Loft Living

I'm already counting the hours until our house gets put back together - we start with polyurethane tomorrow morning and then we have to wait 2 hours between each coat (we've been told that there needs to be about 3 coats) and the 24 hours before the furniture comes back. Carpets can't be put in for another two weeks, but I'm over it.

Anyway, that means our "loft living" will hopefully soon come to a close. When I was apartment searching in grad school, I wanted to get a studio apartment but none were open. I ended up in a one bedroom that was the perfect size just for little ol me and Morty the cat. Right now, Andrew and I are scrunched into a living space about the size of that apartment. But now, in addition to most of the furniture that was in that apartment - my couch, my chair, my bed, my dresser, my desk, my tv - we have all of the things from Andrew's bachelor pad - his couch, his chair, his dresser, his computer, his tv. Oh, and there's my twin bed from when I was in high school on top of the dining room table. At first, we were doing ok. We kept things tidy, had tools separate from laundry, a safe place for bills and receipts, and that kind of thing. However, that's when we thought we'd be living like this for a week.

Now that our loft space has been lived in for two weeks, it's a veritable mess. There's mail all over, a few dirty dishes, random medicines and purse contents strewn all over the coffee table, and the stack of bedding now intermingles with drop cloths and shop rags. We haven't made our bed in a week (since my grandparents were here). It just doesn't feel right, as it's on the dining room floor.

Since Andrew and I are both tidy people, the chaos is starting to drive us a little nuts. I think we've both given up. Part of this stems from the fact that when you wear the same outfit (I have two in rotation) for two weeks as you sweat and get brown gunky floor goo stuck to the seat of your shorts, it's really hard to have high hygienic standards. We have cleaned up our act a little - we moved the trash can to the middle of the living room for a few days so it was easier to deposit the take-out when we'd finished eating.

The cats, however, are having a grand time in their expansive living space which includes the kitchen and the basement. I used a plastic drop cloth to close off the pass-through and we closed the kitchen door which is barely ever closed, so it feels a little weird. The cats had left the plastic window alone until 6am when Morty realized he could paw at it to get our attention. Now whenever Morty wants something like food or attention, he just paws at the window. I don't think he's smart enough to realize that he's capable of ripping the whole apparatus down and that's why we come at his beckon call, but he does know now that pawing at the window means that his humans will become his hand servants without fail.

At least someone is enjoying the arrangement.