“I think I’ve lost some weight,” I wrote in a letter last night. And I really do think so. My face looks a bit thinner, my pants fit a bit better. It’s really not surprising, given what I do at least once a day and usually more like six to seven times.
I climb these.

(Taken from my front door. Those alien things on the lower left are my feet.)
Or I climb these.

(Taken from my back porch. Those are what all of the furniture came up.)
Frequently I head up these with a load of something or other, be it laundry or groceries. And I often have more than I can carry at one go, or have to make multiple trips outside, so if I use the stairs once, it’s generally a safe bet that I instead need to use them at least twice per errand. Combine that kind of time with all of the dishwashing (I have to do them all by hand), and you see how I might be running out of hours in the day for things like blog posts. Plus, how interesting is it to hear that I’m running up and down the stairs all the time? Not interesting at all.
Safe to say, my friends will only be interested in visiting if they get to stay a while. Though I’m already at the point where, if my hands are free, I’m jogging up them. Up All. Three. Flights.
In other news, I cracked the tape on the last packed box today, emptied it of its contents and put them all away. I also put the first nail in the wall and taped up a bunch of images over my desk. Where I’m sitting to write this, as a matter of fact. It’s starting to feel like home. (Though it can’t ever really be home without David. I miss him.)
I also made soup, and prepped for a batch of spaghetti sauce tomorrow. And I slept in. As of right now, I haven’t been awake for even 12 hours yet, but I must admit I’m planning to hit the hay shortly. It’s been a busy, busy day (as have many of my days lately) and I’m tired.
But first, I want to show you this:

Protective Eye
I painted. For the first time since I moved in. For the first time in weeks, actually. It’s obviously nothing terribly detailed or labor intensive, but it was an image I felt compelled to paint, and once my work table was cleared, nothing would let me rest until I did it.
Ever since I saw photos of some protective eye glass beads and read the accompanying story, I’ve been fascinated by the image. It’s painted as a protection against evil on houses and boats, and worn as jewelry for the same purpose, in Greece. What I love about my piece is how I had all of the colors handy. They perfectly match the photograph I found. As if I’d been waiting to paint the eye of protection in my new place, to care for all of my loved ones who live here. (Maybe I’ll tattoo it on Dave while he’s sleeping the next time he comes to visit.)
If you want to get a better sense of how busy my days have been, head on over to Chicagosity. I should have a new post up there shortly. (But first I need to decant the soup into mason jars for later consumption.)

(This is my 2nd post today, so be sure you read the previous one as well. I mean, you don’t have to, but there is an earlier one from this morning if you’re interested.)
Isn’t it amazing how much better you feel about life when you finally deal with something that’s been bugging you, something that you’ve been putting off because it will be vaguely unpleasant, and yet the needling your conscience gives you is most likely worse than giving in and doing it? Such is the breath of fresh air I feel now. I just spent the last thirty minutes schlepping garbage, recycling and empty packing boxes downstairs.
I’d been feeling so bad about the boxes piling up (neatly) on the porch that I’d started avoiding the area near the back door. I could feel the oppressive atmosphere of lurking, unwanted cardboard through the walls. Then, this morning, when I got up to feed the cats, just before I went back to bed, I heard the landlady’s voice and thought, “I really need to deal with this. I share this level with two other apartments. It has to be done.” And then I went back to bed and dwelt on how poorly she must think of me and how lazy I am and how I really didn’t want to move all that stuff down three flights of stairs.
So once I got up again, after breakfast and a bit more unpacking (which meant more boxes to move downstairs) and a blog post, I put on my shoes, grabbed my keys and took care of it.
The garbage was the easiest bit. One small plastic bag filled with the leavings of my life. It hadn’t been on the porch, it had been glaring balefully at me every time I walked into the bathroom. All I had to do was pull the bag out of the bin, tie it off and replace it with a fresh bag. And schlep it down three flights of stairs. I took some recycling on the way. It was, after all, a very small bag.
The empty packing boxes to go into storage required the most trips. My hands are only strong enough to carry so many at a time, and I’d been putting it off because moving them was so hideous last time with the big mattress boxes I had to move. I didn’t have any massive boxes today, so it wasn’t nearly as heinous as the spate of box moving I did earlier this week. (I have been trying to keep the porch neat, really I have.)
And then there was the recycling. The aforementioned soggy paper and boxes beyond repair or reuse. Also not as unpleasant as I had expected. I must say I’d been putting thiat particular task off only because the recycling bin here is very small and I am not the only tenant in the building. It seemed selfish to fill it with my old boxes for several weeks in a row. I had so much of it that I still have three waterlogged boxes on the porch, waiting for the bin to be emptied again so I can take them down, too, but without the five or six small boxes of paper, and the boxes I put in storage, the porch looks much nicer.
And I feel much more like a human being.

It is rainy here. VERY rainy. Which is kind of icky because all of the boxes I’d left on the porch to take down to the recycling bin (they’re too beat-up to use again) are now pulp. Slimy cardboard pulp that I must wrestle down three flights of stairs. Ugh.
In other, shocking, news, I’m still not completely unpacked. I’ve sort of run out of room, so I’m not sure what to do about the rest of my stuff. I have NO desire to put any full boxes in the storage unit, both because it’s three flights down–three and a half, actually–and because it’s dank and nasty. Anything that goes in there will become dank and nasty as well, and, just, no.
Really what I need to do is get my work table set up so I can start making some stuff to sell. That process, by its very nature, will open up storage space. Plus, once the table is up, I can store thngs under it. Still, though, I’d really, really like to be done with this whole unpacking thing. Really. In my dreams, I inhabit a world in which there are no cardboard boxes stacked in corners and leaning against walls. None. Because they’re all broken down and gone.
On the agenda for today, some tremendously exciting activities: grocery shopping, laundry and further unpacking. A life of non-stop glamor is what I live.
Though I may be going to see some improv with a fellow UI alum tonight. He’s taking a class, and part of his assignment is to see other people’s work. I haven’t done any improv in a while. I’m not very good at it, and I suspect that I would continue to be not very good at it, even if I took dozens of classes. I am good at the long-term improv stuff. Give me a character and a situation and I can go for days. But I am TERRIBLE at the short comic stuff. My brain just doesn’t work that fast. And I don’t think that particular thing is fixable.
So. A grey day, a low-key set of activities. Not sure whether my rather somber mood was around first or if the weather triggered it. I do know that the three weeks until I see my sweetie again are weighing heavily on my heart. I’d forgotten what long-distance feels like.

These are the photographs I thought I’d lost. The last wedding album I made of the three I built this summer. I put the covers together the same week I did the other two, but I didn’t have time to bind it then, so no photos. And then I was getting ready to travel here to find an apartment and planning to stay with the bride and groom, so I finished it up quickly in-between bronchitis and a trip to Boise. My visit here was just before their first anniversary, and wedding etiquette is very clear on this point. You can give wedding presents any time in the first year, but after that, it’s tacky. I squeaked in under the deadline.

Becca and I have been friends for pretty much ever, now that I come to think of it, and originally, we all sort of treated my trip out here for her wedding as my gift. (Though that felt kind of self-absorbed to me. “HI! I’m here! I’m your present!”) I knew I wanted to give them something more than the glory of my attendance at their wedding, but had no idea what. Until I learned how to do a stab binding the very next week. “I could make a wedding album,” I thought.

And then, that very same week, I went into a little story in Idyllwild where they had all kinds of exotic, handmade papers for sale (for cheap!!!) and found a yellow-brown paper with hearts burnt into it. That’s when I KNEW I would be making a wedding album for them for sure.

I also knew the binding cloth would be red, because that’s Rebecca’s favorite color and was the main color in their wedding. I’m thrilled that I was able to find something as wonderfully nubby and textured as the bookcloth I used, because it works so well with the handmade, slightly rustic look of the paper.

I was also really pleased to remember the coins. I had such a hard time deciding on a finding for this book. Nothing was quite right. I had a heart carved from a peach pit and then dipped in black and gold. Nope. I had metal keys. Nuh-uh. And then, while frantically digging through my extensive collection of beads, I discovered the coins. And knew they were perfect. Because gifts of symbolic money are good luck, they suggest future prosperity.

Really, this whole project was bathed in good fortune. Every time I needed something, the perfect option appeared. It took me an entire year to get everything together to build it, but I’m glad it took me that long, because the ideas I had about internal book design in the beginning were very different from what I opted to go with in the end. I ended up with a book that really spoke to me about my feelings for my friend and my wishes for her marriage.
(And here’s a little secret I’ll share with you about my books. I always write good thoughts for the recipient on the davey board before I glue the cloth and paper on. No one but me knows it’s there or what it says. But when I say the books are made with good wishes throughout, that’s exactly what I mean.)
So that’s the last of my art projects for now. I got a LOT done re: unpacking and the studio yesterday, but there’s still a long way to go. I opened up a box that I literally have no space for, and yet, there are things I desperately want out of that box so I can use them. I think It’s time to vacuum the floors and furniture and invite some people over to help me put my work table together (the top alone is too heavy for me to move to a place where I can get the legs on it). Then I can figure out just how much is stashable UNDER the table and just how much has to stay in boxes in the closet.
Then I can get to work making things. Because I have a TON of pieces that are taking up valuable closet space that just need a little bit of this’nthat and they’ll be ready to sell. I can feel myself winding up to begin a creating frenzy, so look out. Once that table goes up, I’m going to be a whirlwind.

Earlier this summer, while Romeo & Juliet was playing and before I began the packing frenzy in earnest,* I made two more books. Two of the lovely women I was lucky enough to work with had birthdays, right around the end of July/beginning of August, appropriately enough, since one was our Juliet and one was her understudy. (Juliet’s birthday is August 1, Lammastide.) I love these two women, and I wanted to make gifts for them, and I hadn’t yet packed up those art supplies, so I went ahead and made two little books.

These books are indeed little. They’re far smaller than the wedding albums I made at the beginning of the summer. Crystal’s–the blue one–was about 5″x8″, and Noelia’s–the reddish, orangeish one–was about 4″x6″. (II’m sure I have the measurements written down somewhere, but they’re packed and I was so busy with so many other things, I barely stopped to take these pictures.) Crystal’s has about 16 pages, I want to say, and Noelia’s has maybe 24. I just don’t remember. Frankly, I don’t remember a great deal of what went on at the end of July/beginning of August. There was just too much.

Crystal’s Book

Noelia’s Book
I had a lot of fun making these. I really enjoy creating books for the people I know. I mean, I enjoy creating books, period. But there’s something especially wonderful about putting something together to enhance and express the personality of someone I care about. And I feel these two books really do that for both women.

For some reason, I always saw Crystal as yellow, maybe it’s because all of her costumes in R&J were yellow, but that soft, pale color really seems to speak to me about her. Maybe it’s because yellow makes me think of soft, warm, sunlight, and that’s very much how I see Crystal. As morning sunlight. So the pages are yellow and full of yellow flower and rose petal inclusions.

And when looking for a cover paper, the dragonflies just spoke to me. So I was really lucky to discover a rose gold dragonfly finding at the store when I went looking (because I’d already packed the findings I usually use on books). It all just seemed ordained.
Noelia, on the other hand, is a firecracker. Tremendously feminine, but fizzing with energy and power. The red just seemed appropriate. Though she has some pages with rose petals too. The cover paper makes me think of molten lava, and I kind of get a volcanic imagery with Noelia as well.

Her finding is a locket. Which turned out to be even more appropriate than I’d realized. She had a great time this summer, and created so many wonderful memories to take away with her. I hope she managed to find the right picture to put in it.

These are my two most recent books. Until I get my studio set up and unpacked, I can’t make any more. Though I’m raring to go. I’ll be selling the next bunch on Etsy, so keep your eyes peeled for posts about availability.
Of course, before that happens, there will be a whole bunch of entries about what a pain in the ass it is to unpack. I am getting there. The kitchen’s mostly finished, as is the living room. My desk is set up and my bookshelves are in the right spots. I just have to figure out where all of my tools and supplies are going now. And then I can set up the work table. The large, heavy work table, which will require the assistance of at least one friend. Locals, be warned. Though I will at least feed you. Or pay you in art. Your choice.
I have one more set of book photos to put up, but that won’t happen until tomorrow. Remember in July how I was bitching about losing the only pics I had of the last wedding album I made? I found them. Still on my camera, astonishingly enough. I hadn’t deleted them after all. Thank goodness, because I’m really proud of the book, and I want to show it off. So tomorrow you’ll get another set of book photos and only (one hopes) minimal whining about unpacking.
*I swear to God, yesterday I unpacked a box marked “Misc,” and that’s exactly what it was full of. I carefully packed a whole bunch of random junk. I don’t remember packing it at all. It was near the end, and I must have been exhausted at that point.

I figured it was time to start it up again, now that I’m actually here.

Just now in my neighborhood, just for a breath, a heartbeat, there was a moment of absolute stillness. Absolute quiet. No trains, no cars, no trucks. No planes overhead or loud conversations on the street. No gunshots, no construction equipment. No dog barks, not even birdsongs. Stillness and peace.
And just now, as I was typing the above paragraph, it came again, only this time I could hear something. The chirping of one small bird and the wind in the trees outside my window.
Welcome to Sunday morning in Chicago.

I’m sitting here in my sunny yet tree-screened living room, surrounded by boxes, some furniture and one cat who doesn’t like to let me out of her sight. I just had breakfast. Finally. It was a crisp with peaches, strawberries, blackberries and blueberries, with coconut and pecans in the crisp part, and may I just say that it was FANTASTIC. I’m full now, but I may have to go get some more later.
I have been aching to bake in this kitchen. Not because it’s a stellar cooking space, far from it. But it hasn’t felt like mine, and making the crisp, filling the air with the fruity, sugary, oaty goodness of baking was my way of marking the space as my own. Sort of like a dog pissing on a tree, as I pointed out to Dave. So I made the crisp this morning and I have all of the ingredients for mondel bread, which I shall make tonight, I think. I have leftover Chicken Biryani and some papadoms from the AMAZING Indian restaurant at the el stop, and that should all do for meals today. Tomorrow morning, after I unpack some more, I will go get actual food supplies from the Whole Foods in Evanston.
What else? Oh. Yes.
Dave is gone. Back to Moscow. It was hard to say good-bye. We hugged, he walked into the terminal, I waited for the assholes who had boxed me in to get out of the way, and began to sob as I pulled into traffic. I cried until I got onto I-90 and had to pay attention to where I was going. The tears haven’t come back so far, though I suspect they’re lurking. It sucks knowing I won’t see him for three weeks. But that’s a shorter period than the eons between his visit here and mine to Moscow in December.
I spent the rest of the day unpacking. The living room is mostly the way I want it to be, minus some pictures on the walls and books in the shelves. It’s a lovely little space. Cozy, bright and breezy. The bedroom is partly unpacked as well. Only, it turns out I need a dresser for the boxes and BOXES of clothes I possess. That’s AFTER taking four grocery bags’ worth to Goodwill last August, by the way. In fact, I may need two dressers. But I should probably try to make do with one dresser, the shelving in my closet and some milk crates. Do my pants really need to be in a drawer, after all?
The kitchen is also mostly unpacked. One of the reasons the crisp had to wait until this morning was the missing-ness of my pots and pans and baking sheets. Until I had those, I couldn’t really do any cooking. I’d unpacked glasses and mugs and measuring equipment and all of my utensils and the various baking dishes and storage stuff. I had silverware and stoneware put away, and still no cookware. I finally located the pots and pans box late yesterday afternoon. It was against the wall in the dining room. Behind two other rows of boxes stacked high. It took me most of the rest of the day to work my way to it. But now that stuff’s all put away too.
I’m still feeling a bit overwhelmed here. It’s so different here from where I spent the last six years. I was going to go to the Green City Market this morning, but I opted to run to the store and make the crisp instead, so I could do some more unpacking. I have an “event” this afternoon, and would rather be fresh for it, since I’ll be meeting some industry people. Plus, right now I keep having to dig up the cash to ride CTA, and I’d rather not have to juggle that and groceries. And I am NOT driving downtown and trying to find somewhere handy to park, either.
As of right now, I have walked to the store and back (about a mile each way), made coffee, made the crisp, washed the dishes and moved things around in the still overflowing with stuff dining room. I’ve brought some boxes of books into the living room to unpack and put away in the shelves here, and that gave me the space to move the bookcases for the dining room/office to the right space and to unstack some of the piles that had crushed-looking boxes on the bottom. But as of this moment, I haven’t actually unpacked anything today. Oh. That’s not true. I did open a box to get some clean underwear out before I took my shower. Does that count as unpacking?
Now, I’m waiting to hear from my friend Becca about how we’re getting to this event today and when we’re going, so I can figure out when to get ready. I haven’t yet found my iron, so I’m hoping that something I own isn’t horriffically crushed from a week stuffed in a box in a truck. In the meantime, speaking of boxes, I think I’ll unpack some more. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of others where those came from.

Finished II
Last week, after we’d loaded everything except some clothes, my potentially flammable art supplies, the cooking oils/vinegars and the cats into the truck and sent it off, I finally had some time to myself. Certainly acting is creating art, you’ll never hear me say otherwise about my first choice art form. But it’s not the same as making marks on stuff or building things. It’s so ephemeral. Once a performance is over, it lives on only in memories. And no one will ever share my particular perspective on a production, because I see it through the eyes of the person playing that character that day in that particular way.
Anyway, I’d been itching to do some art, and since I had my supplies—like spray paint—I made plans to take the time to do some creating in the days between packing up the truck and leaving for Chicago ourselves.
I also had these:

CDs Before
These are those CDs that I don’t want but don’t want to throw away. They come in the junk mail, they are my mistakes when saving something, they contain obsolete information. Whatever their original purpose, I no longer want their content. But you can’t just re-record stuff on most CDs. And I hate to throw them away because all they do then is sit in landfills and not decompose. So what to do?
Make coasters.
This was quick, dirty and easy. The longest step was the paint drying time.
1) Grab a box to keep spray paint off the porch and house.

Ready to Go
2) Figure out what colors I want for base coats and what colors I want for patterns.

First Set, First Coat
3) Go to town with spray paint and stencils.

Box After
4) Take the box apart and stick it in the recycling bin.
5) Take photos of the finished product and pat myself on the back for some pretty awesome coasters.
I discovered some interesting things about spray paint during this process. If I put several coats of one color on wet and then added a coat or two of another color, the paints did this interesting marbling. They also pebbled a bit because of the impermeable CD surface. Which is awesome. I like the textures. But those take a LOOOOONG time to dry.
I used several different kinds of spray paint. I had some small cans of Testors spray enamel in metallics. I’m pretty sure I used up the bronze in this process. I also have some Krylon H20. They work very differently, but they played nicely together. Though the Krylon doesn’t cover as well. It takes more coats than the Testors.
I also (re-)discovered that you don’t always get perfect. Out of 22 discs, 18 turned out gorgeous. Four, not so much. I’ll have to figure out what to do with these.
Rejects
Painting over them is obviously an option. Or I might cut them up and use them for ATC bases. I’ve done that before.

Still and all, I got some nice, new, arty coasters to put on my soon to be moved in coffee table.

Finished II

The furniture arrives today. I cannot WAIT to have something to sit on other than the floor. And a bed that’s not actually ON the floor. Seriously. We’ve spent the last three nights sleeping on an air mattress, and getting up in the morning involves getting up in the same way as sitting on the floor does right now. I’m getting tired of it.
I’m also looking forward to having knives. And cookware. And towels. God, how I miss dish towels right now. And glasses that hold a decent amount of water. I also miss the coffee grinder, the tea kettle and mugs. I’m looking forward to being able to make my own breakfasts again. And to making a fruit crisp. Which is the first thing I’m going to do once the kitchen’s unpacked. I’ve got the fruit all ready. Except for cutting it up, for which I need a knife.
I am also looking forward to having internet access on this laptop. For some reason, it is happy to talk to Dave’s portable WiFi, but not to mine. So when he’s not here, I have to use my other laptop, and it doesn’t have important things like photographs and PhotoShop.
I’m writing this on the big laptop, but since I can’t post it, you won’t see this until Dave has had a chance to troubleshoot, which means it will actually show up AFTER the furniture has arrived and we’ve done some unpacking. We’re hoping to make it to the Art Institute tonight, Dave needs to visit it for a collaboration he’s working on with a local composer, so unpacking and THAT have to happen before we play with WiFi.
In the meantime, I’m going to do some photo editing and maybe write a few more posts in Word so I can just cut and paste and upload photos for the next few entries. That and fret about how the HELL the movers are going to get the couch up to this floor and into the apartment. Thank goodness I don’t actually have to figure it out myself.
Oh. Here’s evidence that the cats are settling in.

Imogen’s Shelf
She found this spot all by herself. She’s sleeping there right now.

Primitive Conditions
See? Nothing to sit on but the floor. Katala seems to prefer it. She keeps lying down in the middle of the wide open spaces. Or sleeping in Dave’s suitcase. She’s not really demonstrating a preference for either.

Q’s Closet
Of course our little nervous cat is taking the longest to adjust. Though yesterday she discovered the windows and that’s made a big difference. We’ve had to barricade a section of kitchen, though, since she likes to hide next to the radiator in this inaccessible spot. Once she has furniture to hide behind, things will probably get better. In the meantime, she spends a lot of time in her closet.

Katala Comfort
And sometimes, even when you’re adjusting well, big changes require the occasional snuggle with someone you trust, for reassurance.
Added, 12:06am: Like now for instance. After getting stuck with a king-sized mattress halfway up the second flight of three flights of stairs, so that some friends (Heather, Chris and Sam, thank you all AGAIN for the help) had to get a zip car and drive across town to come help us, I’m feeling more traumatized than the cats. They’re fine. They recognize the smells from home and are having a ball climbing all over the many, MANY boxes in the dining room. Ah well, at least the bed is not only put together but made. I’m going to go fall into it now.