"Home Improvement"

I'm still in the process of figuring out what turns a place into home.

Now I'm supposing that moving into a house with someone and doing bunches of decorating and furniture shopping for it together is an altogether different scenario.  That will happen down the road, I hope, but for now I'm on a bit of a different quest: turning my apartment (for one) into home.

After college graduation, I was lucky enough to be able to move out on my own right away.  But since then, conditions haven't been quite ideal for really nesting into a place.  For one, I've ended up moving once a year - and while diagramming new furniture arrangements is actually quite fun, any roots I've put down in that place (both indoors and the surrounding neighborhood) get abruptly pulled back up again.

Secondly and more importantly, though, is the feel of a room when I'm in it.  When I think of a home, I think of coziness, peace, warmth.  I want to feel it is a place I could bring together people who are important to me, as well as a place for my own time.

Through noticing the lack of some of these features, I've begun to sense how strongly the decor inspires the feel of the room.  And I use 'decor' in the broadest sense; for me, it is mainly the furniture.  For quite awhile, my collection felt horribly mismatched - bright college dorm colors clashed with a gray-green couch inherited from a prior roommate and the beautiful dark wood of the bedroom pieces with which I grew up.  While I've appreciated not having to pay for a whole new set of furniture to fill my apartment, together they didn't create a comfy atmosphere, an environment that invited me to feel settled.  And oddly enough, it bugged me that the collection was obviously in transition from typical college dorm items.  I guess I do have some adult instincts after all. :)

In my latest apartment I'm happy to have taken a few steps closer to these goals.  My parents recently gave me a very nice living room lamp and I'm just in love with it.  Paired with a brilliant new furniture arrangement by my mom, I now have that cozy feeling in my living area.  (Well, mostly - I wouldn't mind replacing this couch at some point.)  Often now I can't help lighting a candle to accompany me through my quiet evening activities, as there's something special to me about its warmth and flickering glow.

Smaller things make big differences too.  A few paintings and a clock decorate the living room walls; a set of colorful cloth coasters is scattered about on tabletops.  My parents also brought me my bed comforter from home, for which I traded the neon green and blue one I'd used in college.  It gives my bedroom a soft lightness and even complements the colors of the curtains.

I still have a ways to go, I know.  But even if my current apartment won't be where I'll live forever, I'm happy to be finding out what makes it really feel like my home.

somedays

Someday, I will figure out a way to make my home feel a little bit like Barnes & Noble.  There is something about its atmosphere, its vibe, that calms me every time I walk in.  And I meander through endless passages, through more storytelling and knowledge that I could ever absorb, and finally bury myself in a corner to spend a half hour with whatever printed word has caught my mind.

Someday, I will have a car, so I need only depend on myself to drive to places I want to go, and events I want to attend, and to visit who I want to spend time with.  And I'll give people rides, because I know how grateful I am every time someone makes me life easier by giving me a ride now.

Someday, if I'm still living in the city, I will have a cat, because of the way my friend's cat - and seeing how he loves this cat - has forever endeared me to the species.  The kittens in the window in the shop next to my building entrance might have something to do with it too.  Or maybe I'll have a dog, a small one that I might be able to get away with having in an apartment, because of the way I smile every time I see my coworker's tiny white dog.

Someday, I'll take a SEPTA bus adventure.  I'll try all those north/south routes I've never taken, and at least observe if not walk around all the areas of which I'm rather unaware.  I so like to call this city my own, and it is wider than what my experience encompasses.

Someday, I will write a novel.  Despite my vast ability to be unmotivated to make progress on any of the personal projects I have in my head, somehow it will come together.  I will get over the times I can't string together the words to make a single satisfying sentence, to reach the times when it flows like this is what I was meant to do with my life.  I'll hole up in local cafes; the employees will know all the drinks and pastries that I typically order; I'll wear baggy sweatpants and nerdy t-shirts all the time; sunlight will stream in as the hours are whiled in narration, sometimes with a musical background because I can't take silence for too long.  And then I'll hope against hope that someone else in the world thinks the result is good enough to share with people.

Someday, I will go on a cruise to a tropical island.  The ship will have salsa dances, and a bunch of really good dancers will randomly be on the ship, and somehow I will be lucky enough to dance with them.  At night on the island I will drink, and dance, and get lost in house music.  I'll sleep til the sunlight wakes me, go sightseeing, visit tiny local shops, eat food I never knew of in the first place, lie tanning on the beach... forget the normal world for a little window of time.

Someday - though I cannot imagine it really exists - I will find a job of DJing for cafes and fancy lounges and bars.  How better to put to use the endless hunger for, the hours of time spent exploring, the depths of a genre of music?  The good stuff may be hard to find, but man, when it's found, it's good.  Eventually I'll find some avenue to create this vibe for other people.

Someday, I'll have an apartment or a house with an empty wood-floored room, so that at last I can host friends, from one to many, for dancing.

Someday, I will be married.  I'll have someone to kiss goodbye as we head off to work.  We'll spend perfect rainy Sundays cuddled up in a blanket with movies and really good beer - complete contentment.  And I will never go to sleep alone again.

philly bucket list!

-- inspired by The Bucket List.  I've been meaning to do this for awhile, but it's also totally meant to be a work in progress.

• Sundae party
• The Franklin - with Ben (seriously, how did I not know about this place??)
• check out Northern Liberties
• Silk City (been mentioned to me enough times)
• Cuba Libre - have to try out salsa there
• Vango - I've been there once, but should try out the salsa night there too
• browse Passyunk Ave
• go to 69th Street Terminal.  because I never have.
• really learn South Philly
• watch an entire Phillies game on tv at a bar
• discover and try out local cafés (in progress...)
• Argentine tango(!!!!)
• Fiume (45th & Locust) - mentioned to me the other day... again, how haven't I heard of this place?  Good things!

Now that I'm in Philly "for real",

I've kinda been making a mental list of things to do.  And since this stage of life I've now reached currently has no real defined end, I essentially have all the time in the world to get around to these.

explore local cafés - up to about 4 so far

bike around the city - done so a few times (to LaB once too!)

find more Latin and swing dancing nights

get on random buses to go check out parts of the city I haven't been around

go to Chris's sometimes

try out bars I haven't been to

bike the Schuylkill River trail

The café addiction

...I have it.

On any number of nights I am tempted strongly enough by the allure of the café to overcome my tendencies to bum the night away in my room and walk 2.7 blocks over to Saxbys.  At Penn, I went to Starbucks often to sit and (theoretically) work, and enough times in the mornings before class that the employees knew me and asked how my summer was at the beginning of senior year.  Any time I end up in a Starbucks, actually -- wherever it may be -- I feel a bit of a sense of being home.  Now, in Philly, I've kind of made it a goal to seek out small independent street corner coffee shops and spend my Sunday afternoons in them.

The café atmosphere has some kind of mental effect on me.  It has a peace and calm about it; makes me feel like things can't really go wrong.  Stress is lessened somehow, cuz you've got a couple hours of a squishy armchair, warm lighting, relaxing music, and probably a hot drink that'll either prop you awake or take up too much of your daily allotment of calories.  Or a muffin -- gosh, I have gotten bad about eating too many muffins.  Those and scones.  I probably consume one or the other of them on more days of the week than not.

Calories designated unimportant, I sit down with my muffin or my mocha and my laptop, whiling away the time alongside others in front of their own screens or books.  We're in our own little worlds, but together in one world as well.  And thus the time goes by.

Sometimes I picture my life filled by lazy days, writing and drinking coffee, staring out windows at the world and people-watching as customers flow in and out or join my habitat of the day for a few hours.  And my butt will probably hurt often, and I'll still eat too many scones, and the guy at the counter will know my favorite drink.  Maybe I'll get brave enough to wear pajama pants occasionally and really cuddle up in a corner for awhile.  (Not sure how acceptable pajama pants are as attire worn in public after, like, high school.  Perhaps if I'm a known regular at the place...)

Well, it's a dream, anyhow.  Someday maybe.