And now for something completely different..

Reading my last few posts I'm struck at how depressing this blog is lately. It's like a visit to the neurology ward-all brain tumors and anxiety attacks. It makes me wish I could post something happy and sparkly involving unicorns.

I don't have anything to say about unicorns at the moment. But there's my apartment to make me happy. I've had very little experience with living places that actually felt like home (as opposed to the garage where I parked myself at the end of the day.) The last place I lived in Cambridge felt like home-that's part of why I was so bummed to leave (even given the circumstances.) The last place I lived by myself was in Paris. I had two studettes there-the first one was about the size of my cubicle and the second one-one floor up in the same building-was about the size of my living room. Neither of those felt like home.

This is home. It's small and it's messy and everything is an unfortunate shade of brown but it's definitely Chez Cantabridgienne. The books are unorganized-that's intentional. The book slave in me *really* wants to organize the books*. They should be grouped by subject matter and alphabetized. But there isn't enough space here so they are only separated out into fiction and non-fiction. In spite of the chaos I can find any book I need and I enjoy the jumble for now because it means that while looking for Sunshine or Pride and Prejudice I might re-encounter something else I might like re-reading.

Also, it can't be too badly organized because the first time my eldest nephew stepped into my apartment he found 60 years of DC comics, which he immediately (and repeatedly) wanted to peruse.

This is a place I'm happy to show my friends (provided they give me a minute or two to pull the laundry off the floor of my bathroom.) I've had two parties here in the last year and I've had my sister and her progeny here. And aside from the part where I kept stopping the baby from climbing my bicycle or farking around with the giant piece of rusted metal on the floor (A gift from my ex-boyfriend snagged during some Mass Ave improvement project-it says "Don't Dump drains to Charles River." They have signs like these on a lot of drains in Cambridge)and the pieces of broken glass in my kitchen from the corningware dish I broke in February and (apparently) the bottle of dad's beer that exploded (Mom had brought up a batch for me to give to my friends as a wedding present and they hadn't been able to collect it yet) it worked out okay.

There are a few collections of shells and rocks I've picked up on the beach and a secretaire I found with the help of a friend. And there is always coffee ready to be made, Ramen noodles, Odwalla bars, peppermint tea and beer. There's also always plenty of olive oil, garlic and pasta. Also, it's two blocks from the beach.

I am never content unless there's a largish body of water near by. I've made do with the Charles and the Seine, but they pale in comparison to the Atlantic Ocean. Since I have these things I am willing to put up with the commuter whale-even when class schedules put me on the 10:40 train. The city kid in me is weirded out by this development, but when I go back to Cambridge I don't feel homesick-I mostly feel annoyed. It's smelly and ultimately not all that cool and full of hipsters and Harvard students and vomit. It kind of makes me sad.

So I go home to look at my books and my beach and exhale.



*since non-fiction is mostly history I'd organize those chronologically. The fiction would be broken out by genre-Literature, Graphic Novels, Scifi/Fantasy and Mystery. *twitch twitch*