Apartment Living

I love living in New York, but some days, apartment living really chafes. This morning, for example. We're leaving for Michigan tonight, so today's mission is a simple one: do some laundry, pack said laundry into some suitcases, and ready the apartment for depature, which is to say, sweep, do the dishes and take out the recycling and trash.

Our laundry facilities are in the basement and are only accessible by elevator -- an elevator which the super locks from entering the basement when it's not laundry hours (i.e., 8am to 8pm). However, some mornings he forgets, so I spent 10 minute intervals from 8:30 onward dragging my laundry bag into the elevator, pushing the basement button then swearing at the unmoving elevator. When I took the trash out, I found Fausto outside and he agreed to unlock the elevator, so I ran (literally -- my first dash on the mended knee. A worthy cause, I think you'll agree) inside, grabbed the laundry and called the elevator. Which, when it came, WAS FULL OF A GUY BRINGING HIS OWN LAUNDRY DOWN. Naturally he had precedent because he was in the elevator first, but he said we could share, so I am now stuck doing one load of laundry a time every 40 minutes for the rest of the day. Which, to be honest, really throws a monkey wrench into my plans for the day -- I cut a slit in the thumb of our only pair of rubber gloves last week, and forgot to replace them until today. So in order to tackle our dishes, I'm going to make a strategic run to Duane Reade to pick some up -- timed, of course, to make sure I don't miss a laundry cycle and get pipped out of my machine by some interloper.

Now for the food-related part of this post. (Tenuous, but it's there.) The OTHER amazing part of apartment living is that in the summer the drain on the building's electricity (I presume from AC units?) builds to a crecendo. In the past week I've managed to trip our circuit breaker no less than three times by turning on a lamp. (One lamp!) So, in order to prepare my breakfast this morning of coffee and flax waffles from the toaster, I had to turn off the overhead light so I could use the coffee machine, then turn that off so I could toast the waffles, then unplug the toaster so I could microwave the milk for my coffee. Then I could turn on the overhead light so I could assemble the dish.

Ahhh, apartment living. It's going to be good to get out of the city for a while. I'll let you know if we come back.