wagging, and I can only assume this ghost is petting him in his sleep, because this has NEVER been something he's done even once before. There are also weird smells. Not bad ones, just inexplicable ones. I'll come home and my front hall will smell heavily like perfume, like someone just applied it and is standing in front of me. The rub? No one is there, all of my perfume is in the bathroom, I didn't put perfume on that day and the area where perfume lives in my place doesn't smell, so where is this smell coming from? I'll tell you where it's coming from: the ghost. Apparently it's a she, and apparently she likes to bathe in perfume. I'll also often go into my bathroom, the door of which I keep closed, and it will smell like something a bathroom shouldn't smell like. For example, this evening my bathroom smells like chicken soup with rosemary. Zero explanation. Previously it has smelled heavily of lavender though I don't have any lavender anything (which is weird and I should change that soon). And to really hammer it home, I've been touched. I was in the shower, rinsing out the shampoo with my eyes closed and I felt something touch the outside of my thigh. I figure it was the shower curtain, sometimes a draft blows it inwards and it sticks. When I opened my eyes and looked down the shower curtain wasn't touching me, wasn't moving even, but I could still feel the pressure of something (that looked like nothing) touching my thigh. Needless to say, I'm thinking about getting the place cleansed by a friend of a friend who is studying Reiki right now, just incase this spirit is malevolent and just gearing up for the big show. YOU NEVER KNOW PEOPLE!
Either way, I really love living here. I like coming home to this place. I like cooking here, I like taking baths in my tub because it fills up super quick, I like all the weird things that give this place character. It's such a solid old structure too. I'm pretty sure it was built in the 30's. At the very least it was built in the 50's because I'm fairly certain my oven is at least that old :)
