I've Been Talking To The Wall And Its Been Answering Mee-ee (Oh-Dahlin', HOWWWW I Miss You)

Ok, so I thought I would take the opportunity to post about the apartment Jacke and I moved into recently. The new place is a 100 year-old house on the north side of Bardstown road (on a side street called Tyler Parkway) and it sports an awful paint job, a charming porch swing, and an adorable courtyard in the back. It has a ridiculous amount of floor space. You don't get any pictures yet because I don't have any, and the place is not clean enough yet to warrant taking them. Rest assured once I get them I will post them here.

It has been a strange, stressful move for the both of us, but in my case it will be rough because it marks the first apartment that I have not been dying to move out of. Every other apartment I have lived in, due to either the people or the place, has given my pretty obvious clues in one way or another to say 'time to go.' The apartment I have been living in for the last three or so years has not really done that so much. There are annoying(and sort of borderline-tchochke) things about it, of course, but for all those things, it is a clean, inexpensive, easily managed place in which I immediately felt at home from the moment I moved in. This new place has not exactly done that for me yet.

Also, it is a stylistically different apartment in that it reminds me more of Old Louisville than it does of the Highlands. There are some nice, cozy things about it, but also some quirky, nonsensical things (like wallpaper in the kitchen. Why wallpaper? When is wallpaper ever a good decision?) and some completely ridiculous things like kitchen cabinets built into the wall that are made to be inconspicuous by being covered up with......you guessed it, wallpaper! Have you ever said to someone 'I bumped my head on the wall because you left it open'? Well, I HAVE. And it made PERFECT CONTEXTUAL SENSE. Also when you are using the bathroom (#1, standing) you have to watch yourself at work, because there is for some reason a medicine cabinet right above the crapper. Sitting down is not better, because the sink console, while a nice console, is directly in front of the latrine--when you sit, the cabinet handle balls are literally inches from your head. For this I count myself fortunate to have kept off the 60 pounds I lost in high school, because if I didn't there would probably be no way to drop the kids off at the pool. I wouldn't fit. It is also fortunate that I don't have very many overweight friends, because I would feel uncomfortable inviting them over for dinner.

As a side note, we have a CREEPY ASS BASEMENT, which is used to watch movies and play video games in. Also, free use of the washer and dryer(!) which is in a big room that seems to scream "I WAS MADE FOR YOUR PING-PONG TABLE, BABY!" and so we are currently looking on craigslist for one.

It is going to be difficult for me to adjust because the new place is not a modern apartment whatsoever and it does not lend itself to things I like in furniture, such as lighter wood tones and clean, straight lines. The symmetry in many of the rooms is not exactly correct. This bothers me on a fundamental level. For example, Jacke's room was an addition to the place, and we have decided that it was a poorly constructed one because the floor bears no pretense of being level, and thus there are a bunch of triangles all around the room where there should be parallel lines. I think that if I had this room, I would go bat-shit crazy in about forty five minutes. Jacke seems to love it, though, ostensibly because it has the antique look of a doll-house (as in, one that was constructed by a second grader) and so I just don't ever go in there.


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I've been listening to lots of old Elvis Costello lately--really, what I've been listening to has been all over the map and it has been like this for a while, but in particular Costello's song 'Human Hands' from the Imperial Bedroom is often playing on repeat in my car. It was brought back to my attention by my friend Loren, who has a cover version by someone named Sondre Lerche, a younger Finnish guy that is starting to gain some popularity in the States, albiet limited popularity. Loren asked if I knew any Elvis Costello or had the original version, and so I guess I sort of rediscovered the tune after a night of listening to my old E.C. and The Attractions records that were gifted to me from a high school English teacher. The tune reminded my not only of how brilliant a lyricist Costello is (he and Dylan are playing here on the same bill in October. Can you even imagine?) but also of the people I am missing and how I am missing them; you might be one of those people I am thinking about. Actually, you probably are. Maybe you will get a call soon telling you exactly how much I am missing you. Yes, that sounds good. Many of these calls will be long overdue.