An Ode to My Apartment

As we draw nearer and nearer to saying a final goodbye to our first apartment in Chicago I can't help but reminisce about  how adorable and fun this apartment was. As many a romantic novelist has said "There's no love like the first" (Nicholas Sparks). And I would like to amend that and say "There is no apartment like the first" (Emily Forest). I mean you never ever really forget that first crappy, cheap little apartment that you found and financed all by yourself. And regardless of how truly terrible it is you still feel a sense of pride when you think about how you found it and how you worked hard at your minimum wage job to afford it. Saying goodbye to your first adult apartment is one of those bitter sweet moments in life, inevitable and for the better.

So here is an ode to my terrible, crappy, and charming first apartment in the city.

Wasn't it fun for the first two weeks we lived here when there was no hot water to shower or to do the dishes? Nothing says "congratulations your an adult" like not having hot water.

That charming way the smoke alarm in the kitchen goes off when it's just too hot, no smoke needed. Nope sorry you can't turn on the oven or boil water on the stove, if its over 80° outside you don't want to wake the irrational smoke alarm. 

Wasn't it cute how the neighbors dog killed all the grass so the front yard consisted of mud in varying stages of puddle form. 

And how in the winter your vast cavernous rooms were impossible to keep warm, so I spent the series of polar vortexes wrapped in blankets and sweatshirts never venturing farther than a few feet from a space heater. 

And while we are on the subject of cold weather. Remember how the back door froze shut so we had to carry the trash all the way through the house and then risk our lives walking across the alley of ice to the trash cans. 

Remember when you thought it would be funny and cute to short circuit the ceiling fan and cause half the apartment to be without electricity for 3 days. There is nothing quite like peeing by battery-operated-LED-lamp light. 

How I will miss the repetitive and mind melting music of the ice cream truck, providing us with the soundtrack for our summer

Oh the adventures you took us on! 

And to you Mr. Raccoon living in the roof, I commend you for finding a rent free home for the cold cold chicago winter. 

Will I be sad to see our little apartment go? A little bit. Will my new apartment have "charming," "eccentric" and "vintage" characteristics that might drive me up a wall? Probably. 

But for right now all my energy is focused on being excited about moving to a nicer and closer apartment. 

Stoop Kids never leave the stoop! 

A New Era

Alright, that's it, I'm done. It's been so long since I have written ANYTHING that I am literally going CRAZY!!

I mean come one! Is this the face of a sane person? 

Aside from emails and text messages I have written absolutely nothing. Not a single blog post or sketch! I never really realized how much  enjoyed the cathartic and creative release of writing until I stopped doing it. This last year I became so in love with writing that I had all these dreams and aspirations of maybe someday writing a book (or books.) Maybe novels or illustrated childrens books, who knows! But quite frankly I won't come anywhere near writing a book if I can't even motivate myself to write a blog post once a week. I am going to have to be exponentially more motivated to write and confident in my writing if I want to ever try to write anything significant.

So I will end my embargo on writing. I know the last time I set a goal to write a post once a week I ended up derailing and sending my goal train flying into the bottom of a deep deep canyon where traces of the smoke can still be seen. 

This time I won't go so far as to set such a lofty goal as to write once a week for this blog. But I would like to write at least once a week for something. Wether it's for this blog or a sketch or some other project I need to keep writing to restore my soul to its former place of creative output. 

And in case you've missed it I have been doing some awesome and crazy stuff recently:

-I am still working at The Lookingglass and I am having an absolute blast! 

Just a small window into my life... a phone full of pictures taken by 13 year olds. 

-I just signed a lease on a new apartment and will be slowly moving into it over the course of the next month. 

The switch plate for the lights in my new house! 

-And I finally and officially made my relationship with my incredible girlfriend public on Facebook! 

We received an overwhelming amount of love and support from friends and family. 

So here we go! Kicking off a new era in this blog, and what better time than exactly one year after starting it!