make my home a beautiful, welcoming place

Yotel: http://www.yotel.com/index.php

Life would be so simple.

yay!

Got some new sheets and a quilt set, very cozy.

Need to check on that plant. {wince}

I’ve gotten the most cheers on this goal, and I have done nothing – NOTHING – on it.

I’ve been totally spacing watering the jade plant, and it’s not looking so good.

I discovered a huckleberry tree on the next street over. I haven’t seen one since I was a kid. It’s in full bloom – lots of mashed huckleberries on the sidewalk. Don’t know why I didn’t notice it last year.

So my cable internet wasn’t working for a day and a half, and I made an appointment with the cable company. I was a cleaning dervish. The place still isn’t totally clean-clean (still a lot of unfiled papers on the desk and table), but it’s presentable. And Sasha is so happy.

The funny thing is, the cable guy never came. It turned out to be an area-wide problem, and they fixed it remotely. But I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time.

So, I’ve been thinking about loft beds in the back of my mind – fond memories of them in my family’s first house, and then living in a student co-op in college. Good use of space if you have high ceilings. Which I don’t. But I can dream.

So, anyway, today I was looking at an Ethan Allen catalog, not especially by choice, but because it and I were in the car waiting for a friend to file some court papers, and she was gone a long time. And I found the strangest kid’s room set-up I’ve ever seen. I wish I had a visual here, but I don’t see the catalog on their website, so you’ll have to imagine.

At first glance, it was a sweet loft bed set-up – bunkbed, with a desk in place of the bottom bunk. But then I noticed there was about a foot and a half clearance between the bed and the ceiling. The kid would have to slide in on his belly. Which he would probably be doing anyway, out of fear, because the ceiling above the bed was stamped with shark stencils.

At first I thought they were lake fish – awww, how cute, grooming little Brad for his future fishing trips On Golden Pond**. Then I looked closer and saw they’re actually sharks. Man. Are they sending their kid a message or what, with a school of sharks mere inches from his face? “Toughen up, kid – you’ll have to fight for your own dinner out there. Stop crying. They scent that.”

Then I noticed something else weird. There’s this fake-antique red lantern hanging right above the ladder to the bed. There’s no clearance, so the kid would bonk his head on it getting into or out of bed. More character-building? Or just being so eager to fake UMC you overlook details like, say, childhood concussions?

And then there was ANOTHER weird thing. The books in the bookcase were covered in a madras wallpaper. All of them. You’d have to open the book to know what it was.

Now, this is especially funny to me, because a friend growing up had this stepmom from hell who covered all the books in their house in white wallpaper – perhaps out of a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of decor, maybe due to a fetish for reading material that gave the impression of a doctor’s office – so clinical! so delightfully sterile! – I don’t know, she was nutty.

So it was funny to see it on these books in the EA catalog. I’d thought covering books in wallpaper was a peculiarly Long Island lapse of taste, or a germophobe thing, but no. In madras, it can be waspishly stylish.

(Apologies to Ethan Allen fans – and actually, they do have some nice pieces – but wow. It’s Arts and Crafts gone so very weird.)

• Sorry, Ethan Allen is just so waspy. I love this page. Two generically non-white boys have to share a bunkbed, and the asian girl wears nerd glasses and raves about having space to do her homework. Meanwhile, the white boy says how cool his bed is after skateboarding, and the white girl talks about how her bed is perfect for sleepovers after all-day trips to the mall. I don’t get how a major retailer doesn’t understand that stereotypes are silly. Maybe they work, in marketing. But if I were a little Asian girl, I think I’d look at that page and say, Homework? Why don’t *I get to skateboard all day?

... I replaced my blue Dawn dish soap with lemon Joy. It’s what my mom has always used, it’s a cheerful color, and it smells happy.

Silly that such a small thing has such an effect.

She’s lurvely. She doesn’t have a name yet – she’s definitely Mediterranean, but I’m not sure if she’s Italian, Spanish, or possibly Portuguese.

She’s sitting next to my desk at home, which is in the southeast corner of the building and has windows on two walls, so she’ll get plenty of morning sun.

Happily, after some investigatory chewing, Sasha got bored of her and is leaving her alone. Only a couple of leaves are punctured.

My apartment has a funky layout – 2 bedrooms, but small living area. Not conducive to having people over.

I’ve thought of making the 2nd bedroom into a dining area, but it seems sort of kluge-y.

It’s hard to motivate to clean, organize, and decorate, because I spend most weekends at my boyfriend’s. And I’ve moved so much in the past, it doesn’t seem worth the effort to really think about how to make this place wonderful.

When I did my bar application in 1998, I found I’d lived 22 places in the preceding ten years. (Including college dorms, etc. I moved a lot for law school internships.) And I’ve lived … five? places since then. Nothing seems permanent, except the futon frame I’ve had for ten years, and my one really nice piece of furniture, my dining room table and chairs.

This apartment doesn’t have a paper-towel holder by the sink, and I’ve thought of asking the landlord if he minds if I put one up, but then I think, what’s the point? If my boyfriend and I continue along our current path, we’ll move in together – another move.

I’m tired. :(

am leaving in september to go to uni[after all] so there is no point in working on the home anymore. plus i cant afford it.