medium crazy

1. Last Saturday we moved.  Officially. I had lived in my apartment for over three and a half years, so it was kind of jarring to see it furniture-less. I spent quite a while cleaning it because the landlord was so good to me and I have some affection for the place. But it’s hard to feel too nostalgic when the place you’re moving to is so totally better. However, I have been thinking about sneaking back to the old apartment to take a shower because

2. the new house has cold showers. You never know if you’re going to get 10 seconds of hot water or 30 seconds of hot water, that’s the fun of it, but what you do know for certain is that you’re not going to have 60 seconds of hot water. I never knew that I could take a shower in 30 seconds but necessity is the mother of invention and innovative high-speed shower methods. Those closest to me know that I’m someone who thrives on the small, beloved indulgences in my life: taking 20 minutes to do my nighttime pre-bed routine, having time before work in the morning to enjoy the quiet and eat an orange, reading a magazine cover to cover, and of course, a long hot shower on the weekend. And a shower of over 30 seconds during the week. Anyway, what this is all getting at is that we have a plumber coming Wednesday to install an expensive hot water tank that we weren’t planning on buying and at this point I’ve come to terms with spending all of my money so I’m just rolling with it.

3. I know the Oscars, seen from a certain perspective, are kind of stupid, but I love them anyway and watching them is a tradition for me. Even so, I was cranky as hell last night when they looked like they were going to end at 11:30 and did not in fact end until after midnight, and then had the audacity to be dull on top of that. Yes we have DVR which I love, but there are a few sacred things that I prefer to watch live to get the true live experience, and for better twitter enjoyment. Which, by the way, if not for twitter I might not have made it to the end of the show last night.

4. My updated passport has arrived so I’m good to go for our Bahamas weekend in April. Since our trip is in five weeks and I’ll probably have to wear a bikini, you wouldn’t think I would be choosing to subsist on an exclusively carbs and sugar diet, but you would be wrong. My motivation has gone missing along with our DVD player, which isn’t the kind of object you would think would be easy to lose, but we lost ours and now the District 9 DVD that I’ve had for 3 weeks may not get watched at all. I’m hoping I might regain some motivation when I regain some joie de vivre, which usually happens around this time of year because

5. it was 55 degrees today, which isn’t really warm and don’t try to say that it is, but it was warm enough that I could go outside for a walk today and while it was a little chilly, there were moments when the wind stopped when I could feel actual warmth from the sun on my face. ACTUAL WARMTH FROM THE SUN. March isn’t a nice month in New England, but it’s coming and I can feel the impending happiness that will come with it. I know that everyone likes sunny days so I’m not saying anything interesting, but these first warm days after the misery of winter do something extra special for me. They alter my mood and state of mind and provide a particular happiness/hopefulness that I never feel at any other time. And I’ve resolved to enjoy this spring and summer more fully than I did last year, when I pretty much took them for granted. I think we may have had post-wedding/honeymoon lethargy. But our new neighborhood has nice streets with sidewalks and there are joggers everywhere. I think we might have to become joggers in order to fit in. Also the sun is really up in the morning now when I get up, so I at least feel like I’m waking up to a new day, rather than to an endless series of dark days in a lifetime of coldness and despair.

So. A couple weeks ago we bought a house. This house:

We love her.

The house still feels to me like it should be a house that belongs to my friend’s mom and dad rather than to me. This is partly because it was built in 1987 and not updated much since, but it’s mostly representative of what it’s like to be 30 and move into a grown up house after a decade of dorm and apartment living. We moved in on Saturday after a week of what felt like nonstop packing, and OH MY GOD unpacking is more fun than packing. It was so exhilerating to unpack our stuff in a place with closets, and shelves, and an attic…there are just so many places to PUT THINGS!! The house comes with some huge upgrades to our lives that I’ve already discussed at length — namely a second bathroom and a dishwasher — but there are so many other things. For example, the floors in this house don’t creak. It’s so WEIRD. Also, it’s warm here. I’m not used to this kind of warmth that insulation and real windows can apparently provide. M. and I are so used to sleeping in a cold bedroom that we woke up last night hot and kicking the covers off. It’s just so WARM. And OH. OH. We don’t have to park behind each other in the driveway. We can park NEXT to each other. So when one of us wants to leave, we don’t even have to move the other person’s car out of the way. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT??

We had two weeks to work in the house before our official move in date, and we took full advantage of it and got LOTS of generous help from our talented family members who have a lot of knowledge and skill with home improvements. Everything we’re doing to work on the house and make it our home has been a big group effort and I’ve never appreciated our families more.

We’re painting everything including every ceiling, which made a huge difference.

The red accent wall underwent a serious facelift. I’ll hold off on “after” pictures until there is a real after. Everything is still a work in progress at this point. But I can reassure you that the red wall is no more.

My personal favorite upgrade — replacing rusty radiator covers with new ones. (Full disclosure: This was not my handiwork, I have no idea how to do this.)

M. tore up the entire tiled kitchen floor like a manly man guy.

Our kitchen. I will be delighted to show you the after shot in about four to six weeks.

Maddie came along to boost morale when needed.

Plastic cup champagne toast on our first night in the house.

Also good for first-morning-in-the-house mimosas.

Things have been hectic and busy lately, but only in the best way. It’s all been very fun and I’m just enjoying this particular milestone in my life. Maybe this house will eventually become just another mundane element of my life, maybe I’ll even start complaining about things like our shower that only stays hot for 20 seconds which I would normally be whining about but I don’t even care that much right now because I’m so happy to be here. For the moment I’m just going to enjoy pulling into our lovely new neighborhood at the end of the day and watching Lost tomorrow night in our new comfy family room chair and getting used to all the new little noises of a new place.

Today was also M.’s birthday, which got a little neglected in the craziness of everything we’ve had going on, though we did have a nice dinner out. Happy birthday to my partner in mortgage payments and everything else.

I have been such a negligent blogger.

That is because I have been painting. Oh, the painting. I am suffering from a case of Brush Wrist with a side of Roller Arm. Painting is much more slow-going than I realized. I feel I can now say that I’m a pretty good room painter. If you need any rooms painted, I’m your girl (in a couple months after I’ve finished my own house, that is).

Last night I had a dream-filled sleep, and I dreamed that I was painting. I’ve worn the same paint-crusted jeans every day for a week and if that’s not sexy than please tell me what is. But you know, there is something a bit romantic about working on your new house with your partner in life, even though you’ve been eating greasy takeout and wearing men’s undershirts everyday and your fingernails are all chipped off. Because it’s our house together and it’s fun.

Oh and our families have been there constantly, both to come by and see the place and to help us work. I love my family and M.’s and have often been grateful for them, but I’m extra grateful at the moment. Our place is a crazy work zone right now, and we’re doing the craziness now because we haven’t officially moved in yet. We still head home at night to our apartment. We officially move in this Saturday, and the house will be SO MUCH BETTER because of all the help we’ve had over these last couple of weeks. I have pictures but no time to post them at the moment.

I CAN’T WAIT to walk around our new neighborhood in the spring and have visitors come over now that we have a place to host. We won’t actually have a kitchen for about six weeks…did I mention that already? When we got into the house we ripped up the kitchen to pull down the unsightly painted brick on the walls. Then we realized that the cabinets were not only old but kind of gross and rickety and figured that as long as we had the whole kitchen torn apart, we should just replace the damn cabinets now because no way are we going to want to do this again a year from now.

And…I’m talking about cabinets, and I’m boring. SORRY. This is my life at the moment. It’s time consuming and wonderfully fun. It always felt unattainable to actually have a real home in my overpriced state and I’m HAPPY ABOUT IT.

I wish I had things to share not pertaining to cabinets and paint (our rooms will forever be known by their paint names, e.g. Moon Mist, Green Tea etc.), but I don’t. Free time hasn’t really been an option lately. Or as M. put it, wow were we lazy when we didn’t have a house.

Also, ever since we bought the house I’ve suddenly started getting an influx of questions about when we plan to have kids. To which I say, ONE THING AT A TIME PEOPLE.

Last weekend we started packing. Packing appeals to a certain type A part of my brain, so ultimately this was kind of a satisfying activity. Also I found some cool utensils in the back of our kitchen drawers that I forgot we had. However, our apartment is currently a mess with piles of boxes everywhere. Last weekend I also finally started reading the book that Meghan gave me for my birthday (last summer) and it turned out to be the kind of book that you read compulsively in a few lengthy sittings:

This book is just a really good, satisfying story, well-written, with characters you care about. I just really enjoyed the reading experience of it and highly recommend it. I imagine the TV movie will be happening at some point and I’m sure the book clubs are already all over it.

It may sound like I LOVE all the books I’ve read lately, but that’s partly because I’ve been trying to be selective about what I commit to reading. I’m trying to read things that have been recommended by people with good taste in these things. So far so good.

The compulsive reading of this book did take some time away from all of the urgent things relating to us closing on our house on FRIDAY MORNING. It really feels kind of surreal to me to think about walking into this house on Friday and knowing that it’s actually OURS. Of course, before we can walk into our house we’ll probably spend an hour shoveling out the mountains of snow that will be falling today. But still, OUR HOUSE.

Then early Saturday morning my family members will descend upon the house equipped with trucks, tools, and impressive handyman skills and we’ll begin the Update This House project. We’re not gutting the house, we’re just freshening it up. Ushering it into this decade if you will. Much paint will be involved as well as some sheetrock and tile. Before and after pictures to come.

I’ve taken four days off of work to devote some energy to the new house. I’m excited. So many good things have happened in my life in a year’s time and I’m very very grateful for them. To whom it’s relevant, I’m sorry that I haven’t been a very attentive or available friend much of the time lately. I’m not very good at balancing all of the work stuff with all of the life projects and finding time to take good care of all of my relationships. It’s a flaw of mine I know.

On the weekends we’ve been spending a lot of time furniture shopping. Hey you know what’s expensive? Furniture! I mean, I knew that, but now I REALLY know that. I thought I might be able to find some cool things on craig’s list so we wouldn’t be buying everything new, but I now know that people sell their stuff on craig’s list primarily because it’s not nice stuff. If it were nice stuff, they would KEEP IT. Plus I’m struggling with huge, difficult, almost unanswerable questions like “How should we arrange the living room??” and until I can answer those questions it’s hard to commit to the furniture. I think I may need to just relax until we’re in the house and I can stand in the rooms and think about it and oh my god I just realized how boring this is. Isn’t it funny how you can care about things that only a year before would have made you die of boredom? And even now on some level you hear the words coming out of your mouth, and you know that you’re now one of those people who you used to sit with at lunch who would talk about curtains who you used to listen to and think, “Oh my GOD why are we talking so much about curtains.” You’re that  person.

Anyway: Lost is back on! With an even bigger sense of urgency and suspense than usual because of its being the final season. Last week as the premiere was starting and I was preparing the living room (lights off, iphone ready for commercial break tweets) I felt so sad for M., who does not watch Lost, that I had to yell to him from the other room, “I feel so bad for you that you aren’t watching this!!” Obnoxious, right? Oh also I have rejoined the American Idol pool for this year. I might humbly remind you that last year I was the WINNER of the American Idol pool, which ranks with the greatest accomplishments of my lifetime. I’m trying to get M. to join the pool this year to add some healthy competition to our household. I can get why he would be intimidated by competing against me though.