Short Update: our housing situation

Ok, so, things are better. Exterminators and a cleaning crew have been in, and most of the bugs are dead. Centipedes and spiders started coming out as soon as the ants were gone, and while we’re seeing fewer spiders, the centipedes are more of an issue. They seem to be mostly in the basement now, but I’ve been seeing little baby ones on the main floors too. I have what might be described (by Lily) as a serious bug phobia, so while this is admittedly better, it’s still not good. I doubt I could ever live here comfortably, but it’s doable for now, and it’s definitely our best option. I’ve been semi obsessively cleaning, in an effort to keep bugs at bay. But it’s a 1500 square foot house, and I’m only one person with very little energy and a lot of important things that I’m supposed to be doing, so it always feels like a losing battle, even though I know it’s not, really. We even managed to solve the air conditioning problem, sort of, although we ended up having to pay to get one of ours out of storage.

We are actively looking for a new place, to take residence as soon as possible. Lily is primarily in charge of this, and has been working very hard. So, that’s good too. On days when I’ve killed fewer than three bugs, I can think about how this is actually a very nice house. The previous owners made some very nice renovations before selling it to the current owner. There are a couple of points about the house and the grounds that are serious drawbacks, but the yard is gorgeous, and the whole house could be gorgeous if it was just taken care of well. Lily asked me once what I would do if it were my house. I told her I would raze it. My second answer was that I would sell it or rent it out. The basement could be converted into it’s own apartment, and the upstairs rooms could even be rented out if a second floor was to much for whoever was renting the main floor. I can see potential in the place. Tons of it. But I still wouldn’t want to stay here, even though it’s a million times better than it was.

 

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What’s Out My Window; Minor Adventures In Cat Training

I can’t sleep past three a.m. lately. I can’t stay up much later than 8 p.m. This makes me feel old. However, I have discovered that I actually quite like early mornings. This is new knowledge: I’ve only rarely seen a morning on the right side of it, and often only for reasons my Great Aunts need not know about. Here, the sun starts to show as early as five a.m. This is good, rather than obnoxious. I don’t really get direct sunlight where I am now, but I do get a lot of sunlight anyway, and I can look out at the light above the house across the alleyway.

As alley views go, it’s not bad. It’s certainly much better than the last place, which had a gulag view. The gulag was what I called the open space in the center of my apartment building; the slumlords called it a courtyard. It had a jaundiced light, a drain that didn’t drain well enough to prevent mold and fungus flare ups after rain, and lots of neighbours whose windows were too close for comfort.There are other reasons I called it the gulag, but those don’t bear going into here. I lived on the first floor – which was convenient since it was a walk up and both Lily and I have physical disabilities, but this also meant that the apartment only got any significant amount of natural light one or two months out of the year. In order to let it in, we would have to draw the curtains and blinds, and then that neighbours-too-close-for-comfort thing was a concern again.

But – the purpose of this post is not to complain about my last apartment. Except for the ongoing process of cleaning and packing, I don’t have to be there anymore. This alley view is nice primarily because the backyard of the house across the alley from my balcony is well tended and landscaped. The houses across the alley are on a relatively steep hill, and unlike most people, they’ve managed to do make their yard very useable. Done differently, the terracing could definitely be wheelchair accessible, too. I occasionally ponder the landscaping and comment on it to Lily, which does feel slightly voyeuristic. I’ve decided it’s not my fault that their house is on a hill and that it’s the only thing I can see outside the windows, however. Well, and I try not to pay too much attention. Although, I do wonder to what degree the visibility of their yard affected their landscaping choices. I don’t like to think that I would consider my yards visibility as a factor in my choices (beyond how the landscaping affects privacy), but I suspect I would, at least a little.

 

My Oven Tried to Kill Me: Or, Why I May Not Use A Gas Stove Ever Again

The title isn’t hyperbole, really. Well, except for the obvious disclaimer that the oven isn’t sentient and doesn’t have intentionality. At least, I hope it doesn’t.

The CO alarm in my apartment went off on May 31. Lily and I went through the whole fire department then ER song and dance, and then stayed in a hotel for a while. The CO levels in our blood were pretty high. The interesting thing is that the level of CO in the apartment measured by the Boston Fire Dept (before opening windows), wasn’t really high enough to account for that. Instead, it looks more like we were exposed to lower levels of CO for a very long period of time, and we only found out because one day the levels in the air were high enough (or had been high long enough) to set off the alarm. I’m not sure.

I rented from what may be the worst landlord/property management company in Boston. It was a pain in the ass to even get them to change the batteries in the smoke and CO detectors when they died, and the detectors were located in the wrong place anyway. Fortunately, I’m not living there anymore, or again. They even tried to insist that it was a false alarm until I sent them the BFD incident report.

 

Less interpretative, more rectangle

The checkerboard pattern thing I've been knitting lately. It's bright blue!

This is what I’ve been working on lately, a little bit at a time. A while ago I decided I wanted to learn how to knit. I don’t know why – I wasn’t inspired by anything and there wasn’t anything in particular I wanted to make. But, I do like working with my hands. I didn’t know anyone who knitted (and I still don’t, to my knowledge) and I didn’t have money for classes, so I watched videos and looked at the tutorials on the Lion Brand Yarn website to learn how.

It worked fairly well. This blue checkerboard thing is the third thing I’ve made. When people ask me what I knit, I tell them I make interpretative rectangles, because that’s pretty much what they are. My first rectangle was a half circle. My second was more rectangular, but a bit wobbly around the edges like a lava lamp, with S curves here and there. This one is less interpretative and more rectangular, hence the post title. I’m not sure what it will be yet, but I’m thinking perhaps a very lightweight scarf. It does complement my girlfriend’s eyes. :-D

 

Dairy free omelet experimentation – without any of that fancypants Diaya cheese stuff

An equation: egg yolk plus hummus equals happy face and OM NOM NOM. I also drew this myself, with magic markers.

It’s been a while since I found out I had a moderately severe food allergy. I haven’t tried to make an omelet until now, though. I’m allergic to all dairy, and anything with dairy ingredients or dairy derived ingredients. Not just casein, but anything that at any time came from or was related to or got anywhere close to milk.

So, most of the food products I eat, for convenience’s sake, are certified kosher and dairy free. As an example, this is how I know, aside from my allergic reactions, that Silk soy products have dairy in them. Sometimes I eat vegan products. Lots of vegan stuff that isn’t also kosher isn’t actually vegan though, in that it still has amounts of very not-vegan dairy in it that are significant enough to give me a reaction. So, non-kosher vegan food products are not something that I do often. Stuff I eat pretty much consists of meat, produce, eggs, and kosher products like spices, bread, coffee, cereal, soy milk, and whatnot. Okay, now that my vegan/kosher digression is over, it’s probably important to note that I’m not vegan and I don’t really keep kosher.

My omelet experiment today was most definitely not vegan or kosher. It was tasty though. I decided I wanted to make an omelet, for the first time since I couldn’t cram some cheese in the middle of it and call it a morning. I wasn’t sure what to do with the filling. I wanted it to be gooey and a little bit savory, and after thinking about the odds and ends of what I had in my fridge, I had the idea of mixing some hummus with an egg yolk, and combining it with the other filling. For the other fillings I decided on beefsteak tomato and bacon, mostly because that’s what I have right now. Today is a grocery shopping day.

I cooked the bacon, cooled it, and chopped it. While the bacon was cooling, I sautéed my chopped tomato a little bit to soften it. I mixed that up, and let it sit while I started the egg base for the omelet. When it was ready, I spooned the filling in and poured the egg yolk/hummus mixture over it, and let it cook through.

Mine didn’t turn out as well as it could have. For the size of my frying pan I had about one or two too many eggs, so the exterior was too thick and didn’t fold well. The outside was also a little dry by the time the inside cooked. I had too much filling, which just exacerbated the folding and cooking issues.

I’m definitely looking forward to trying this again, with a bigger pan or a smaller amount of egg and filling. When I tasted the inside, it was really good. The hummus and egg yolk mixture worked really well, both on its own and with the tomato and bacon. It was savory and creamy, and almost a little bit cheesy. Not in a weird impersonating-and-not-quite-doing-it-well cheesy way, but in a gooey, savory, yummy way.

P.S. This is where you can learn about that fancypants Diaya cheese stuff. I’d really like to try some, I just can’t afford it.

 

Adventure! Or, how I bought makeup for the first time in 10 years

An interpretation of my face: browline glasses and red lips. I drew this myself, because I am talented.

Lily and I went on a field trip today to meet up with a new friend of ours. I, because I am good at planning ahead, gave her a really prominent hickey on her neck a couple of days ago in a fit of passion or some-such. I had sort of half-assedly expected it to fade, because often they do, but it didn’t. This morning, it was still really dark and really prominent. It wasn’t big, but because of the color and location it kind of stuck out in a way that would have been distracting and awkward, as well as kind of really public.

This is what prompted my titular adventure. We were scrambling around this morning getting ready in our usual way, and realized that we had absolutely nothing to cover the hickey with. Nothing. No makeup, although I did find some decades old eyeliner mixed in with my manicure stuff. We have scarves, but for the first time in ever it was just too warm to wear one and not have it be really obvious that it, one, wasn’t appropriate for the weather and, two, was covering up something.

Lily needed to be doing other things, so in order to make sure we got out the door on time, I needed to be the one to go out and get the tone correcter, concealer, and powder she needed. To make sure I was super duper prepared, I looked at her neck really hard for like two minutes so I could try to match her skin tone exactly. Then I perambulated myself over to the CVS and headed for the CoverGirl section because (1) that aisle is really confusing and (2) the gay.