serenissima | "Quarters sweet quarters" (Reply)

aristeros had the sniffles over the past few days and seems to have passed the bug to me: my nose drips and my throat hurts. Whine whine snivel. I hope I'll be over it quickly.

We're living in a three-bedroom house approximately twice the size of my former apartment, featuring twice as much kitchen cabinet & counter space. You'd think this would make it easy to find places to put all our things. We got the most urgent items set up in a day or two, namely the clothing, kitchen and bathroom stuff. However, we didn't bring with us the bookcases we had at the apartment, nor his desk, and mine lost a leg in transit. So all the study-type things are still in boxes in a pile in bedroom #3, which we have designated the office. Really it's the lack of a desk that's been curtailing my websurfing -- we had Internet up and running even before the moving truck arrived.

We bought a couple of new particle-board desks and a bookcase from Target, and as of last night, all three are assembled. I am typing this on

aristeros' computer. I'm going to tackle the pile in the office today. (If you happen to be in the market for particle-board furniture, note that Target uses various manufacturers for its store brand; the desks we got are decent, but the bookcase is worth manure.)

I've revised my estimation of the house's age to around thirty years old. The house (and the entire base) has a blocky, utilitarian architecture that reminds me of my old high school gym. It has a dishwasher, which we missed at the apartment, as well as a garbage disposal, washer/dryer hookups, and enough closet space. We're still working on the laundry issue: we purchased a used set of machines, and we have to transport and install them ourselves. We have wildlife indoors. The roach problem seems to have been suppressed with traps and a can of Raid, but I'm still getting mosquito bites while inside, and at night we've startled lizards on the floor a few times, tiny beige-pink critters only two inches long.

The house still feels to me like merely the place where we're staying. I've put up a few of the pictures I used to have on the walls. I guess I'll feel more at home once the rest of them are hung and we've cleaned up our moving-in mess. The title of this post comes from a sign I saw on someone else's house, while we were taking a walk around our new neighborhood. We've been told that we'll be moved to a brand new house in a few months, because they're in the process of demolishing the old houses and replacing them. This makes

aristeros feel as if there's little point getting properly settled here, but I still want to be mentally as well as physically comfortable.