Porch Dreams

Right now I’m fixated on the back porch, the balcony—the feature of my apartment that doesn’t really exist. (In the background I’m also shopping for a new rug in the bedroom, obsessing over lighting and decor options for my drab taupe box of a windowless office, and wondering what color scheme would please me for pillows in the living room…and that’s just for spaces that are mine.)

Spring is here in Michigan, and so, like everyone else, I want to be outside. I want to own my desires and bring them to life, I want to bike through the fresh air and nap in the sunshine and read on the porch.

Before we moved to this apartment, our small but sufficient one-bedroom, I was already thinking about the fire escape. I knew a previous tenant had grown herbs on this fire escape, and I have fond memories of the fire escape to the apartment I shared with Emma, which was big enough for a table and chairs, three stories up in the trees. I thought of all the New York City stories that include ducking through the window to catch some air on the steps; hanging a string of lights and claiming a small patch of the sky for oneself. Sure, we have a bathroom with a tub in it, a bedroom separate from the living room, two closets, and a kitchen. We have space for our bikes in the hallway, and windows in three directions. It’s enough, but it also isn’t enough.

I imagined us, having just moved in together, mixing drinks and carrying them through the apartment, one of us locking the cats in the bathroom so they couldn’t escape, and then opening the door at the back of the bedroom and stepping out into the early evening to sit on the steps and savor the last of summer together.

*  *  *

It’s a good vision. Alas that our first September in the apartment came with a wasp infestation, centered on that back wall of the bedroom. I was checking out the fire escape, in the early days after moving in, and when I turned to go inside, I put the full weight of my leg down onto a wasp with my bare foot. That was the last time I went out that door until the following spring—and that wasn’t even the worst of it. After our maintenance guy and then an exterminator had sprayed three or four times, we started to find poisoned wasps languishing, first on our bedroom windowsill, and then all over the bedroom floor. Two, four, six, thirty, until, the final day, Cooper came home to somewhere around seventy-eight dead and dying wasps writhing on the carpet at the back of the room and under the dresser we had under the window, while a sadistic cat looked on. After that, we covered the cold air return in the room, and the rest of the wasps died and were no more.

That horror stunted my fire escape dreams, and although I swept the little landing at the top of the crooked wooden steps a couple times, nothing came of it. Until now! This year, I ‘m ready. I’ve got some copper-wire fairy lights I bought at Christmastitme but don’t really like indoors. I bought Cooper a curly parsley plant this weekend—supposedly it’s one herb that can actually do well inside, so hopefully he can permanently give up buying bunches of parsley that are always too big to use up in time. Soon we’ll add some other plants to enjoy for the summer, although they won’t want to winter with us (basil, thyme, some flowers). We can bring out a stool or two folding chairs, and sit on our miniature deck and look at the leaves in the trees, and into our neighbors’ windows.

It’s not an obvious space for enjoyment. It’s about three feet by ten or twelve feet (nothing like the beautiful 66 square foot original patio of that great blog). You could fit four folding chairs on it, awkwardly in a row, or you can fit two next to each other and have a nice time together. You could probably fit a very small bistro table, or one of those half-moon little balcony tables, and then two simple chairs. We won’t. Maybe one stool with a plant on it, a plant that can move to the ground if we want the stool. Folding chairs in the bedroom, just inside the door, if we don’t want to sit on the steps.

The structure is made of wood, nailed together well enough to work, but with no thought to craftsmanship. It was painted a bland bluish-grey a few times, and the paint is forever peeling off, every time you sweep the leaves and branches off the porch. Straight ahead from the bedroom, you see three wooden bars, and between the bars (if you’re seated low) or above them (if you’re standing), you can see a bedroom through a neighbor’s window, the curtain for which she never fully closes. She could certainly see us if she looked out. To the right, south, there’s the brightest sun and a nice apartment building across the street. To the left, north, another building. There’s also a door to the other upstairs apartment, making this space less private, a little less welcoming to a takeover. Oh well.

I’m not sure how nice we can make it. It doesn’t really matter—there are so many parks nearby, bike paths and the river and picnic tables. There are patios and decks and beer gardens downtown, a short walk away. After almost two years in this space, though, it’s a fun challenge to try to add another room, another dimension, to our lives here. An easy little escape—all I have to do is open that door that is usually just a window.

So I’ll see if I can grow any plants to block the house next door. I’ll see if the herbs will do okay back there, at the southern end of the little platform. Maybe with a little outdoor rug, and the fairy lights, it will become a porch instead of a crumbling afterthought. 

In the Rain

When I woke up this morning, the apartment was dark and moody, cozily and quietly separate from the rain pouring down outside. It was such a morning for staying in (says the girl who wishes she could stay home every day, I know, I know), and I would have loved to light a candle on my desk, let my fingers plod through the day on my laptop in a little sphere of candlelight, alone in the dim bedroom.

Instead, I picked a comfy dress and leggings, pulled on my tall, red galoshes and my trench coat, and walked to work in the storm. It was fairly warm out, and kind of nice.

When I turned the corner of the Modern Languages Building, I saw that the fountain, which was uncovered last week, was full of water and fully functional, sending streams of water up even as so much rain was coming down.

The fountain brought a thrill for summer, and a wistfulness for the first summer I spent here, in Ann Arbor. The summer of the Krankenhaus, when I read histories of Europe in the sun on the Diag and spent sixteen hours a week in a Spanish classroom in the MLB, eating lunch outside under the bell tower every day, dreaming of all the countries I would visit once I lived in Germany.

Now, I have three jobs and little time for lounging on the lawn, and I sometimes think that if I could go back, I would have just begged the rest of the rent money from my parents and not borrowed those few thousand dollars for intensive Spanish from the government. I haven't paid them off yet. But I would also love to have that summer schedule again. Learning a new language is a game I love to play, and summer is a time for openness, exploration, and freedom.

When I sought out a window this afternoon, I found blue skies and sun. I'm excited to walk home.

note to self

last week:

it was a good week*
because cooking (frozen pot pies made last week, baked mostaccioli, learning to cook catfish)
because I got sent home from work three hours early Sunday and baked tiny chocolate cakes
because sunshine and increasing temperature
because I saw a movie
because all my laundry is clean
because I decreased my shoebox collection by one
because I remembered to call my mom
because I went to yoga twice, for a grand total of 3.5 hours, and one of those classes was just me
because I went to the Y
because I got to wear my new springy sweater I bought with in January with Christmas money
because I get to wear other clothes I haven't in a while
because I cleaned my stove SO WELL
(but not the oven)
because we went out to brunch and to the farmer's market in the chilly sunshine Saturday
because I went to the Arb after work the following Sunday




*(and it's a good week, and it'll be a month, and then it'll be a year...just take your damn time! -- 0:30)

**I need a new blog design. sans serif. not sure about this collage-nonsense, but in the interest of having a blog, I'm posting it without further consideration.

Christmastime in the City

Multiple cities, obviously.

I Want

a loaf of bread
2-5 apples (get me through the weekend or the week)
new red lipstick (lost mine)
a borrowed iron
the will to hem my curtains (hinges on iron)
donuts and cider
$20 to get through the week

That's all I want this weekend, at least that's tangible/measurable (if the curtains are hemmed, the will was there).

Paying back student loans, it turns out, saps all your extra money. No paid sick or vacation days kills the possibility for extra money. Life, friends, is boring!

 My brother's baking bread today, so hopefully by tomorrow I'll have some. Free, and so delicious.

I'm going to the cider mill tomorrow, even though the money was spent yesterday on mulled wine at the new beer garden and Strongbow and cheddar ale soup and ravioli, split with Emma. A beautiful evening followed by a lovely date with cocktails and pizza and a tasty s'more.

As for lipstick – red lip gloss forever, I guess. It's been running out for a year, but never actually does.

A Year of Carlessness

It's been a year and a day since I wrecked "my" car—spinning out from some black ice in the fast lane on I-94, ending up three lanes over and down the hill and smashed into a harmful, helpful tree (at least I didn't end up in the creek!).

I survived, obviously. I survived the crash, which is the important thing. Then I survived the carlessness. The car connected me to my boyfriend, living then in Detroit, endless miles away (okay, like 42). Then the car was gone. But he got a car. I took the train. Sometimes the train even showed up when it was supposed to! (I was unlucky in that my most frequent train-riding coincided with the Norfolk Southern debacle resulting in "up to 90 minute" delays. On top of the already frequent 1-3 hour delays, come on, guys, get with the future. By the time MDOT decided to buy those tracks—at which point I assume they stopped fighting and making people late on purpose constantly—we were together in one city.) Sometimes the train showed up at four a.m. and I was in bed and I don't remember how that affected the weekend anymore—so obviously, we survived.

And my fridge survived, too. I walked to buy all the frequent groceries at the co-op, even though it's more expensive. I even ate peanut-butter pitas for lunch for a few months, and was sort of forced to buy organic. Kroger and Trader Joe's and all the rest became always-communal adventures, which is mostly fine.

My bike, already a frequent companion while in Ann Arbor, rose to new heights. My boyfriend's apartment on the other side of (central) Ann Arbor didn't feel far away. There was no faster way to get from job A to job B, except maybe a moped. Then the rain and snow and ice came, and everything is now half an hour apart on my ever-plodding feet, but it'll be okay. I got a puffy coat with a fur-lined collar as well as fur-trimmed hood (all fake of course), and me and my leggings under my jeans with my wool socks and snow boots and everything else? We regularly walk 60-90 minutes in one day and love hate survive are okay with it partway through most walks. (Remember that time I said I was sick of first person plural? Probably not, that was three-plus years ago. Anyway, this appears false because I was 'we' with my car, and my cats, and friends (girl- and boy-), and now even with my clothes.)

Look at that fur collar and that Fishbowl-glare. It's the best I can do on such short notice.

Like anything else that breaks or you break up with (mainly the latter), you forget what it was like to be together. I don't think about it that much. I'm a girl without a car. I manage, and I also sort of hang onto people and jump at every chance to be a real suburban consumer (not that I really want to be that). I was never the person with an entire backseat of dirty clothes or old books or even just CDs. I had my ice skates and sometimes a sled or winter boots in the trunk, yes, yet I didn't live from my car. I mainly only used it to buy groceries, pick up roommates, and drive to my parents or my boyfriend. It really belonged to my parents, or technically to them but really to me, and so I acted like my parents and I kept it cleanish and called it "the Accord" to all interested parties (i.e. parents, brother).

But the car was part of me. (And ten minutes ago, I knew exactly how; then I forgot.) It wasn't just the hours I spent sweating in it in the hot heat of air-conditionless summers, or the nights I spent singing in it, driving when I should have been sleeping. It wasn't just the relationships it maintained, the road trips, the reluctant goodbyes. Oh, right, of course, the reason Americans Drive Cars and stand in the way of beautiful public transit like that of Germany, which I miss every day—it was the freedom. The freedom and the feeling of power that the freedom granted me. I could work until 11:30 on Friday nights and still wake up with my boyfriend on Saturday morning, even though he was in a different city. You could propose the idea, I could offer the car and probably drive most of the way. I guess I liked performing feats as well as making plans all on my own. Though the distances haven't changed, without my own car, people and places are farther away from me. And that stinks.

But—we all already knew cars were more dangerous than planes or trains or most things we encounter on a day-to-day basis, right? Drew totaled the car he used to (literally) live in, Ali flipped over in her SUV last winter, I crashed my car, Ali hit a deer, Emma only has one actual headlight and one functioning side mirror, and on and on. But I was reading about sunscreen, and then I was reading about the safety of the HPV vaccine (which is safe, duh), and then the bubble for likelihood of dying in a car crash was WAY BIGGER THAN EVERY OTHER DANGER-BUBBLE. (Except cervical cancer, that bubble was also very big and that is why you get vaccinated.)

Trains, people. We need a ton more trains.

Maybe I Should Make a 'Transportation' Label

This is my bike. Not the lovely, white, somewhat antique Peugeot in the back; it's the beat-up Huffy in front. I've had it since sometime in high school—all my other bikes were tied to birthdays, so I can pin them down, but not this one. There was my first bike, on my fifth birthday, an extremely 80s white one with thin black squiggles of wild paint and fluorescent yellow wheels surrounded by white tires. I think we tried to name it Zebra at some point, but naming bikes doesn't really work for me. The next one was Black Beauty, or maybe the Black Stallion (not so feminine, nor beautiful), but that name didn't stick either. It was a black Magna with yellow and orange bits. On that bike, I finally learned to balance on two wheels, and then to start the bike rolling on my own, at which point I convinced my parents I could have a proper girls' bike that I wouldn't have to pass on to my brother. I was turning nine years old. This bike came with a name, "Glamour Girl," as well as shiny streamers on the handles and serious glitter you could feel as little bumps when you ran your hand along the shiny turquoise body. The color and the glitter outweighed the stupid name; though eventually, I had to rip the streamers out and peel off the Glamour Girl and all other associated labels.

My dad bought me my current bike less than two years after he bought me my first full-size bike, which was a nice, dark purple with a comfy, wide old-lady seat. Once I realized that was something to be embarrassed about, I was, but I also loved that bike. (I wish the current one was as comfy as that one was.) My dad has a habit of forgetting to close the garage door; one night, that cost me my bike. So we went to K-Mart, I think, and I chose this purply-blue Huffy (historically a favorite color of mine) with thick curves inspired by old-fashioned bikes and a matte finish (still with subtle glitter). It turned out that a water bottle doesn't fit in the normal place because of the way the bike curves; the lack of space can also make locking it difficult, since I use a thick lock with little give. The suedey finish on the bike seat, soft and appealing when I first got it, has dried out, cracked, lost a layer, and now soaks in all moisture it meets. If I leave a plastic bag on the seat overnight to protect against rain, I'm confronted with a wet seat inside from condensation. It takes forever to dry out. The handles are cushioned by foam, which, like the seat, has dried out and holds in moisture. The gears don't like me very much, and my back brake—you know, the important one—needs to be fixed again.

Still, it's essential. My bike keeps me within ten minutes of everywhere I regularly need to be, as it has for the past two years (excluding Detroit, an important destination for the past year if not anymore, but one that required my dearly departed Honda). I am, with my bike, less than ten minutes from the train station. Both jobs, my brother, my boyfriend. If there was anywhere I actually liked to buy groceries in this radius, I'd be set. Still grumpy, but more contentedly self-sufficient. Between downtown and campus, it's usually faster to bike than to drive, anyway, partially because traffic laws feel flexible when you're on only two wheels.

But I kind of hate it. I hate the hills in Ann Arbor. I hate how I bike up the same ones, day in and day out, and it never gets easier. I keep doing it, and I keep getting exhausted. We lived for a year at the bottom of a hill, and every day I biked to class—often in the rain, sometimes in the snow—I had to pedal up that hill. It felt like it took forever to reach Hill Street (ha ha) and be able to catch my breath and charge forward onto campus and to class. Coming home, though—it was great. To work hard to get to class, a place I usually didn't really want to be, made sense in some way. It was unlikely I would enjoy the way there, but the way home was fantastic. I raced down East University once, sometimes two times a day. If the street was dry, the traffic sparse, I'd let go of the handlebars completely and fly down the hill. Sometimes I dared keep my hands off even at the curve, so I could practice steering, not just balancing, simply with my body.

These days, I bike on busy streets, steeper, faster hills, in the wind and the rain (and the snow, as of last week). On these streets, I'm too cautious to fly, and I don't really want to bike for fun when I've been biking back and forth all day. It's also cold. If I were writing this in the spring, it might be different. Now walking feels like a treat sometimes. My impatience and my chronic tardiness are the reasons I bike so much more than I walk. Even if I don't have to be somewhere as soon as possible, my instinct is to pedal pedal pedal, make as many lights as I can, and be done. I'm better at relaxing while walking than biking, though again, the cold makes me want to get from A to B with the utmost speed. It's also easier to keep your pants dry when your legs aren't perpendicular to the sky.

Chez Moi

I've lived in my new apartment, the first home I've had all to myself, for almost three months now, and yet so few people have seen it, it seems. I guess I introduced my desk, and another brief glimpse of my bedroom back in October, but it's time to unveil the oasis.

What? If it's being unveiled, it must be exciting, like an oasis. It certainly isn't large, so that angle's out, nor is it impeccably decorated. I'm trying, but there are gaps. When you boil pasta or take a shower, it is steamy like a jungle , and it is an island of warmth in this cold, cold sea. It's hard to fit the whole bed+living room in one photo, because, well, it's just so small. And cozy!

This photo from when I was in Ireland needs to go on the wall between the window and the cabinet.

Here are the gaps I'm talking about. I've got a map for over the desk, one framed poster (Croatian naive art bought in Zagreb!) to go over the couch, but it needs a collage of other frames (to be purchased) with it to fill that massive space—I have nine-foot ceilings! My obliging father painted it for me, and he just brought a paint bucket to stand on, because it was easier than a ladder and worked at home. At home, we have eight-foot ceilings. Thank goodness my landlord keeps a painting ladder in the basement.

My cantilever chairs are antiques. I'm so cool. My parents bought them in the seventies when they moved into their first apartment together (also in Ann Arbor). My dad says they're from the beginning of the twentieth century. He helped me I helped him reupholster them for Emma and me to use last year. Can't wait 'til Deutschland is on the wall. The pastels of the different Bundesstaaten (states) go great with my "ice cube" walls. They're so pale they don't quite show up right in these photos, but you can take my word that they're lovely. Oh, and that hallway is my breakfast-lunch-dinner nook, which leads to the kitchen and then the bathroom. But those are for another time.

 Close-up of my ivory velveteen curtains (which I still have to hem). Funny story—I washed the velveteen for the curtain for the little window over the bed, to pre-shrink it, and when I took it out of the dryer, the raised leaf pattern was gone! Thank goodness I didn't shrink the big curtains.

These are my lovely Simply Shabby Chic sheets, which were discontinued before I moved, causing much anguish. But I found them on eBay, and now can happily coordinate with my walls.

The biggest question: where will I fit a Christmas tree; or: where will I find a tree small enough to fit?

Stream of Consciousness and Stone-Ground Wheat Crackers

I really want to eat those Trader Joe's stone-ground wheat crackers I have in my cupboard at home. Let's be honest here—I want to eat those crackers with generous portions of butter on each one.

I want to want some decadent ice cream, but the truth is that I probably wouldn't enjoy my crazy fudge moose tracks fancy store brand ice cream as much as those crackers with butter. I'm cold. The Fishbowl, that famed computer lab where, the tour guides tell you, "I've never had to wait for a computer," even though the Mac section with seats is usually almost or completely full, and the PC side not much better, is so cold.

My strawberry banana with pineapple juice smoothie (smoothie 4A!) is also cold. My fingers are very cold. If I had internet of my own, I could write you a blog post that was about something, because I could be warm and reclining on my couch at the same time. I was supposed to have internet today. But the website lied, the service it sold me is no longer offered in my area, and though I will eventually receive a Visa rebate card for the stupid expensive modem I have to buy, I have to wait until the ninth of December for it to be activated. (Can you guess how excited I am to buy a $100-item during holiday-shopping-time, and not get the rebate Visa card until after holiday shopping is over? Bad timing.)

UPS delivered the setup package for the other, simple DSL to me today anyway. I was excited to get a package—could it be cookies from New York? Something else from New York? (My favorite aunt lives in New York. State.) No, it's instructions and cords for internet that I don't get to have. Thank you, AT&T.

I finished the current Outlander book I was on. Safely landed on the coast of Georgia, thank goodness. Books like that are addictions. I got within forty pages of the end and there was no way to stop. So I'm waiting, a bit, before I start the fourth book. I don't want it to go too fast. (At the same time, I want to read other books, Literature of Merit, Foreign Language Literature, that thing I guess I'm trying to translate for a competition eeeeeeeeee, seriously,  that's how I feel.) It can't really go too fast, because there are four books left, at this point. Two of which I haven't read before! But the tunnel vision, that great need to be reading the book—I've got to stave it off for a bit or else I might not think about anything else. And then what will I blog about for the rest of this demanding month?

So I'm going to bike home, stick that disc of 30 Rock in my laptop, and eat some buttered crackers. Two episodes to go before I have to return it tomorrow. So doable!

I can't believe there aren't any pictures of those crackers on the internet. In the first few rows of Google Image results. How?

Yellow

I went on an early afternoon walk to breathe in the air and soak in the sun (not an activity approved for my skin type) and maybe entice some cats into my loving shadow. Either this yellow ginkgo tree or some chubby squirrel arms were the best part (all cats encountered were otherwise occupied).

I and my reluctantly functioning computer have been sitting with this view, but the sun is diminishing and I think I should go back outside before my chance for sunlight is gone. Two days ago it was snowing and I was trying out my new down coat; today I'm wearing a cashmere sweater for a jacket, but who knows how long this can last.

Plus I was going to bake some banana bread and think about going out to dinner. Saturdays are the best.

Soft Open

In the office, the rain on the roof sounded exactly like someone was faking it with a rainstick. The drops were small, precise, hitting the metal roof like needles, extraordinarily consistent. Though there was a sort of ebb and flow to the storm, at no point did it stop. Bad news for my bike and me.

The rain sound was definitely coming from the clouds, not from someone with a stalk of dried cactus trying to bring on a storm. I left the bike outside the building, made the trek to my apartment and then the restaurant on foot. Halfway to the Diag, I realized my left rain boot had split down the heel. Now I have to go back and get my bike, again on foot, because there's no other way to get from one job to the next on time tomorrow. It will be raining then, too.

This morning, it was peaceful, dark, cozy in my apartment. When I finally committed to waking up, I spread open the curtains to these pretty little drops of rain. I used my camera with deliberation for what felt like the first time in forever. Then I stretched as far as I could.

This will someday, hopefully, be a lemon tree. Even though the window climate's getting cold and the sun harder to find, in the last few days, it's sprouted another baby leaf on top. If I were my darling Rachel (Rachel! Rachel! Are you out there, Rachel?) I would probably name it, but being myself, I haven't, even though it's arguably the closest thing I've got to a pet right now. It's too dainty, delicate, and I think it would be offended to be treated like anything from the kingdom Animalia.

Here's the first glimpse into my new home for you, the internet. There's a game we could play, and it would be about identifying where every item in this picture was purchased, but let's not play and say we didn't. Name no names. Though the guinea pig would argue she's the closest thing to a pet in this home, she's really closer to a pillow.

I desperately miss the lover-cats. And another cat, but we'll talk about him later, because he deserves a lot more words. I do appreciate my "ice cube" walls, and my shiny spotless new white desk, and the warmth of candlelight before bed.

On to Phase Three

September

October

Starting tomorrow, we face November's fall. I can't say I'm pleased. November has a bad track record, the colors will all fade away, and though the heat in this building is finally on, I'm still shivering.