Settling

All is quiet on the blogging front, but not really in reality.  We are busily going through our hastily packed boxes and trying to find spaces for everything.  The clothes are in the closet, but not all of them because it's, you know, cold again.  The dishes have been put away but the crockpots are still looking for a place to call home.  The crafting supplies have no idea what they are doing since the death of my sewing desk, but the stash is safely hiding in its cupboard.  The one part that is without a doubt, one hundred percent done?  My books.

There is already talk of a fourth bookcase coming into our lives on account of just how many books I have.  This may be the third time Chris has moved them in our year and a half of marriage, but I never fully unpacked them before now.  I guess I always worried that he might judge me on the sheer number of books that I have collected over the years.  But happily there has been no judgement.  He even helped me unpack, sorting out the final half of the alphabet and reading random lines of Tolstoy and Mead.

My favorite part of the new place is probably the kitchen.  It is exactly the type of kitchen I've always wanted -- small but not too small, with a wall of shelves and real cabinets with real handles (You laugh but there were no handles on any of the cabinets in our old place).

I love that the place is painted with all white trim/fixtures/whatever you call cabinets and such.  I'm sure it is impractical but it makes everything so much brighter.

As we've unpacked we've also enjoyed Chris' new work schedule that has allowed us to eat dinner together every night this week.  That combined with a new kitchen can only mean one thing.  Cooking!

I highly recommend the Southwest Mac n' Cheese from Budget Bytes.  It's the second meal I've made from her website in the past week and they've both been a hit.  A bit spicy for Chris' taste, but that's my fault.  I love some spice in my cooking.

All things considered, the move has been one of the best things that could have happened to us.  And not just because we now have a screened in porch for after dinner tea.

See?  There's still knitting and reading happening here.  But more on that later.

A Life in Boxes

This post has no pictures because I am posting it from work (shhh! don't tell!)  I have a million and a half things to do, but I thought you should have a head's up -- we're moving again.  This means there is sure to be some sort of disaster or life-altering event in the near future.  Be prepared.

You may remember when Chris and I moved back in July.  Just before our one year anniversary we packed our things, left our cramped apartment in the overpriced neighborhood in the north part of the city, and moved ourselves downtown.  We found a place in our budget.  Where if one of us lost a job we could still pay rent.  We found a place where we could finally have a dog.  A place big enough for the two of us plus a home office.  A place I could walk to work through a really nice historic neighborhood.  We thought we found a place that hit everything on our check-list.

What we also found was mold, mail theft, drug dealers, domestic disputes, teenage hooliganism, 76 hours without water, and gun shots.

I pride myself on my ability to make things work.  I may have had horrible living conditions in the past, but I always survived with the thought that someday this will make a really great story.  But with our bedroom now smelling like sewage, we have decided that it is finally time to give up our spiral staircase in favor of somewhere that won't poison us.  As we have told friends and family that we have a place to go the collective group has given a sigh of relief.  Evidently no one felt safe there.

We've been doing a lot of research on places, trying to find a place we can land once we convinced the current apartment to break our lease.  Sadly, everything in our price range has actually looked worse than where we currently live.  Until Monday I was resigned to burning candles and carrying my new taser until August when we would inevitably move to an even less desirable neighborhood.  But then we found it -- The Place.

I'm hesitant to talk up The Place too much.  I'm concerned that we will once again find ourselves with serious concerns, be they health or safety.  But so far it has hit everything on our revised list.  There is running water, the leasing office is consistantly staffed, and I think I can walk the dog without counting footsteps or listing appropriate body locations hit.  There is no tolerance for innapropriate behavior and we did not see a single cigarette (not one!) on the ground when we took our tour. 

As of yesterday morning we were hoping to break our lease and find an opening at The Place.  As of last night we were packing furiously.  We move this weekend.  I don't know how to explain it other than God looked down and decided that enough was enough.  This is our chance to escape and we are taking it.

I hope to be back soon with tales of my new screened-in porch once we have safely relocated, and I'm hoping that is sooner rather than later.  But in the meantime, let me leave you with this one awesome fact -- I fit the entire contents of my yarn cabinet in one box.  This can only mean that I need to buy more yarn!