Chicago weather

I love Chicago more when it's beautiful outside. This weekend, it was shorts weather. We biked, took walks, spent time hauling out the big plants to the back porch, repotting, pruning the dead leaves, just enjoying being outside.

I never realize how much I need the outside until the warm spring winds come and blow the grey off of everything. Now I have a hard time staying in.

The end of this school year is so close I can taste it. Only one more session of two of my classes. My most hated class closed today after we convinced (with not too much work) our prof that we should do evals today and skip next week. One big paper to finesse, and two short ones to crank out. It's been remarkably stress-free.

Green things

I can't bear to let go of green things. I rescued a tall straggly palm-like plant from my in-laws' trash bin. It was leaning over on its muddy roots, and probably had suffered a freeze, but the leaves still had some green, and I couldn't just leave it there. I put in a yogurt container and now it's thriving in my kitchen window. There is also an old, gnarled rosemary plant that we've carted across the country and back, and it finally suffered a freeze in Chicago. We keep it around because periodically, we'll see microscopically tiny, bright green shoots in the bends of what looks only like dead root. The brown, dusty stems now shelter a buried garlic bulb that started sprouting, and, yep, we couldn't bear to throw out.

Every time we move, invariably my beloved elephant begonia (that huge, gorgeous baby on the right) loses a few arms, and I reroot them to start new plants.


And, sadly, it has endured so many moves and clippings that it's about half that size now. But it lives on in many incarnations!

So I'm in agony right now trying to figure out what to do with this stupid pointsettia that my mother-in-law passed on to me after Christmas. I don't want it in the house because, well, Fergus eats just about anything he can wrap his jaws around then throws it up later, and I don't want those leaves to wreak havoc on his delicate guts. But I can't seem to put it out with the trash. Right now the leaves are drying up and falling off, and I sweep them up, and continue waffling on what to do with it. I suppose it will sit on the kitchen counter, getting in my way every day, until I figure that out.

All moved in

Turn around right when you enter. That's the messy foyer.


Heading into the apartment, this is your first view. The living room.



The above picture was taken standing in the dining room/computer room, which I now realize I forgot to take pictures of. It's the same size-ish as the living room, and has a table, computer/desk, and this big black metal shelving unit.

Walk through the dining room into the kitchen:






(wall of artwork--Hannah's)


I don't know how big it looks in the pictures, but it's freaking huge.

Bathroom


Laminated (ha!) pictures from a South American fashion magazine




Bedroom, my least favorite room of the house (it doesn't have a welcoming vibe yet)




Oh yeah, I also forgot to take a picture of the backporch, which is soso darling, with lots of plants and sunlight.

Laundromats

So I've had a life-long obsession with laundromats. Actually, Laundromat is a trademarked term, so I should actually just say "laundry." (And I know that because I'm obsessed.)

As a kid, we'd go into town once a week or so, family-time, to wash the clothes. It was the most exotic place to me. First we'd stop by the Dairy Palace for a treat. Dilly bars, lime-flavored slushes, everything they had was amazing compared to the carob chips I sometimes ate for snacks.

The laundry was old and small. Katie and I would run around collecting used lint sheets, hiding under the folding tables, and sometimes, if the adjoining door was open, peeking into the dry cleaner that was attached. I remember, back then, the lint sheets were fluffy pieces of foam. The dry-cleaning steam press was an enormous, amazing piece of machinery. There was something elegantly ordered about the neatly pressed clothes hanging on the moveable clothes bars.

And the dryer smell! It's always been comforting to me.

In college, needing extra money, I got a job at the laundry and dry cleaners across the street from my apartment. Forget the money--it was primarily because of the beautiful hippie boy who worked there. He wove me a hemp necklace one day as my clothes swirled and sloshed in the machines behind us. I got free dry cleaning if I stuck my sweaters in with each load, and I became addicted to the steam press. I never looked so neat and presentable as the 4 months I worked there.

In the end, screaming kids, a steady influx of clothing needing attention, and late nights prevented me from reading my Shakespeare homework during my shifts, and I had to quit. But it has always been one of my favorite jobs.

Then I moved to Chicago and fell in love with every single dingy, divey laundry I'd pass on the bus. There was one in Andersonville, the Swedish/Middle Eastern neighborhood, that was--oddly--an Indian laundry. Djani. It was teeny--big enough for one wall of machines. By then big chain laundries were springing up everywhere: Spin Cycle, or some such. No romance there. None of the dust and steam, lost clothes and plants everywhere.

I took a photography class at Northwestern, continuing ed. After, I wanted to embark on a project--taking pictures of the old laundries. I never did. I still want to.

I am thankful every day that my apartment has its own washer and dryer. The apartment complex grounds has about 30 spread-out buildings, so any communal washing would be a trek from the apartment across the lawn. But laundromats are still magical.

A home

In Chicago, I had just about the perfect apartment. Well, minus the paper-thin walls, lack of closet space, and living room layout. There was just something magical and peaceful about the way the hardwood floors gleamed in candlelight; the bamboo shades in the windows of the living room alcove outlined in tin star lights; the squat Art Deco orange chair always adorned with a sleeping black cat; the purple velvet couch; plants everywhere . . .

But the only way to get that was late at night, filled with candles. The living room was the main part of the apartment, and being the thoroughfare from the front door to the kitchen took away from its living-ness, and turned it into a huge hallway.

I had always daydreamed about the kind of city apartment I'd have. Sparse. Dusty. Book-filled comes to mind. And it took me forever to realize that didn't reflect me. I crave coziness. Hardwood floors don't exactly ooze coze. What I think of as me never was.

So as much as I really can't stand carpet, my living room now is so cozy. I never sit on the couch. I sprawl on the floor on scattered pillows. The living room is a place I want to be.

I was cleaning tonight, throwing out papers that gather like dust bunnies on every spare surface of the apartment. Shuffling candles, recipes printed off Epicurious.com, scraps of paper with notes and lists scribbled on them into some semblance of order. My liquor table doubles, no, triples, as a cookbook shelf and a cat blocker to spare the carpet from pee in the dining room. A litter box sits against the floorboards, because it was easier to cater to the cats than disinfect the carpet every day.

The living room holds a drum kit, scads of hand weights, piles of books and CDs. The walls: collages, origami stars, and some random paper mobiles--all by Hannah.

I looked at it all, and wondered what people thought of the first time they walked into it. It's not what I ever thought I'd create for myself (and that's probably because I had to share creation with Tim, but still). I wish there was a place to put the handweights other than underneath the gorgeous, elegant walnut coffee table my dad made, or that we didn't need to put a fucking litter box in our dining room.

But I finally realized (or came to terms with the fact) that it's my home. My space. I'll never have the spare, Asian-inspired empty rooms, or the intellectual's towering bookshelves in a dusty bare room* (see comment). This messy warmth is really what I am.

Someday I'm going to

Run a whole-body health center. I'll do therapy; Charity will teach yoga. We'll make friends with a massage therapist and ask her to move her business into our space. We'll need a naturopath, an acupuncturist . . . what else? (We had a big long list . . .) It will be a beautiful space, women-run. The walls will be painted brilliant colors, there will be lots of plants everywhere, and windows. We can hire out the yoga space for drum circles in the evenings, or hold art openings in the lobby. It will be a center that draws in people and gives them comfort.

Open a store-front theatre. Tim will be the artistic direct and I will do the business of running the company, as well as be the graphic designer for all our publicity materials. We'll put on small shows that incorporate music and dancing and we'll become the rage and hotspot of the Denver theatre scene. There'll be a small cafe or bar attached to the theatre space, and it will be a dark, quiet hangout for patrons before the show, and where the actors unwind after. When there's not a show up, we'll have open mic nights, and I'll get up a band of my social worker friends, where I'll play the drums.

Be a young adult librarian. I'll wear my hot librarian glasses and create an oasis in the middle of a library for the young adults. I'll spend my days reading and recommending the latest books, and planning activities for the youth advisory board to carry out.

Run a creative arts camp for at-risk youth. Maybe just for girls, though I'd hate to deny them the joy of having camp flings. It will be a camp in the middle of a forest, with a small lake for swimming and boating, trails for hiking, and dusty cabins for hanging out during free time. There will be workshops for writing, acting, and music. The kids would all work on their individual talents and create a piece to be performed at the end of the week/month/summer.

Educate about domestic violence. I'll be a reknowned speaker and trainer for domestic violence. I'll lead workshops and inspire people to advocate for battered women. I'll write books and manuals, and everyone will refer to me as "the leading expert in . . . "

I will change lives, give hope, make a difference.