the perfect beginning to my summer of freedom

Wow. I just woke up on a Monday morning and did not have to drag myself out of bed before 6am, force myself to shower, eat a hasty breakfast, and speedwalk to the MAX to get to work… because I’m DONE!! My last day was last Thursday, and since then Brian and I have been packing, hauling, cleaning (we had to clean our apartment from head to toe (proverbially, of course… apartments don’t have heads, or toes! Silly!) because we want our full security deposit back), unpacking, and spending hours and hours deciding between the cute, $16 embroidered lampshade or not as cute but still kinda cute, $8 printed lampshade at IKEA… okay, that was just me. Brian just stood there and looked bored out of his mind.

Anyway, we love the new place. It’s only about 10 blocks from our old place, but is all hardwood flooring and pet-free. It’s also larger (700-750 sq feet, not quite sure), with higher ceilings, and lots of windows. And it has a built-in wardrobe/dressing area!! It’s still kind of a mess right now with the remaining boxes and stuff to unpack, but once it’s all put away and slightly decorating, I’ll post some pics. PROMISE.

The building is a bit older than our previous place – I like to joke that it has ‘vintage charm,’ since that’s a favorite phrase among almost all landlords/property managers when they’re really trying to say – look, this building is old, we’ve tried to fix it up, but it’s still old, but look! Old is charming! Why else are there so many vintage/antique stores in business? Anyway, we’ve found a few… idiosyncrasies about the place already, such as the fact that the kitchen cabinets are kinda stained and musty, the faucets need to be squeezed tight with gargantuan strength so they don’t leak, and there is a severe lack of electrical outlets. (Power strips can only do so much. Well, what can you do.)

My favorite, though, is one that I had the fortune to discover this morning as I was about to leave for a leisurely breakfast at the coffee place down the street. I unlocked both locks at the door, and went to pull it open… and it was stuck! I locked and unlocked them again. Still stuck. I peeked in the crack between the door and the trim… there was ANOTHER bolt in there… a bolt that can only be locked/unlocked with a key… FROM THE OUTSIDE. AHHH!! Brian must have locked both doors on his way out to work in the morning, and since we’d always come and left together until this morning, we didn’t know that there is NO WAY TO UNLOCK THAT LOCK FROM THE INSIDE.

I WAS TRAPPED IN OUR NEW APARTMENT!!!

I called Brian. ‘Where are you?’

‘Uh… somewhere far, far away.’

‘Oh. Crap.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m locked inside the apartment.’

‘What?!’

After it was determined that if he were to come back and open the door for me, it wouldn’t be for a long, long, time, I told him that I would find a way out, then headed to the kitchen, where there is a large window leading out to the fire escape. Convenient, eh? The fire escape happens to lead to another window, which leads into the hallway outside our apartment door. So I climbed out there and discovered that the window, though open, is held shut with a chain latch. GREAT! It looked like my only option was to climb DOWN the fire escape… only the ladder to the ground was pulled up, so unless I could figure out a way to unlatch it, I was going to have to jump from the second story.

It was barely 9am at this point, and I just wasn’t sure that I was capable of such feats of adventure before I’d even had my coffee.

I had to try, though… so I climbed back into the apartment and put sneakers on (no way I’m foolhardy enough to attempt this all in flip flops!), then hauled myself back out onto the fire escape. When I reached the ladder, it seemed to be on some sort of spring system and not a latch, so as I put my weight on the lower half of the ladder, it just swung down and I thankfully did not have to do any sort of crazy jumping. I then quickly headed back into the building with my keys, lest any spectators think that I was breaking and entering (or, having broken and entered, now on my way out…) and let myself back into my own apartment.

Then I called Brian and told him that I was going to lock him into the apartment sometime to get him back. Ha!!

I can see this becoming an ongoing prank that we play on each other. Except he would have way more fun climbing down the fire escape, and probably wouldn’t even use the damn ladder.