Apartment Life in the Winter

My guilty little secret: I love this apartment.

Our name for the modem in the Airstream was Firefly, the name we gave the trailer that we kinda knew from the beginning wouldn’t stick but we chose it, anyway, because man do we love that show. For the apartment we had to pick a modem name fast, and we picked Purgatory. Between places.

Various Levels of Hell

So far, I think it’s been nothing but multiple circles of hell for Tracy. For example, there are so many dogs here, some in the hallways, some on the staircase, some by the building door, one who gets walked in bad weather with its pajamas/no-coat-wearing owner inside the building and the dog on a retractable leash down the steps outside, so that Tracy has to wait in our doorway for this dog to do its business.

Tracy doesn’t mind these dogs that much, but they mean that Banjo’s four walks a day have fallen to him, which means he has very little downtime between pulling off his gloves and scarf and hat and vest and coat and boots and Banjo’s harness and coat and then putting it all on again, for the fourth time that day. He did not sign up for winter in Wisconsin, much less winter in an apartment in Wisconsin with a dog that his wife won’t walk.

Banjo’s none too pleased, either. Her 12-hour days outside on her camping bed, watching the desert or mountains or beach channel with a scratch-and-sniff screen, has been traded for cheap apartment carpet and a sliding glass door to nowhere. She’s taken up “anger play” as I call it: attacking toys while she waits for Tracy to finish putting on all the layers so they can go walk down the sidewalk.

That’s why my love for the apartment is a guilty love.

One Experience of Heaven

After a night shuffling around on that apartment carpet there’s the feel of the hard kitchen floor on my feet. Look feet: difference! There’s the light over the stove I can turn on, and I can choose two settings, as Tracy sleeps clear over in the other room. There’s the cold water I can pour from a glass pitcher in our large refrigerator into a full size drinking glass, and drink, and refill. There’s the clean bathtub I can run at 3:00 am, slipping through the layer of warm bubbles, drawing the new, white shower curtain almost closed against the night, leaving enough of a gap open open for my tiny lamp to shine on my book and my small, warm, space. When I get out of the tub, there’s the street lamps shining through the bedroom blinds onto my side of the bed, where I left the comforter pulled back enough to reveal the clean, taut sheets waiting for me.

Amid five nights of sleeplessness as I deal with the rebound effects of leaving a bad med, I’m so grateful for this sensual love the apartment gives me. Warmth, coziness, room to endure this period on my own.

Of course, the day time reality of the apartment isn’t all that great for anyone. There’s that giant pile of snow being built by metal-on-road force right under the bedroom window.

There’s the truck: Tracy had to buy back this bra-like thing he sold when we hit the road. It keeps freezing air and precipitation from coming in the radiator and preventing the diesel engine from starting (or getting warm enough when it runs to keep it running, something like that). The truck is too big for the heated, underground parking garage here.

There’s also Mr. and Mrs. Jolly Green Giant who live right above us. I met Mr. Giant once when I returned his driver’s license that fell onto on our balcony. Mrs. Giant I hear every morning as she stomps around their apartment in her heels before work. She also takes a bath at 3am and wanders around at odd times, no heels then.

And there are the random neighbors. The asshats who put their furniture in the dumpsters that are in the basement parking garages so no one else can throw any trash away (you don’t learn this until after you’ve walked the hallway and ridden the elevator and walked the parking garage, trash in hand). There are the two guys with the same last name apprehended by the police after a raid; the newspaper said they both were wanted for separate murders, victims found in their vehicles last summer. Lovely.

The next bit is a mixed bag.

Snow at Thanksgiving

We were so grateful to receive three invitations at Thanksgiving, our first social holiday in six years. We spent the glorious meal at Doug and Laura’s house, with their family, where the wasabi mashed potatoes were the MVP. The next evening we spent at Patti and Guy’s, with their family, where we played trivia and enjoyed the company of a couple of their sons we hadn’t met yet. That Sunday we were to go to the family home of Tracy’s best friend (Hi, Mrs. Meeter!) in Iowa, but nearly a foot of snow ground that plan to a halt. Apart from missing the Meeters (the only time Tracy thought he was going to see family/friends since we moved here has come and gone for this season), I’m grateful for the early snow. Heresy, I know.

Tracy hates it. Can you tell?

To add to his responsibilities of the dog walk and the truck running, we also need to go to the house after each snow and shovel the sidewalk.

This is the backyard currently: no trees, no birds at the derelict bird feeders, and a big pile of snow I’ve been building as I shovel.

Here’s the driveway with one path I made, to the bit of space Tracy made so we can try to pull the truck in off the street next time.

We’ll see how much snow we get next! The Wisconsin sky keeps adding an inch or so at a time, a dusting on top to keep us aware it’s winter early here.

Snowshoeing

As Tracy and Banjo have been slugging it out along the slippery sidewalks and roads, I’ve made a go with my new snowshoes.

Amazingly, my hiking poles were in the truck still, and astoundingly, these little snow baskets were in a bin I’ve been lugging around with me since I bought the poles in Wyoming years ago. Not in the storage unit, not in the basement of the house, but with me in the apartment when the snow came!

I loaded up with all my clothes and gear and walked right out of the apartment.

We’re in the midst of suburban Apartment Building World here, but there’s one patch of corn field where there are no apartments, and I headed straight for that.

Turns out someone else had done the same before me, making a narrow snowshoeing track I could follow.

I plan to walk this track every single day I can. In the quiet of the woods, me and the snow.

And that is my report from a winter apartment, so far.