Entry #3: Apartment Adventures

We unpacked in a record time of six minutes and then stood looking at our place, wondering why it still looked much as it had when we had arrived. In way of personal, homey items, I had brought one picture of us from our first year of dating, two pictures of our families, a plush orange cat, a doily my mom had made, a calendar I had made for Dave some years ago, a love rock from Dave’s parents, a small penguin made out of copper wire by our friend James Nelson and an owl coaster my mom and I had bought together at a garage sale in a small town near Peterborough – she had a matching one. Dave, being of the male species, brought nothing.

We explored our new place, enraptured in the luxurious space that we could now call our own after many months of being homeless. It held many wonderful surprises. What we thought was just a washing machine sans drier in the kitchen actually turned out to be a washer AND drier in one, and not only that, the previous Mr. Blue Underpants had generously left us some laundry detergent. In fact, we found many things around the apartment passed on to us, such as a cupboard full of cleaning products, some brown sugar and olive oil, a microwave, a full bottle of Sunsilk straightening shampoo (how did he know?), several rolls of toilet paper, and a lifetime supply of home decor magazines.

Into the bathroom and what do we find? Ooh…a heating rack for towels! Behind the mysterious door that stayed closed during the showing, there was a water heater, with a timer that allowed you to program when you wanted hot water. The kitchen was spacious, with lovely black counters, a tiny fridge and a ticking clock. It came with cutlery, pots, pans, but inside the cupboards we found that random items seemed to be missing from their set – a mug here, a plate there…back in the deep, dark recesses of one of the bottom cupboard revealed something of a flatwear graveyard, a land of unwanted kitchen items, if you will, filled with chipped or cracked items. We made note of this to tell Rav.

The kitchen opened up into the living room, off of which there is a large floor to ceiling window and a balcony, about two feet wide, hanging precariously over the eight lanes of traffic below. The white walls are broken up only by three unevenly mounted canvassed pieces of felt, in tan, dark drown and cream, placed off center above the black couch. The lines were clean, the tables were glass, the tiles were immaculate, and the carpet was new. The water pressure was good, the elevator talked to you, and the temperature was above freezing. It was more than we could ask for. The only thing was that the bed creaked when we got into it that night, but only on Dave’s side.