OMG

It's been fairly warm in the Greater Boston Area these days. So, when I peeked at my compost bin to see if the scavengers were back, I noticed a glorious thriving plant in my garden so recently deprived of snow (so recently, that I didn't notice the snow was gone until five minutes ago).

ROSEMARY! Two large, happy plants have overwintered, and hopefully will continue on into the summer!


Postscript: I sent this to Mister, and here was our conversation:

Mister: compost bin scavengers?
Me: um
Mister: also: wtf garden melted how did we not notice that
Me: i know
Mister: I even put the grill outside last night
Mister: I walked out there
Me: i know!

Pictures!

I know, the moment you've all been waiting for: pictures of the new apartment! Let's do a little walk-through, shall we? R, don't kill me -- it's a shit-ton of pictures.

You walk into the house, into the foyer. Look! Shelving for shoes and sundry articles! We'll have a little couch in here at some point to take shoes on and off. There's also a window next to the door that I'm not showing.

To your right, are french doors into the living room.

Triple windows facing SE give a lovely amount of sun, and a view of both the front porch and the street.

A single window, facing SW, makes this room super sunny during the day (less so at night :-P). Also, look at how cute our couch is there! The rug, JUST fits in this room. I believe the rug is 8'x13' or something similar.

A long shot of the room, with a glimpse into the dining room. Where the wide bookshelf is currently (at the right of the picture) my piano might be at some point -- if it ever comes out from NY.

Walking through the archway into the dining room, and looking back at the living room.

The triple windows in the dining room also face SW.

A shot of the rest of the dining room, with the doorway into the hallway (the hallway is not easy to photograph, so I didn't really bother -- the apartment is divided down the middle pretty evenly, with bedrooms and the bathroom on one side, and all of the living space and kitchen on the other. The hallway basically connects the two in a space of about 10').

A close-up of the built-in china cabinet. The handyman sanded it down and restained it while he was doing the work on the rest of the apartment (walls painted, floors refinished, and a brand new kitchen).

Walking through the doorway into the hallway from the dining room, immediately on your left is the pantry (in front of you is the kitchen, and to your right is the hallway connecting to bedrooms and bathroom).

Yay pantry!

Little laundry chute into the basement! We have our own washer and dryer, and plenty of DRY storage space.

The view from the doorway of the kitchen. Windows still face SW. There's dishwasher, gas stove, all new appliances, new floor, new counters, new cabinets... NEW! :-D

Looking back towards the right is the stove and most of the counterspace.

Just to give you an idea of the color scheme.

The little alcove where the fridge is -- it's a fruit room!

Mister keeps thinking that I'm making it up when I talk about fruit rooms... but I know the truth!

The NW portion of our exclusive garden! Shade only, sadly.

The NE portion of the garden. It's about 14'x14' -- the upper apartment gets the garage. I think we're winning. :-P

A quick shot of the back porch.

After viewing the entire left side of the house, I'll show a few pics of the right side.

The second bedroom, the back bedroom, the whatever room.

The windows face NE. Also, face the neighbor's porch light which is on 24/7 (so do the bedroom windows).

And rather than show you the messy bedroom (same size as the last room for the most part), I offer you the double closets. One has two poles for hanging clothes, and the other is a mass of shelves.

This concludes our walk-through, and I hope you enjoyed it!

New Apartment

My mother just left yesterday, after arriving Monday to help us get settled into the new apartment. All that remains in the old apartment is approximately six items -- all of which require a car trip to themselves. Hence why they're still there. :-P We'll be out by the first and happily so!

There still remains much in storage of my stuff, but I did make one trip out with a friend and got a full carload of some kitchen stuff, artwork, and other useful items. I don't know when we'll be fully out of there, but I would like to be out sooner rather than later (it IS all my stuff!).

Mister's mother is in town for tonight and tomorrow for business -- so has brought us two 6' tall, 3' wide bookshelves. Yay! The only bookshelf we currently have is a 5' wide, 3' tall bookshelf that may or may not hold a TV on top. (As my piano might be journeying out, the piano may occupy such space.) The bookshelves that I used to own are no longer -- one barely made it into my last apartment not with Mister (I left it for the incoming tenant), and the other did not FIT into that apartment, and was destroyed by weather. [Due to circumstances, I had to remove all of my bookshelves from the apartment previous to that -- I was not going to leave the Roommate From Hell anything useful!]

Thanks to my mother's help, we are well settled into the new apartment. Most of what remains to be unpacked are books and odds 'n' ends. Mom and I went grocery shopping, so we are back to having staples in the house. We've been here long enough that it was time to do laundry, so I'm running a few loads (there are about three) before I go to work. My mom washed the windows (which sorely needed it -- they refinished the wood floors, so there was dust everywhere), and brought coffee, :-P and it is feeling like HOME. I even swept the basement stairs and the laundry area today to make it more my own.

I still need to buy batteries, but you will get pictures soon, I promise!

WEEEEEEEEE'RE HEEEEEEEEERE

So, quick mini-update: we're alive, we're mostly in the new place (little fiddly bits remain, as well as all of my stuff in storage which we're getting Friday) and life is good. It still smells of paint though. :-\

Strangely, the weather worked with us even though we thought it wouldn't. On Monday, it was in the 40s. On Tuesday (the day we moved) it was in the teens and 20s. So Monday afternoon, Mister and his friend D broke up some of the ice in the backyard. But that left quite a bit of ice remaining. So for most of the move, my friend M was out chipping ice to give us something to grip onto (fyi -- ice chips and textured ice is not slippery!) while Mister and M's boyfriend J lifted heavy things with either me or M spotting, and I'd load the car with boxes. We had a ziptruck for the big stuff, and just kept loading up the car to have that ready to go quickly. The fact that all four of us are the "get shit done" kinda people, J and Mister are very strong, and we're only moving THREE BLOCKS AWAY made a lot happen in a very short amount of time.

The mattress was the scariest part, but I think it was mostly because the ice problem hadn't been dealt with. We moved it first because "if it fell over, its soft".

We need camera and batteries in the same place (a.k.a. here) and I'll get you guys pics of the new place!

Four More Days!

I cannot believe that I am four days away from sleeping in my new apartment! We're planning most of the big move for Tuesday day and Wednesday night -- this is working around my work schedule. Mister also made the executive decision that I'm not cooking until after we move, so's we could pack what was in the kitchen. Don't -I- feel silly for having bought leeks and carrots yesterday in anticipation of cooking for 7 today... :-P

Ideally, we'll have all of the stuff from here moved in by the weekend (I'm off next Friday and Saturday) so's we could run up to Lowell and get to work on moving out the stuff in the storage unit. I have A LOT of stuff. And because my mom is coming into town to help us unpack stuff, I want to actually have enough to do.

So I've reserved a Ziptruck for Tuesday the 15th so's Mister, M and I can move the mattress and big furniture. I can't wait!

The question is of course when to pack up things we're using? When to pack up the comps? Have we even set up comp service in the new place?

So much to do, and so much of it is dependent upon timing...

N.B. Not looking forward to moving the mattress down the three flights of the outside back stairs, through the garden with its icy dog-tred paths and from thence to the truck... I could see it ending badly.