Floof

In the midst of our Hurricane of Doom preparations, I've managed to take some cute pictures of the cats. Who's surprised?

Sophie spends a lot of time on the little chair throne next to me in the living room. When she's not in my lap, I mean.

 

These pictures of Augustine were actually taken on two different days. He loves the printer box now that it's been toppled onto its side. Sophie won't go near the thing, though. She prefers it upright.

Our cats are kind of weird.

I put two more wide but short boxes down side-by-side in the living room, and the cats are beside themselves with happiness. Sophie will nap in one for a few hours, stand up, streeeetch, hop into the other, curl up, and nap for a few hours. Repeat this until dinner time. After dinner she moves to the bed. Hard life!

It's especially hard when Augustine has the audacity to claim the other box, forcing Sophie to try to salvage her ruined napping cycle by (gasp!) finding another comfy spot. (Not the printer box in the bedroom, though! It's on its side, not upright! Horror of horrors.)

I finally took some pictures of the little . . . shed-like thing that perches on the roof of the apartment complex directly behind our house. It's visible from our bathroom and one of our bedroom windows. I've been fascinated by it since we moved in; it looks like some deserted shed, but clearly is just the stairwell up onto the roof. Its door (which has paint visibly peeling off of it) never fully closes or locks, so on windy days it swings open and bumps closed.

It made me think of Skellig, to be honest. If I climbed onto the roof and poked my head in the broken door, there'd be an ancient man with wings lying under piles of junk who'd hint that I should run down to Haruki East and pick up a maki roll special. Or something.

The shed-thing is creepy, but I kind of love it.

Trees

I know it's silly. I've been telling myself it's silly for a while, now.

Remember the video I posted of the apartment a few weeks ago? Remember seeing an enormous maple from the bathroom window, and from one of the bedroom windows? I kind of got attached to that tree. Whenever I looked out of either of those windows--or whenever I walked under it on my way to the car--I'd imagine what it'd look like in the upcoming season. Being so far away from everything that I'm used to, it was really comforting to imagine that this gorgeous tree would be here with me for the next several years. I imagined what it looked like as a sapling, too, and how it got progressively bigger. I made up a bunch of stories about the people who had also looked at it, or walked under it, or played around it. I'd sit in the little chair next to the bedroom window, or lean against the bathroom sink, and watch it, and fantasize, and feel wonderful about life.

Over the last two weeks there has been a lot of noisy construction going on in the neighborhood, usually starting around 8:30 am. So when a very, very loud machine woke me up last week, I just covered my head and went back to sleep. And then when I left the apartment to run errands that evening, I saw that they had cut down the tree.

I'll admit, I've cried off and on about it since then. That's the silly part. I don't have any friends here, and the way I'd envisioned that tree being here was steadying and comforting and uplifting the way a friend is. There's now this hideous empty space behind the house where the tree was.

(This is also annoying because it blocked my view of the apartment building caddy-corner to ours. Now I can see it, and the people who live there can see me when I stand at the windows. Which isn't often, anymore.)

Ugh. This last week has been hard.

But Andrew, Augustine, and Sophie have been as wonderful as ever. =)

We finally have our new drivers licenses, license plates, inspection sticker, etc. The plates are white with a soft blue ocean wave cresting across it--the kind of wave that a kid draws, like one big C rolling into the next. Across the bottom it reads The Ocean State. The drivers licenses are mostly blue, with an ocean cliff scene in the bottom corner.

I wandered around a new park last Saturday, and took a lot of pictures. I'll resize them and post them tomorrow. Or maybe later tonight!

Tomorrow we're going to go to the public library and get cards--and a giant cookbook for my rice cooker. I can't wait to make real food! We tried to go to the library this afternoon, but just after we pulled out of the neighborhood the rear view mirror fell off the windshield. (The day after we got the car inspected. Good timing, at least!) So we spent the entire afternoon trying to--and finally, successfully--reattach the mirror.

I really, really miss having a piano around. Even my electric piano. My fingers itch.

My next post will be more cheerful, I promise! Until then, have some cute cats. Please please view these pictures at their full size; it's worth it. =)

(Also, I keep the original sizes for all these pictures. And the original sizes are huge. If anyone--Mom--wants a giant kitty photo, just let me know!)

Furniture!

We received our furniture yesterday! Hurray! Finally!

Andrew's mess art stuff has been carefully deposited in front of the living room's radiator, within easy reach of his new workstation:

(Andrew's nook as seen from my wicker chair.)

(And as seen from the doorway between the living room and the bedroom. Also, this is Andrew's last week of classes! Hurray! Finally!)

As well as Andrew's desk and chair, we also received another bookshelf, which I immediately put to use:

Now that my books are in the living room, I can use that open shelving space in the bedroom to store more clothes! Which is going to be perfect when it starts getting cooler and I need my sweaters and scarves and things.

Our wireless internet stuff is now craftily hidden behind the framed picture on the bookshelf. No, those are not tentacles hanging from the doorknob, those are old shoe laces that have been repurposed for Augustine's batting pleasure. (Even Sophie made a few attempts at hitting them! Failed, though.)

Also, our new futon is set up! How exciting to see a new bed that looks exactly like the old bed, huh? Still, here you go:

In other news, Augustine has realized that my wicker chair is extraordinarily comfy. I now have to pry him out of it whenever I want to sit down.

Do you know, I haven't had to take allergy medicine since we moved up here? None.

However, we've traded my allergies for really outrageous humidity. I'd thrown some thin cotton shorts over a chair last night, and when I picked them up to put them away this morning, they were damp. They weren't damp when I'd put them there. That's how humid it is. Yuck.

A long-time friend of mine, Kaly, whom I've visited once or twice during Christmas trips to Albuquerque, is in Providence right now--in fact, the friend she's staying with lives about three or four blocks down the street from me. Small world! We're going to meet at the Starbucks tomorrow morning and spend a couple of hours catching up. Looking forward to it. =)

Why Yes, I Will Give You A Video Tour

Jennifer reminded me that I really need to show you the apartment as a whole, so I tidied it up a bit and took a video. Augustine helped! Please note: Andrew is a busy artist student and his supplies are everywhere. Unfortunately, our major Ikea purchases still haven't arrived (our new bed; Andrew's desk and storage system), so his supplies will continue to be everywhere until our furniture is finally delivered. Also, yes. The apartment itself is shabby. I hope we can make it look nice one day, but today is not that day! I've done a few things--bought the rugs, put marble threshold tiles over the radiators, put up curtains--but this apartment will never look really nice. Unless the landlord decides to remodel it from floor to ceiling, anyway. Oh well! It's comfortable and cheap, and that's what matters right now. =)

Here's the apartment's floorplan again, if you want to reference it while watching the video. Right-click it and select "View In New Window" (or something like that) to see it full-size without disturbing the video:

A few notes on the video:

-It starts off on the landing of the second floor.

-You can't sit on the toilet at a normal angle; it's too close to the sink. You have to sit at more of a 45 degree angle, which makes it incredibly difficult to access the toilet paper holder that's mounted on the wall. We bought a standing holder that's hidden from the camera by the sink.

-The door that my shoes are pointing at (at around 1:16) is the door that leads from the entryway onto the balcony. This door is almost impossible to open--as you see when I shove myself against it trying to open it later (at around 9:00). Oh well. I tried.

-Augustine and Sophie sometimes share small spaces! And Augustine is such a good video helper.

-I work in the living room, in that wicker chair.

-Andrew's workspace, once the furniture arrives, will be to the left of the window that Augustine is put in. Where a lot of Andrew's supplies are currently resting.

-I'm really not a fan of having the litter box in the kitchen, but the only other choices--the living room and the bedroom--are even worse. We don't let the cats have access to the entryway/bathroom area, so even if the bathroom weren't tiny it still wouldn't be an option. Oh well!

-I don't do anything except for writing stuff out on the balcony. It's my stress-free creative zone. The wooden charm with the red tassel that's hanging on the door from the living room to the balcony is a souvenir that Lizzy gave me from Japan. It's a sort of charm from the horse temple (I don't remember what it's actually called!) for safe travels. =)

-I would have gone out the front door to show you the street at the very end, but a neighbor I'd never met before left her apartment just as I got to the bottom of the stairs. She found me sopping in sweat wearing pajamas that I would never ever want to show the public, making a video of the house like an absolute creep. Her first words after "Oh hi!" were "Do you live here?" I can't blame her.

And now, the video!

WaterFire and Photos of Apology

Has it really been a month since I last posted? It certainly doesn't feel like it. Well, to make up for it, I'm offering you some pictures!

Andrew and I went to WaterFire tonight. The WaterFire organization lights more than eighty little bonfires in a nice little row down the canal that bisects downtown Providence. They're lit at sunset, but the festivities--including live music and performances--start hours earlier. Roads around the canal are strategically closed, and food vendors set up in the middle of the streets. It feels a lot like Sights & Sounds, actually, with a hint of Dickens on the Strand (from back in my Galveston days). The bonfires burn until midnight, and ethereal music (rather like Enya, but slower and in deeper tones) plays through it all. It's gorgeous.

Click on each image to see it full-size!

(We were standing on a cute pedestrian bridge over the canal. This is about a fifteen minute walk from our apartment. The bonfires cover a lot of the canal--it'd be quite a walk to see the entire display. I'm glad we live so close to it! Parking would be terrible, otherwise.)

(I was trying to show how 15 West, that building with the columns, was lit up. My phone's camera is terrible, though. Trust me, it was much more dramatic and beautiful than it appears here. Also, that annoyingly bright blue light hovering between the buildings is actually a cute old-fashioned-looking lamp illuminating the sidewalk next to the canal.)

Occasionally, a black speedboat would go by very quietly, with a team of people dressed in black who added wood to the fires. More often than that, a pontoon or a gondola (with a real gondolier!) would float by with tourists inside. It was a slightly windy night, and when the fires had just been fed new wood, sparks would be flying everywhere; I was certain that some of the tourists would get singed.

Once, a boat went by with a guy standing in it, doing some fire poi. I got a little of it on video! Let's see if videos were here, shall we? . . . Okay, so almost an hour later, the video still wouldn't load. I've loaded it to a different site instead. Hopefully I can imbed it here. Fingers crossed!

(I also tried to get on video the beautiful beautiful buildings around the canal. Hence the random shots of complete darkness. Oh well. Andrew was equally difficult to catch on film, mostly because he was ducking whenever I aimed at him!)

We bought some Korean BBQ to snack on, and it was fantastic. We also wandered away from the canal to see what all the crazy lights were going on over there. Turned out to be a concert!

 (The very bright white spot above the center arch of the building is the face of a very stern-looking godlike guy. Somebody like Poseidon, caught on a really bad day. I'll have to try to get a better picture of him soon!)

(Side view of Angry God Dude and the people on stage.)

The building closest to this one was lit up entirely in red, which was what drew Andrew and I in that direction in the first place. Spotlights of shifting colors--red, purple, blue, green, white-- were spiraling around all the buildings. Beer and liquor were being sold on the street, and are allowed within the area. The barriers that keep cars out are also home to signs notifying pedestrians that no alcohol is allowed outside of the safe area.

I also took a short video of the band that was playing, but of course I pressed Record about two seconds before they finished their song. But I got the singer talking to the crowd a bit, and that amused me. I don't think you can make out what he said in the video, but here you go anyway. You can see the red-lit building, anyway!



On our way back home, we passed by the giant and beautiful First Baptist Church that perches precariously on College Hill and stares down at the canal below. I pass by it almost daily, but this is the first time I actually read its sign.

(I had to hop up onto the hill and hike away from the sidewalk to get close enough for a decent photo. I was a little afraid that someone would yell at me. I took it quickly and scurried back to safety.)

A week or so ago, I went to Providence Place Mall. The mall is lovely, and has a wonderful view of downtown. As you can see:

(Yes, it straddles the canal; I'm in a glassed-in bridge over it. Cool!)

Once I'd finished shopping, I walked back to RISD campus where the car was parked. Along the way, I passed by the Rhode Island capital building. It's surrounded by the greenest lawns and the greenest trees I've ever seen.

(This picture doesn't even begin to capture how beautiful it is. Just so you know.)

But it's green and beautiful everywhere. Here are some giant flowering bushes of some kind that one of our neighbors is very proudly sporting in their front yard. You can't tell, but the blue-flower bush is actually as tall as I am.

Inside our apartment isn't as pretty, but it's certainly happy. Especially the kitties!

 (Augustine fell asleep in a Superman position--sans tail.)

(Well, Superman/faceplant position.)

 (He's very pleased with his place on my book/storage shelf. I'm sitting on the bed, watching him watch me.)

 (He's also happy to help Andrew take breaks from drawing homework.)

 (And he lets Andrew know when he thinks it's time for him to take a break. [Yes, Augustine climbed up onto Andrew's giant sketchpad and curled up smack on top of the drawing. Subtle!])

 (Sophie has only one leg, and it protrudes from her face.)

 (One of Sophie's favorite places is on top of this kittybox I made for her. It's hard to tell in the photo, but in the bottom right of the box is a hole I cut out. Inside the box is another fluffy pad. I think Augustine's in there in this photo, though you can't really see him.)

(Augustine loves to be near Sophie, but at least he knows better than to try to take her spot on the comfy bathmat.)

It's past three here now, so it's definitely bed time. But! I bought clothes and shoes for exercise, and I intend to go walk around Blackstone Boulevard tomorrow or Monday, with camera phone in tow! Hopefully I'll get some more lovely pictures to share. =)

First Things First

We bought a very nice little oscillating fan last night, and as a result I feel comfortable doing some more gloating. Here we go:

The sky is currently that flat, lovely shade of grey that indicates we might be getting a bit of rain. If the scent in the air is any indication, it'll be soon. No wonder everything is so green and blooming up here. Water actually falls from the sky.

I was up until a little past five this morning, I suppose, trying to imagine which pieces of furniture we need (oof, wow, there's a skunk outside somewhere), what style we'd choose, and what our color scheme will be. The plotting wasn't going very well. And then, revelation! The first thing we need is a color scheme. And then a rug that fits that scheme. The other decor (including furniture) will fall into place after that.

Because the walls do lean inward, I think we'll go with rather low furniture. Our focal point will be the floor, drawing the eye downward to the largest part of the room, thereby (hopefully?) making the room seem larger. Bright rugs, one in the bedroom and one in the living room.

The bedroom will be soft greens/blues/creams/browns. The living room will be in the red/orange/yellow range. We'll purchase some nice sheer-ish curtains for all the windows.

It feels very nice to have a solid idea of what we'll be doing! It feels a little weird, though, that our first step is rug shopping.

Of course, once this was all figured out, I felt right asleep. And as soon as Andrew's alarm woke us up, I turned to him and said, "I have made a decision," and launched into my Master Plan. Which did indeed include furniture choices and placement as well as color scheme. He, of course, applauded my ideas, and agreed that we'll start rug shopping asap. And then we said good morning to each other, since I'd skipped that step.

We leave the windows open constantly, to let in the cool air. At about six in the morning, the birds start to wake up on the tops of the houses and trees around us--which in turn wakes up the cats, who try very desperately (and in vain) to jump up into the windowsills for some early morning bird-watching. One bird in particular has a very sharp, single-note CHIT. CHIT CHIT. CHITCHITCHIT. Echoing through our bare apartment, it sounds like sneakers squeaking on a basketball court. I think this bird lives in the eaves of the building next door.

No pictures yet. Hopefully this evening!

(P.S. It just started raining! It sounds beautiful.)

Layout

So I'm sprawled across K&J's very comfy air mattress with all the windows open and counting down the minutes until Andrew gets back from New Student Orientation Day One, because all I want in life--other than, say, a Dr. Pepper--is an air conditioning unit. Or maybe a fan. Possibly a nice hired servant to waft giant banana leaves over me.

I gloated to Mom yesterday that our weather (yesterday) ranged between the fifties and the seventies. Apparently Rhode Island frowns on those who gloat.

The drive went remarkably smoothly. We didn't take a single wrong turn, the cats behaved fairly well, and the scenery was gorgeous. Andrew took more scenery pictures than I did, but I don't know if any of them came out yet. We need to download everything off of his phone when he gets back from campus. There are bound to be some very cute pictures of Sophie and Augustine curled up in the floorboard and/or in the passenger's lap, though. (They cried relentlessly in their crates, but fell asleep the moment they were put into a lap or on the floorboard. However, now that we're at the apartment, both of them want to spend most of their time sleeping in their crates. Go figure.)

Also when Andrew gets back--or possibly tomorrow--we'll make a video of the apartment. I've made a rough sketch of the apartment's layout (not the scale, because that would involve math and such, and that's beyond me even when I'm not slowly cooking). Guess I'll post that now.

(As always, right-click on the image and select "Open Link in New Tab." Once it opens there, you might need to left-click on the image to make it zoom-in to its full size.)

(Another side note: front of the building is at the top of the image, and overlooks the street and that pretty stone wall overhung by trees. The back of the building, at the bottom of the image, sees a lot of sky and the rooftops of some other apartments.)

There are two keys to get into the building: one for the back door and one for the front door. There is a separate key for the laundry room, which is in the basement. There's a key to enter the first door of our apartment. There's another key to get into the inner door of our apartment. Yes. This means we were handed five keys total. Five. This is the safest building in Providence.

I hope the layout is easy to understand. You walk up the stairs (or, if you're finger-walking the stairs in the layout, finger-walk down to the bottom of the image), where you end up on a landing. Turn right and you're at our apartment's outer door. Take out a key and unlock that door. You're now in a very dark entry way, surrounded by more doors. Open the door to your left and you're in a black-and-white tiled bathroom, complete with a clawfoot bathtub (that doubles as a shower stall). If you take out another key and open the door in front of you instead, you enter our bedroom. If you open the door to your left instead, you enter onto the balcony.

The apartment's walls are all white plaster, and would maybe benefit from a new coat of paint. The floor are an ancient orange hardwood--real wood!--covered in dark brown and black knots, and hammered into place with dark nails. The boards don't all lie flush together; sometimes the cracks between the boards are a third of an inch wide, creating long black stripes down the orange floor. "Orange" makes it sound ugly, so let's call it "amberish" instead. Because it isn't ugly, although it isn't exactly pretty, either. A few of the boards creak underfoot, but not as loudly as the narrow, carpeted stairs do on your way up to our apartment.

The walls (except for those that don't have windows) all slant inward with the roof, and in the afternoon sunlight the amber of the floors is reflected on the slanting walls, making the walls appear a beautiful glowing yellow/orange/cream.

Like the bathroom, the kitchen features a black-and-white tiled floor, though these tiles are much larger than the little bathroom tiles. We have a small gas stove/oven, a very big sink, a decent number of cabinets, and a three-quarters size fridge/freezer. No dishwasher. Hence the giant sink.

And the balcony! It is certainly large enough for a comfortable chair, several bookshelves, a tiny desk, and a lamp. I think I'll buy a few room dividers (like this one) to make it private--just on the off chance someone comes upstairs. Ours is the only apartment on the third floor, but you never know. Someone might venture up accidentally. Not that I would be horrified and shamed if someone saw my book collection (despite the number of teen vampire-werewolf-faeries-magic-luv novels I own), but privacy is nice.

In all, the apartment is very honest: the house is a few centuries old, and the attic wasn't intended to be used as an apartment. It looks old; it looks like it shouldn't be an apartment. If you look too closely at anything in particular, you'll see vast room for improvement (like the gaps between the floorboards, and the entire layout of the bathroom. You have to sit on the toilet at a 45 degree angle because of its proximity to the sink). But despite the initial appearance of it's-old-and-crumbling-and-maybe-kind-of-gross, the apartment is actually incredibly clean. (Well, there's one spot on the floor that looks like mold is spreading; it had been hidden behind a piece of the last tenant's furniture in a corner of the living room by the radiator. We contacted the landlord as soon as we noticed it. That should be remedied quickly.) But really, this place is cute and charming and has a lot of potential for prettiness.

It also doesn't hurt that we've had absolutely delicious food for lunch today and dinner last night, both at restaurants about a five minutes' walk away. Dessert, too.

This is a great place. Now: to get a fan.

Buying!

Total excitement over here. Grandma P and Grandpa R agreed to my aforementioned plan.

Which means that as soon as we unload the car--but, you know, after we sleep for 24 hours straight to recover from the road trip--we will get to settle down into the serious business of Buying Stuff. Well, I guess we should maybe measure the rooms first, and then carefully decide which pieces of furniture and so forth we absolutely need.

But then? Buying Stuff.

And as Andrew will be in classes all day every day until August, I will bravely take it upon myself to go do the deed.

Also: Augustine thinks Sophie's tail makes for a great footrest.

Also: Augustine's just adorable.

Hauling/Buying

Well, the trip back to Austin was pretty eventful. Our flight was canceled, so we had to stay in Boston overnight--but it could have been much worse.

Anyway. We plan to load up our (that is, Andrew's) car and head out on Sunday the 12th. We'll arrive on the 14th, I think.

My Grandma P. has told me on no uncertain terms that she's paying for movers to drag our stuff across the country, as a birthday gift to me. I think it'd be less stressful and more economical to just, you know, buy new things once we get up there. The apartment is small and we won't need much: a futon, a drafting table, a desk, a bookshelf, a chair for my little indoor balcony.

(Guys, our apartment has an indoor balcony. Have I told you already? Just in case I haven't: there's an indoor balcony. I will make it mine and set it up as a little reading area. Chair, end table, lamp, bookshelf. Definitely going to be my favorite part of the apartment. Eeee.)

So, well, yes. Either we can spend a good four to five thousand hauling our stuff across the country--and risk all the problems associated with using movers, plus the expense of flying me to and from Texas to oversee the movers while Andrew's in summer school, and all the complications of me trying to get my hands on a car while I'm doing the overseeing--or spend one or two thousand at the most on some cheap inexpensive new things. Frankly, the latter sounds better to me.

. . . . . . Not to mention how much I absolutely adore furniture shopping.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I seriously love furniture shopping.

Map!

Here's a map that shows a few important things about our new neighborhood.

(Right-click on the map and select "Open Link in New Tab" to see it in detail! Or just click on it, then press the browser's "Back" button to return to this page.)

The apartment is marked with the little "A"-in-a-pink-balloon. To the east, within the blue box, are all the cool shops/cafes/stores/etc that I listed with such excitement. (That area, which is called Wayland Square, extends beyond the map a block or two.) To the west, in the red box, is obviously the RISD campus. The smaller orange box in the bottom left corner is the RISD library.

Apartment!

We signed a lease this afternoon! Celebrate!

(Click below to read the rest of the post and see pictures! Note: To view a picture in more detail, right-click it and select "Open Link in New Tab.")