10 posts tagged “apartment”
On Thursday, I bought this little chest from a shop here in DFW.
I am in love with it. Obviously, it needs some work: a new handle on the third drawer, some adjustment in the lower left rear, and I do plan to paint it (come Labor Day). But it fits perfectly in this spot, it is reasonably clean prior to final repair and painting, and the drawers pull in and out smoothly.
It also has a smaller footprint than the two-level table I previously had in this space.
Wow! Does this mean my apartment is actually falling into place? Finally?
Pearl
It's been some time since I wrote about my frugal plans. But as you can see, the coupon clipping paid off. Witness: new bike plus accessories.
I am still clipping, but the big reward I am giving myself next month is to pay off a credit card completely, using the monies I earned teaching summer school. This is not as huge as it sounds, perhaps, given that the balance is in the low four-figures (but the APR was 20-some%), but it is a great reward for me. The class has been great fun--and since it is the second time I have taught it, this gives me the chance to perfect a few rough places from the first run.
But the good news is being able to pay off the credit card and buy the sofa. Of course, buying the sofa also gave me a $150 gift card I can (and will!) use on IKEA items over time. Plus donating my former sofa to charity.
Sigh of relief.
The next frugal move is to talk my wireless/phone service, second credit card, and electricity down to better deals.
Pearl
...was get a new couch.... DONE. Well, sort of, as life teaches most things are, nowadays.
Yesterday I took the Big Trip to Frisco... to IKEA Dallas. Armed with catalog and list of names/numbers/sizes, I travelled north on the Tollway to the Big Blue Box I love so much.
I got there early, too, as is my practice, for the breakfast deal: a regular breakfast and bottomless coffee for $1 from 930-10, when the store opens. The eggs an bacon are okay, the potatoes iffy, and teh French toast sticks... well, I skip those. But the coffee: good, and bottomless, and good.
For a Tuesday, it was jam-packed with women, children, grandparents, and the occasional beleaguered father. Yikes. The cafe was CRAZY with noisy families, more than any Friday or Saturday in my memory.
I sat at a window table--again, my usual practice, so I can enjoy the landscape; at the next table, a mother spent all breakfast texting, while her two-year-old ate butter pats and her two pre-teens ate and entertained themselves. Mother totally pre-occupied with texting... one of the pre-teens cleaned everything up and was clearly the responsible one. The other moped. Mom looked up every once in a while and said someting nonsensical, like "Good kids," then went back to texting. There's a future therapy bill. Or three.
But I got it done. My new sleeper-sofa, the Ektorp version in basic black cotton duck:
Yeah, that tiny thing.
It will be delivered on Friday, "some time" between 9 and 9. Old couch will be removed by Salvation Army on Saturday, "some time" between 8 and 6... so there will be an overlap of 24-33 hours where I have two couches in what is decidely a one-couch apartment. Oh, well. The real trick will be getting the Ikea men to a/ move the old couch and b/ put the legs on the new couch. And should I tip them? Such many questions!
Regardless, I have a new sleeper sofa, which is great after 13 years of my current one. Admittedly, the current sofa has a great mattress, hidden by an increasingly faded outside. Incredibly comfortable, without good looks. I hope it finds a new home. It may be joined by a wicker chair and ottoman I inherited from a friend, but have never quite settled on.
Ikea is always an interesting trip for me, here in Dallas. Since my first trip to Ikea was in Paris, round about 1999, the contrasts are really strong in my mind whenever I go. In Paris, one must take public transpo (Metro, then bus), while in Dallas I drive $2.80 worth of Tollway to Frisco. In Paris, the Box is located near the airport, in the 'way out 'burbs; in Dallas, Frisco--and the Ikea stop--used to be out in the middle of deserted Texas farmland, but now the store is surrounded by strip malls featuring other chains (Container Store, low- to high-end furniture and home deco stores, and lots of eateries, if you don't like the limited choices at the Ikea cafe). The open, brown prairie that surrounded it: GONE. More roads, more chain/box stores, more stuff growing like a rabbit colony... or Starbucks franchises in the aughts.
The view from the entrance: left, center, right. I admit, it doesn't look like there is much here, but believe me, this is like downtown Times Square compared to opening weekend a few years ago. And the Ikea parking lot is HUGE.
In Paris, Ikea is one of those places where French people shop to find space-saving items and inexpensive kitchen goods that are still (and necessarily) practical and stylish. In Dallas, few people shop for "space saving" items: our houses have too much space, usually.
I am always pleased to find things that are cost-efficient, useful, and attractive--like yesterday I bought a small white ceramic flowerpot that I'll use as a pencil cup, prettier than the black mug I have now. But also inexpensive white magazine folders, glass plates to match my white ones that are in a discontinued style (oh, well), an espresso cup and saucer, a rubberized placement for using my laptop on the dining room table, wooden hangers, a cheap towel to keep in the car to cover the steering wheel and my seat during summer months, new shower curtain, black iron hooks for everything around the house, and a second Arstid lamp, this one for my bedroom. Besides the couch and cover.
A delightfully successful day.
Pearl
In my courtyard, we have two gardenia bushes that blossomed these past two weeks. It makes the whole courtyard fragrant.
I never used to like gardenias, but these real ones have grown on me. The individual flowers, too, are very pretty.
We also have a huge magnolia tree that sits right outside my study window... if my study weren't a complete mess right now.
Pearl
Someone stole my complex's recycling bins. DFW hands out recycling bins in a very ugly Army green. We had two: both gone.
Who does this?
What you see is my recycling, now left on the curb for pickup Wednesday morning in an ugly lump. We still get pickup, but the two piles (one on each side of the driveway) are very unsightly and just pain dirty.
Again, who does this? Who steals recycling bins?
An idiot, that's who. An idiot who is going to find him/herself in recycling hell sorting green/brown/amber/clear bottles for the rest of eternity, with some relief time on the line de-balling aluminum foil crumples.
Pearl
Today--Tuesday--will be interesting.
1. The Big D is COLD. We are experiencing a chilly few days, which I love: waking up with the windows open and the chill of what would normally be spring weather slipping in, while I am under toasty down quilts. I love anything that delays the inevitable hothothot weather acomin' down the line.
2. In my history class, students will be presenting today... ah, a Day of Trust. Three groups, each presenting/teaching one of the late 19th-century "isms" found in theatre and the other arts, avant-garde movements. I look forward to this and to (hopefully) not batting clean up. Only one of the groups has prepared pre-presentation reading/prep material... which is a slightly worrisome sign.
3. Continuing my de-cluttering activities. I am starting to get slightly ahead in my quest to de-clutter, simplify, and organize my house. This weekend, I bought a new translucent bin for my bathroom cleaning tools (neatly organized now), three under-shelf white wire baskets (2 for bathroom and 1 for understairs closet), three smallish clear boxes for my bathroom drawers for a. small tubes of Neosporin and other goo; b. those aluminum blister-paks of pills (on which I write dosage instructions in Sharpie); c. small bottles of pills and liquid that roll around loose in the drawer... usually. I also bagged up more "stuff" for Goodwill and ransacked closets for consignment store... my next quest.
Today's deal: putting in place my new printer/scanner/fax/copier, while getting the old one ready for Craig's list sale.
I have also organized Jack, the Cat. He has a new, gold-color stretchy collar with bell, a new brass nameplate with his name and my cell#, and a new flea collar. (Do you know that fleas in Texas are extra-big and extra-hungry? Yessirree.)
Once my closets are free of no-longer-used clothing and my drawers are empty of duplicate kitchen or bathroom junk... then I can move on to the bookshelves. My ultimate quest is to get rid of three of my larger bookcases, which means selling/recycling/finding new homes for all the books on these shelves: never an easy task. A new bookcase in my office would be a great help, but that seems to be a real difficulty.
The summer--and endless free time--loom in front of me...
Ok, endless free time mostly devoted to research and writing my monograph on actresses and articles thereof. And THEN de-cluttering. On breaks.
Pearl
As promised, I am documenting my new vintage canister set and my array of egg beaters.
The canisters were a gift from my baby sister K on my birthday. We found them in the antique mall near her home where I bought the first eight hand beaters. She bought the second group for me, as a Christmas present last year. My parents just sent them from their home, where they kindly store things for me (or just put up with that duty as a parent!) since my place is so small.
K had cracked up while I bought the first group, because I test each one: rotoring madly to check out the smoothness of the action, the quality of the gears and grip, checking the whole thing for nicks, dents, and paint chipping. I have a definite need for "working" beaters (although I don't use them for beating, per se) and she was laughing her ass off three aisles away hearing me rotor at top speed.
A couple of the beaters she bought me aren't hanging up. One, I ran out of hooks (note to self: go to Ikea for hooks--thanks, K!) and two, some won't fit comfortably. This one --
has its own measuring jar for mixing mayonnaise, salad dressing, whatever. I saw a couple of these last week while I was antiquing with a friend, but forgot that K had bought me one. This one is in much better condition than any I saw. There is another, larger one that has no jar and a cream-colored wooden egg handle as well as a small, toy-sized one, also without a jar. They can't really hang comfortably on the wall, so I'll have to figure out what to do with them.
I fell in love (anew) with hand mixers through seeing and teaching the play ON THE VERGE, a wonderful script by Eric Overmyer in which three Victorian female explorers travel through Terra Incognita. One of the many artifacts they discover are... hand beaters. No idea what they are--these beaters post-date Victorian days--nonetheless they "rotor" madly. I always love the feel and sound of them, even as a kid. Now I have mixed that up with the memories of an hilarious and intelligent play I really adore: what could be better?
Now I have 15 of them.
The most familiar shape to me was the above handle and rotor. But now I find I am in love with the egg-shaped handle as well.
Mmmm. Very satisfying end of that particular challenge and high point of this week.
Pearl
Since I shared my Paris morning ritual, I feel I should do the same for my US home.
Countertop coffee machine. I'd like to retire this model and get a new one, but that's for the future. The coffee is kept in the blue tins, one for decaf and one for the hard stuff.
The nice thing about this coffeemaker is that I can set it to turn on every morning. Nothing like coming downstairs to a perfectly brewed pot of coffee. No waiting. No cloudy-brain morning preparation.
Not nearly as strong and delicious as my French cup, but a new coffeemaker might improve that.
This is the rest of my kitchen.
And this. I'm a big fan of Ikea and of old-fashioned eggbeaters.
And this. My always-full, all-too-piled-up counter.
And, finally, this.
Pearl
Here in the Big D, we don't see much in the way of snow or ice compared to our northern neighbors--even Oklahoma gets more snow and ice than we do! However, earlier this week, we had an overnight storm that left us with some snow and some ice. Classes at My U were cancelled on Wednesday morning, and though everyone assumed the ice would be gone by afternoon, it wasn't, not until the next day. (This is the reason municipalities save $$ on salt and dirt here, because mostly snow and ice melt quickly, becoming barely a memory right away. Kids here do not score snow days as I did when I was younger, at least 3-5 times a year. Sad for them, I say. There's nothing as great as a day snatched from authority, where one can sled or read all day on a weekday!)
But I digress.
Wednesday morning, I took pictures in my courtyard of the weather aberration.
This is snow around the base of the magnolia tree on the center of the courtyard. It is a kind of slushy snow, but snow. Here is the ice.
This is one of the ornamental plants in the courtyard, where every leaf is coated in ice. Pretty.
Harder to see, but the magnolia leaves and branches are coated with ice.
I like the ice-coated look: glittery and bright. We don't get much of this in DFW, so I'm definitely glad I took these pictures.
Pearl
Yesterday was, as you know, the first day of the semester. My first class after, well, being away on another planet.
Exhausting.
I forgot how exhausting it is to stand and talk for 80-some minutes. Okay, in this case only about 55, because I ended early, but still! Had to figure out how to plug in computer to new technology. Please note: Just because I have an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. doesn't mean I automatically understand what a "dongle" is, or that I can sense the difference between a Mac dongle and a PC dongle. And can we get another word? "Dongle" sounds just wrong. I will not be able to say it in mixed company, and I can say a LOT of things.
Then, of course, there's the mysterious "toggling" between on-screen and off-screen, as well as the fact that they've placed the shelf for my laptop (yes, must also use my laptop everyday in class, so carting back and forth) too far from the central desk for me to be able to use said laptop for lectures... and so must print out lecture everyday rather than store on hard drive.
Life is hard.
Ok, bitching done.
Upside is the students, naturally, and this group of sophomore students is particularly enjoyable. Bright, lively, a little confused, and rested from Christmas break, they will be fun to teach and a challenge to stay ahead of. Both of which are always good for a teacher.
Today I have the playwrights, two classes full--beginner-intermediates and master students. And for them, today is about talking and about writing... lots of writing. Hands-on, pen-and-paper writing.
Just to give you a picture of life here in the Big D rather than Paris, here are some pictures of my complex.
This is taken from my front door.
Note the brand new gas grill: a source on controversy for my complex. Some say, Go, gas! Some say, No gas. I was in paris, thank God, and out of the loop.
This is the magnificent magnolia tree right outside my door and second-floor study window. In bloom, it is absolutely delicious. The courtyard is one of the major draws for this complex, since it is landscaped byprofessionals. There are also two gardenia trees, multiple bushes, and two places to sit. This makes up for not having individual patios, in many ways. The courtyard--the whole complex--is also delightfully quiet, missing the constant sounds of traffic that fill many other areas of DFW.
Pearl
