apartments

It's 7:07, and in the next 38 minutes I need to eat dinner, make icing, get dressed and pack up to go over to my old house for a party that is both housewarming and birthday party.

Friends of Eric's, who I like to think are now also friends of mine, bought the house that I moved into to live with my ex and four other roommates. It's a beautiful house, and Mike and I had talked on more than one occasion about how nice it would be if we could afford to buy it.

It was pretty close to a shithole when we lived in it, though. There was a giant hole in the bathroom ceiling that we pinned a poster of Bruce Lee over. It was tight at first, but over the months, gently sagged down till it actually looked like he was going to kick you as you brushed your teeth. Everything else was 25 years old: the carpet, the paint job, the wall paper. Ugly and dingy.

As soon as we moved out, the landlord gutted the place. No carpet, no wallpaper. Refinished hardwood floors, light yellow paint that reflected the amazing amount of light most of the house got.

The first few times I went there were really weird. Even the last time, I could still feel the ghost of my previous life there shimmering under the present. The only time that was a bad feeling was when I tagged along on the tour and Diane showed us their office. Mike's old bedroom. We did a lot of loving there, and started the lot of our fighting there too.

It was a melancholy moment. Or rather, the ghost of a melancholy moment shimmering under the surface.

Okay, so here's another thing I don't like about buying sheets. How was I supposed to know that mattress people are sleeping on mattresses that are approximately 10 feet high, and so if I bought a queen-sized sheet set for my queen-sized futon, I would end up with a fitted sheet that goes two feet under the futon on each side and a flat sheet that would make pools of crispy cotton on the floor? I mean, really.

Last night Eric and I strolled down the street for a going away party. MC, who is/was the singer for the Solid Senders, is up and moving to Montreal to go to museum studies school. God help her if it's anything like library school, but Montreal! And she'll be living by herself for the first time. We advised her to get a cat so she wouldn't be talking to herself. She advised us that she had no problem with talking to herself. I had a glass and a half of wine, Eric had some beer, we ate chili, MC got really excited about my brownies, and the three of us had a really nice conversation about tattoos. We left just as Tracie was fomenting the move to Babylon for some dancing.

Eric worked early this morning, so I got up with him, and was up and out for a run by 8 am. Then greasy breakfast, grocery shopping, crossing the street to avoid the Somerset Vort-ex,* and back home.

Since getting home, I have been dividing my time between all the rooms in my house. Ironing board in the bedroom to measure what I was going to chop off the sheet and iron the new hem. Sewing machine set up on the kitchen table. Living room breaks to change music, check my email, and copy the bass lines from a 5678's song. Sheet finally hemmed, and down to the basement to wash it. Washing machine finished and out through the lean to out to the back yard to hang the sheets. More fucking around in the living room, back to the kitchen for dish washing and banana bread baking. Bread in the oven and off to blog.

And now, I rest.

*Jennifer, Eric and I all have exes who live on Somerset Street. Within two blocks of each other. On the same side of the street. Sometimes that's just too much, even if I am fond of my Somersetex.

When I go away for more than a couple of days, I like to find a housesitter. While Freya would be okay with someone dropping by once or twice a day for some food and a couple of pets, she wouldn't be happy. She likes to be around people. She likes for people to make laps so she can sit in them. She likes for people to lie down so she can purr a bit and then flop down on them, and then spoon with them after she slides down their side. That's the kind of cat she is.

I like to find a housesitter who would appreciate a week or so on their own - someone who lives out in the burbs, or who has roomies, or misses cats, or something. They're doing me a huge favour by staying Chez Butch, so I like to feel like I'm doing them a bit of a favour back.

Ian was a perfect candidate: roommated and cat-misser. But I think he got a little more than he bargained for.

The Wednesday before I left, he came over and I gave him a tour and we went over the notes I'd made for him. The entire page of notes I'd made for him. Apartment quirks, what to do in case Freya got sick, contact numbers for friends. I called the vet and gave them his name, I emailed Grace to see if she'd be available to drive Ian and Freya to the vet's in case of an emergency, I called my landlord to tell him that if there were a problem, Ian would call. I left my upstairs neighbours a note. I left Ian detailed notes about all the people who knew.

In short, I went kind of bonkers. I'm still not quite sure what tick had gotten under my skin, because jesus, I even emailed Ian from Halifax to give him yet one more ridiculous "just in case" instruction. He must have thought the place and my pet, not to mention my brain, were made of glass.

Point 5 under "apartment quirks" (right under "turn shower taps 5 times for water") was "ants, mice, bats." Listed from least to most scary. Ian was holding the paper as we went over it. His eyebrows shot up. "Bats? For real?"

"Yeah, sadly. It's high season too." I paused, feeling guilty. "I probably should have mentioned the bats beforehand. But you probably won't get one." He couldn't tell, but I was crossing all my fingers and and all my toes.

When I got home from the 'fax, there was a note on the table. "And check the phone message from Mark," it said, "Pretty funny." Now Mark is a funny guy prone to making penis jokes, or, well, drawing penis jokes. So that's what I had in mind when I checked the message. It was not a rude joke about the male member, but detailed instructions on how to deal with bats. As soon as I realized he was serious, I gasped and looked around the room. My eyes instantly zeroed in on the guano on the wall above the TV. Poor poor Ian, I thought, what a housesitting disaster.

I was thinking, too, about the cat puke.

Steve and I picked Eric up at the Halifax airport on Sunday night. After all the hellos and the settling in, Eric and I sat out on the lanai in the dark. He seemed a little quiet, maybe a little tense, but I put it down to travelling and being somewhere new. We chatted, there was a lull. He turned towards me.

"There's something I need to tell you," he said. I could feel the shot immediately, each molecule of adrenaline another worst case. "Freya's okay, I went and checked," he continued, and my shoulders came down from around my ears. "But she threw up on your bed." I started breathing again. "On your new sheets."

Aha.

"But she's fine?"
"Yep, she seemed normal."
"Ah well, sheets are sheets. If Freya's fine, I can buy new sheets."
"And no one's slept on them."

As it turns out, I don't even have to buy new sheets, because Housesitter Ian did an amazing job of cleaning them when the stain was fresh. He washed them. Twice. With stain remover. He washed my mattress, even.

I'm not sure a medal is good enough.

There *must* be gardeners who read this blog. I know for sure that there are people in my neighbourhood who read this blog.

To all of you, what is this plant?

This is a baby one. It looks like rhubarb, no? Except the stalks never get red and the leaves are fuzzier.

I pulled all these roots out of my front bed this afternoon. There were a bunch of baby plants, but I just took photos of the best examples. Look at how giant that root is compared to how tiny that plant is (second from the right)!

Last summer, the biggest plant grew to be over 6 feet tall. If you measured around its leaves at the widest part, it was probably 4 feet in circumference. It overshadowed the lilies, which was a shame. Last fall, my landlord scythed it, and this spring, I mercilessly pulled the root out.

How do I get rid of it permanently? Will more come back?

#1
The apartment next to me is for rent. It's a really big one bedroom (main floor + unfinished basement) probably somewhere around $775+hydro. It's in Chinatown.

It's the mirror image to my apartment, which is a lovely haven from this mad mad mad mad world. Aside from the bats, it gets a little less light than I'd love. But I asked, and that apartment doesn't get bats. The whole building (6 apts.) is non-smoking and I've asked the landlord to keep it that way. Things get done and the building is decently maintained.

If you don't smoke or own a barky dog, email me for more details. I hate smoke. I really like dogs, and there's a certain barky dog I love (Hi Milo! Who's a cute puppy?), but I won't love your barky dog if it wakes me up every weekend morning and then barks and whines for three hours because it's sad you've gone out for the morning.

#2
Eric is looking for a roommate. He's funny and nice and from what I've seen he's also tidy and clean. And he spends a few nights a week, uh, elsewhere. The apartment is beautiful - it gets lots of light - and contains a lot of very cool thrifted furniture.

http://ottawa.craigslist.org/roo/302059902.html