A House Is Not A Hole

[Some of this may fall into the category of TMI. We'll see...]

[Chris's housemate (whom he's pseudonymized as "Redondo"; who am I to mess with brilliant and wholly appropriate naming?) has given notice, and since the other housemate has lived there for something like ninety years and can't face yet another search, my sweety has taken on two gargantuan tasks. First, find a housemate who's not a catastrophe (I've been thru those wars, and it's not easy), and two, spruce up his pad so it doesn't scare away the likelier prospects.]

[The second task is what he spent much of the weekend doing, and it hasn't been easy. Chris calls his place "Maison le Trou," le trou being French for "the hole." Again, brilliant and wholly appropriate naming - the rent's cheap for a reason. He's done a few things to ameliorate the general squalor, but I don't think it will hurt his feelings to quote him: "The only thing that’ll improve the place is a machine gun, a can of gasoline, and a torch."]

[Bless him for trying a less illegal solution first, though, right? Off we went on Saturday to Ikea in Emeryville and Discount Hardware in the Mission for paint, throw rugs, cheap-n-fun lighting, kitchen storage solutions, etc. I hadn't been to Sweden's Solution to Everything since being single, and I realized I'd sort of forgotten how to get excited about stuff for the home. Between living in poverty in a postage-stamp-sized studio and having accumulated a lot of the basics years ago, I haven't been indulging my Martha Stewart side very much lately. ("What Martha Stewart side?!" demands the Chorus.)]

[However, you try going to Ikea "just to keep someone company." I got out of there for under a hundred bucks. Among the purchases was the first set of sheets I've bought for myself since singledom. The mismatched light blue set I've been using wasn't even new when it lived in what passed for John's and my linen closet, so you can imagine their state when I finally threw them away last night. Ah...the memories even Spray n' Wash can't erase. (You knew I'd go there.)]

[After lunch yesterday in Cole Valley with Violet (wow, we needed to get caught up; wow, we did), I went over to Chris's and tried to stay out of the way while he painted the water closet, vacuumed the dank hall, strategically planted throw rugs, and hung art. (Their revelatory hallway art merits description: a clumsy Toulouse-Lautrec-fake watercolor I've dubbed "Sophie, The Syphilitic Whore of the Belle Epoque"; one of the posters in C.'s Soviet propaganda collection, showing a wise and kindly-looking Lenin and a Cyrillic slogan ("Workers! Don't Mourn Those Inbred Romanovs" or something); a pseudo-historic map of Scotland with all the place-names in Gaelic; and what looks like an original promo poster for Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.)]

[We may live in pits, but I'm glad that Chris and I are, separately but together, trying to make our lives a little more livable. It's good to care about this stuff again.]

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