Do grownups live here?

I freely admit that these are emphatically not the best pictures I've ever taken. But, they do convey the general idea of the look of the place, even though they give you no idea of the space. Actually, it's only pictures of two rooms; I didn't take any of the kitchen, guest room, or our bedroom. Those will come later, when they are tidy.

The view from the front door-- 2/3 of the living room. Sadly, the fireplace isn't functional.

But as you can see, we've hidden the couch in a pleasant little nook created by the bookshelf.

Go further in and you can see the front door and closet on the left, and the entrance into the dining room on the right. The two pictures hanging by the lamp are illustrations from the Canterbury Tales, given to us as a wedding gift.

The view into the dining room and the rest of the apartment from the living room. The doors at the end of the hall are to the two bedrooms. To the right of the dining room are the pantry/workroom and kitchen.

Walk into the dining room and this is the view on your left. We actually rotated this table around after I took this picture, so now it goes horizontally. It looks much better that way.

And this is the view to your right--more books, more artwork, another clock, and the door into the pantry.

So there you have it--the two main rooms of our home. I am in love with it.

Is it October yet?

All the public rooms in our house are now what I can safely call--without even a shred of false optimism--done. Books are unpacked, artwork is hung, furniture is moved, floors are swept, and everything has found itself a home. As soon as I finish writing, I am going to put batteries in the wall clocks and set them so that unsuspecting guests do not wander from room to room thinking that at one moment it is perpetually 10 o'clock, and at another it is precisely 7:05 and 21 seconds. Then it will be really done.

The October issue of Martha Stewart Living came in the mail today, complete with a cover photo of pumpkins and squash arranged cunningly to look like giant, root vegetable-y toadstools. We sat out on our front step in the sun and read it together and enjoyed the burgeoning crispness of Autumn in the air while discussing the relative merits of apple cider muddled with cranberries and green curry served in a black cauldron at a Halloween party (verdict: cider is always better on its own, and green curry in a cauldron is clever and sounds delicious).

The arrival of Martha Stewart magazine is always a discombobulating event, because it comes some two weeks before the actual month in question is due to begin. Now everything feels October-y, even though there's a week and a half left in September. I had to forcibly restrain myself from buying a pumpkin and some pots of 'mums at Whole Foods this evening.

I went to Whole Foods because there was nothing left in the fridge but eggs and some spoiled ears of corn that we didn't eat because I did show some false optimism and assume that my husband would ever be in the mood for corn within the life of the produce. As soon as it goes out of season, he will crave it and I will shake my head and smile tenderly and offer him a pale memory of fresh corn out of a can and think wistfully of the delicious summer feasting that we let slip by.

Although I didn't buy a pumpkin, I did buy several pounds of organic fingerling potatoes (the gold ones and the purple ones; purple potatoes are a joy to my heart), a roast for later this week, some beef for dinner tonight, zucchini, mushrooms, and onions. I pondered long and hard over the many varieties of apples that are now available, but was so spoiled for choice that in the end I threw my hands up and decided that the choice was beyond me for the moment. I experimented dangerously, too, with bags of frozen vegetables ready to be tossed into curry or fried rice at any moment.

Curry and fried rice are two staples of our weekly diet. Curry because it is both easy and delicious--a tablespoon of curry paste, a can of coconut milk, whatever vegetables we have lying around, and whatever meat I pull from the freezer, along with a generous helping of basmati rice from our magical rice cooker of bliss. And then, with the leftover rice, I make fried rice, because it is easy, quick, and delicious.

I learned how to make fried rice when I lived in Alabama and was poor. The value of being poor is that it teaches you how to make delicious poor-people food (as Dave calls it). Rice is cheap and nutritious. So are onions. Garlic isn't cheap, but we always have it anyway. Toss in some scrambled eggs and any vegetables that didn't get put in the curry, throw in a handful (literally, I just scoop a handful out of the jar) of cumin and coriander, a little cinnamon, and some cayenne pepper, and we eat like kings. Fried rice is an end-of-the-week dish, when we're out of fresh meat but not yet out of everything else and so not yet willing to go to the grocery store.

Earlier today we had breakfast at Kalie's with Molly and Brittany, who came out from Grove City last night to play Scrabble and Cranium with us, and to sleep on our living room floor, because they are Good Friends. After we said our goodbyes and saw them on their way, we stopped at Susan's Yarns, a small yarn shop on the way home. I've been wanting to give it a look and see how it was, and I wasn't disappointed. It's everything a mom-and-pop store ought to be--dingy, dark, and disorganized. There were empty cardboard boxes on the floor and a giant bin of assorted buttons, and box after box after box of every yarn you could ever hope to want, with not a price tag to be seen.

When I'd found a yarn I wanted (I'm being ambitious and knitting some socks for Dave and myself, because the weather is getting cold o' nights and we have wood floors and dubious-looking radiators for our only heat source), I looked around helplessly for someone to tell me how much it might cost. Eventually, I found the owner, who was a tall, thin, and ancient-looking Australian with white hair and a white aran-style sweater so covered with cables and bobbles and mismatched wooden buttons that it looked like someone made a stitch sampler and then decided at the last minute to throw some sleeves on and call it a day. He knew the price for every skein, ball, and hank in the store, recommended the right needle size for the yarn in question, and looked scornfully down his nose at me when I said I prefer bamboo needles to metal. It was perfect.

I'm making faux-Indian food for dinner. Lamb at Whole Foods was a cool $15/pound, so I opted for beef instead. Cube the beef, fry it up with some onions, throw in some potatoes, cauliflower, peas, and maybe a little zucchini and then dump a bottle of pre-made korma sauce over it (I'm not proud, and I am lazy, at least in this instance--real korma takes forever to make) and toss some rice in the rice cooker. Twenty minutes of work and then two hours of enjoying the smell of softly simmering magic as it wafts through our beautiful apartment and warms everything it touches.

And then I'll get back on the computer and upload some pictures of said beautiful apartment.

Or maybe I'll run back to Whole Foods for those 'mums. They smelled so good.

Oops

I just realized that I haven't written anything here in a month. My excuse is that the "S" key on our keyboard is being sticky and so it's frustrating to write.

Here is a summary of our recent news:

I got a job. It's nannying--it's fun, it pays well, I'm working full time, and we've doubled our income. That feels good, cause we were pretty broke.

Now that we have some money, and now that the weather is cooling down enough that we are no longer wandering around in a soporific heat-zombie haze, we've started to look about ourselves and turn our apartment into someplace where grownups live. This is an improvement over its previous appearance, which can best be described as a glorified storage facility.

Today we rearranged the living room, hung artwork and clocks, and put up curtains. It's amazing how curtains and a few paintings will make a whole room suddenly feel like a "real" room, even if it's still a mess. There are boxes and things everywhere still, but it feels much more put together all the same.

I sprained my foot at LARP a week ago. Still sore, because I haven't been keeping off of it. Whoops. There is a somewhat less-than-thrilling tale connected to it that I may share at some point. Mostly I'm just annoyed because I didn't hurt it doing something fun and/or glorious out in the woods in the middle of the night. I did that for 3 1/2 hours without so much as a stumble.

Also, we bought a real live grownup alarm clock today after three months of using cell phones with alarm tones that we hate. It is a fancy schmancy $12 dealie from Wal-Mart that wakes you up with either alarm clock bells, cathedral bells, or wind chimes. It also plays noises to help you fall asleep. I am currently listening to the "ocean" setting ("brook" had too many frogs and not enough running water, and "wind chimes" was essentially an Enya song that never made it to the vocals). I feel sleepy already.

Now that I'm settling in to a work routine and our house is finally, finally getting to a state where it's set up, it's finally beginning to sink in for me that we are for-real married and not just on some glorious temporary vacation from life. It's a good feeling, but surreal in a too-good-to-be-true sort of way. Does that make sense? After the last year, my brain is convinced that seeing Dave every day means that I am on vacation from whatever drudgery I am normally involved in, ergo the fact that I see Dave every day--well, you see what I'm saying. The idea that I can live real life and see Dave every day is novel and exciting.

I think there were other things I was going to say, but, although I was being facetious about it a few minutes ago, the ocean sounds and seagulls really are starting to make me sleepy, so more later.