Though I haven't quite made a full recovery from my cold yet (and its been weeks!) I'm finally well enough to cook again. More importantly, I'm well enough to be able to taste food again. Its amazing what we take for granted: we moan about how bad we feel when we wake up feeling sick - blocked noses, teary eyes, sore throats! - but on the mornings we wake up normal, no further thoughts are given to the way we feel...despite how not bad we feel.
Since A. and I woke up feeling almost normal this morning, we decided to spend the day looking at condos for rent. Now I don’t know about you, but I love apartment hunting. As a creative type, I tend to view unfurnished apartments as blank canvasses, and can spend hours bent over floor plans with a set of markers, drawing couches and beds and tables in every arrangement possible. I suppose that’s why I find myself moving every year (though I hate the physical act of moving as much as the next person); each new, spotless, white apartment teases my imagination with its possibilities and inspires design fantasies of lush fabrics, sleek furniture and rooms rich with ambiance. Immediately upon entry, my mind fills each empty room with furniture and decoration, not always limited to what I have at home. So what if I don’t own a pony hair chaise? It’ll be perfect next to that antique armoire I’ll buy someday.
One of the greatest downfalls of being a student is living on a student’s budget. While all the rooms I envision are almost always filled with beautiful antiques and elegant furniture, they are, upon my moving in, inevitably furnished by Ikea (and low-end Ikea at that). Budget aside, its pretty daunting trying to find a safe neighborhood to move into when newscasters pepper their sentences with words like “drive-by”, “homicide” and “kidnapping” as if they were nouns. I’m beginning to wonder how lucky I am to have survived living across a strip joint on Yonge Street for a year by myself.
A. and I didn’t make any life-altering choices today, which is ok since we have till the end of August to clear out of our current apartment. He’s too practical to start committing to anything this early on, but those floor plans we got today are just begging to be drawn on.
