Let me tell you about our apartment..

 EH and I moved into our completely UNfurnished apartment last week, and we were ecstatic to finally have our own keys, our own bedrooms, our own address. We quickly realized though, that the not owning our own beds was an issue. I bought an air mattress at K-Mart (yes I know! It even has its own subway stop!), but the pump we borrowed malfunctioned at approximately 12:30AM leaving us with a very hard wood floor to call our bed. Like the Dakota girls we are, we got creative and gathered blankets, towels, yoga mats, robes, and winter coats to pile on the floor as a make-shift mattress. Then we each took Tylenol PM to knock us out. Despite our best efforts... it was a rough night (understatement alert!).

We were both laying on our backs, when we woke up from our first night at 3W to the distinct sound of a vocal performer practicing her scales. Opera style. La la la la la la. Up and down again. Loud and high and opera-y. She must live above us. EH and I turned to each other and laughed at the hilarity of the last 12 hours. We had sore backs, sore necks, well sore EVERYTHING, and then we went to Ikea to buy furniture.

We were very vulnerable and pathetic furniture shoppers, and we went a little crazy. The process of writing down isle and bin numbers for the furniture we saw in the displays was thrilling, but once we got to the warehouse and actually had to find boxes for our beds, couch, table and chairs, dresser, lamps, etc... that was a different story. We did it though, and were called by a fellow female shopper "women of the 21st century." That was nice of her to say, but we still had all our stuff delivered.

Our super's name is Angel, and although he is incredibly difficult to understand on the phone, he seems like a really nice guy. We call him Super Angel. His family lives in the apartment above us, and EH and I met his young son in the hallway the other day. His name is Angel too. Erin and I find security in knowing that there are angels above us.

Putting together our new furniture has been like an exercise in marriage counseling for EH and me. We decided that if we can survive setting up all of our furniture, we can survive anything. There have been some rough patches in our construction efforts, like when the futon didn't come with directions, and I thought we should just "figure it out" ourselves. Also when we put my bed together, we switched two boards around accidentally and now one corner of my bed is held together by one single screw. Good thing I'm a tame sleeper. We only have two more things to put together, and then I'll post pics. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we did all of this without tools. You can call me Macgyver from now on.

The other day I saw girl our age walking up the stairs in our building, and later I told Erin, "Maybe we could be friends." Erin said, "I think I saw her too. Is she white?" "Yes!," I said. Then we laughed at how funny it is that being white is enough of a description for us to identify the same person. Then we laughed at how she is probably the opera singer.

The bedrooms in our apartment are very unevenly distributed. We flipped a coin, and I got the bigger room with two huge windows facing the street. (I'm also paying more). I love my room so much, and I'm thankful that EH is cool with taking the smaller, less light room. I get some interesting sound effects from my room too, which is an added bonus (or a disadvantage, depending on my ability to sleep in). This morning it sounded like someone was playing a Casio keyboard directly into my windows, with the function changed from "piano" sound to "street" sound. The sounds of fire trucks, car alarms, honking cars, garbage trucks from keys A to G filled my room. It reminded me of this (minus the moo-ing). I'm getting used to the noise though, and in a weird way, it's almost reassuring to know that so much is going on outside and I can, but don't have to, be a part of it.

Pics to come!