A Room of His Own

The Kid's garage, complete with trucks, books, and costumes.

Back when we were preparing for the move, I asked The Kid, "If you could have anything decorating your room, what would it be?" His answer was immediate:

"A garage!"

"You mean, like the parking spaces we have on the floor in the living room?"

"No, like, a shelf where I can park my trucks."

And so the wheels set to turning. I wasn't going to go out and buy a garage for The Kid's room; we had plenty of shelves that could be repurposed. But, of course, me being the Type-A wanna-be crafter I am, I didn't want to just put a shelf in The Kid's room and tell him that's where he had to put his trucks every night. It had to be something special. I set to planning.

The Kid stayed with my folks while we moved so he didn't get underfoot, and so he had a place to sleep while our furniture was in transit. We wanted to make it a priority to unpack his room first thing, so that when he got to Ann Arbor, he had a place of his own, even if the rest of the apartment was an absolute mess. Which it kind of still is.

The decals went up first thing! Even if The Kid had no furniture, he'd have some trucks in his room.

But as his arrival day approached and we still didn't have any furniture, we were getting anxious. Would we have time to set up his furniture? And would I have time for the craftiness I wanted to do on his garage? (I didn't want to tell him "Well, this is your room, but this shelf is going to look totally different once I have the time to do it..." and then procrastinate my way to not fixing it. I know myself pretty well.)

So, thank goodness the furniture arrived a couple of days before my parents and The Kid. Jake got the call that the movers were two hours away while we were sitting in a theatre watching The Edge of Tomorrow; we were supposed to get 48 hours notice, and so assuming the furniture wouldn't come for days, we went on a movie date and made plans with local friends. Surprise! We canceled all of our plans, and the next day, I ran out to Michael's to get my supplies.

I spent the majority of the next day out on our deck crafting. (I can not express how excited I am to have an outdoor space!) It was a beautiful day for garage-making, and I'm absolutely thrilled with the way this turned out, especially since I had no plans or directions, no Pinterest inspiration, just what I was seeing in my head.

Since I had no directions, after the jump is the step-by-step for what I did, in case anyone else wants to do something similar. Or, if you're just curious.

Unexpected Discoveries

The weird things you discover after moving to a new town.

1. My hair looks better in Michigan. The lower humidity in Ann Arbor is much better for my curls. This means I've had to experiment with products, since I've lived in the world of crazy frizz since my hair decided to be curly 22 years ago. (It was stick straight until I was 12. I got a perm--it was 1992, shut up--and it stuck. Forever.)
2. Lower humidity means we're thirsty all. The. Time.
3. The thing that's been taking the most getting used to in the apartment: I have to turn the other way to get to the light switch in my bathroom. 

I'm sure there will be more unexpected discoveries coming up...

Lessons Learned (...and learning...)

My favorite box label. Only in our apartment.

We're deep into the unpacking process, and I've been learning a lot about long-distance moves. I' storing some notions for the move in two years. Things I experimented with, like:

1. Making a hole in the bottom of a garbage bag, threading hangers through the hole with clothes still on the hangers, and tying the bag up. I had too many clothes in my closet for one wardrobe box (even after all of the donations and swaps! How did that happen??) and this helped keep them organized.
2. Organizing my jewelry by wrapping my necklaces individually in tissue paper (okay, I used Kleenex) so they didn't get tangled, and bagging pairs of earrings in tiny ziplocks so nothing got lost.

And some things I learned from having guys load our stuff on a truck and drive for several days:

1. If using recycled boxes, make sure to label your boxes clearly! We used boxes from my mom's best friend's recent move, and even though we tried our best to scratch out her writing, and even labeled ours in a different color, the movers were still confused about which rooms to put the boxes in. ("Follow the black writing, not the green!") Plus, sometimes we just plumb forgot to label the boxes with our own directions, so we've been finding things in the wrong rooms sometimes.
2. The "miscellaneous" box is not only a necessity, it's expected. One of our movers told me, "If you don't have at least one miscellaneous box, you're not moving right." That said, we have a lot of miscellaneous boxes. And they're not easy to unpack.
3. The best box we had: our MISCELLANEOUS BOX OF DEATH. We had a huge box in the middle of The Kid's room that random big stuff went into. It was huge, it was messy, and it was awesome.
4. Movers expect you to not be fully packed when they get to your place. So, if you've made a pact to trash/donate/leave behind anything that hasn't made it into a box by the time the movers arrive, unless you tell them that at the get-go, they might thrown your random junk into a box and move it halfway across the country. We've found a few boxes of old mail and things we meant to throw away or donate. Oops!
5. Even with the best of intentions and super-nice and -efficient movers, things will be stressful and non-time-sensitive. It's tough to not know when your stuff is going to get to your new home, even though a couple-of-day delay gives you time to figure out where your furniture is going to go when it gets there. We thought we were going to get a two-day heads-up; what we got was a two-hour heads-up. While we were in a movie theatre seeing The Edge of Tomorrow. Because we thought there was no way our stuff was going to arrive that day.
6. It all worked out fine.

The First Great Move

Well, cats and kittens, Phase One of The Great Move is officially done. Jake and I are living in our new apartment in Ann Arbor, waiting for our stuff and our son to come join us.

The movers loaded up their truck on Monday--three and a half hours later than expected, but they moved very efficiently after they did show up--leaving Jake and I with a mostly-bare apartment, an indifferent turtle, and a very confused cat. (He was more than content with the boxes, though.)

Box Cat

We were busy the rest of Monday with errands: returning the modem and cable boxes, buying necessary toiletries, packing up stuff to take in our car, cleaning, and hanging out with friends at our favorite soon-to-not-be-local-any-more place.

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday morning, set to packing the car and cleaning out the kitchen (seven bags of garbage from our tiny little kitchen! How???), and turned in our keys. I suppose it always feels this way during a move, but I felt like I was in a sitcom, say the last episode of Friends, or The Cosby Show, where there's a poignancy to turning off the lights and closing the door for the last time.

I guess that's why it's a trope, right? That feeling of closure, of not being able to look behind yourself any more, and the necessity in moving forward? (Sorry to get morose on you; it still hasn't 100% hit me yet, but I did spend a good five minutes sitting on the floor in The Kid's room on Tuesday, thinking about how he'd never see that view again. The feelings are starting to creep in.)

Iggy was super good on the 8.5-hour drive to Ann Arbor. Jake and I had been worried; on every drive he's taken in the past, he's yowled so much that we've had to let him out of his carrier and hold him in a vise grip on our laps. This time, though, he hardly made a peep, even when his water spilled on him during a rest stop and he had to air dry. What a trooper! I think the change this time might have been putting his bed in the carrier with him, rather than the towel we usually put in.

Side note: Iggy got into catnip for the very first time on Monday. Apparently, he's one of the cats who just blisses out rather than getting hyper. Who knew? Good to store for future reference.

The drive wasn't too bad at all, and it was great to get the keys and walk around our new place.

Due to administrative silliness, we actually had no idea what floor plan we'd be walking into. I think we had built one up in our heads, and of course, that wasn't the one we ended up getting. The luxury of a long-distance move where your furniture doesn't arrive for days and days, though, is that you get to take the time to really figure out where everything is going to go.

We're getting used to the floor plan, and so while for the last two days, we've been living like this:

Living Room (with a new area rug!)

Breakfast Bar, with a peek into the kitchen. 

Dining Room

...we have a good sense of where things are going to go when we get them. (When we're going to get them is another story! We're crossing our fingers for tomorrow.) Yesterday, we went to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store to pick up a new dining room table and comfy chair to replace the ones we left behind--that place is amazing, by the way, and I think there will be many visits in the future, for furniture and knick-knacks.

We've also, of course, been exploring local food. Yesterday, we visited the Zingerman's empire in a weird industrial park, and spent way too much time sampling cheeses and desserts.

Zingerman's Creamery

Our apartment is within a five-minute walk of a grocery store, pet supply store, and a couple of restaurants, which was really key when we were looking for places to live. We're really excited about the Halal restaurant we walked to for dinner last night and the Great Harvest Bakery in the same plaza, and we know The Kid will flip his lid for the frozen yogurt place that's all tricked out in his favorite color.

It's a lot of getting used to, and the learning curve is going to be steep. But I've been enjoying coffee on our balcony and the luxury of having laundry in-unit. Updates as they come!

Ann Arbor Epiphanies

Jake and I made our way to Ann Arbor last week to explore our for-the-next-two-years hometown, find a place to live, and check out nursery schools. I had the whole trip outlined on an Excel spreadsheet (what, you don't carry your schedule, apartment office phone numbers, and comparative rent prices on your person?), but I was thrilled to have experiences I couldn't quantify. Like:

1.

Zingerman's lives up to the hype. (That above is a Sherman's Sure Choice from the Deli, but we also visited the Roadhouse twice and had amazing dinner and breakfast foods. Zingerman's Roadhouse also offers refills on mashed potatoes and sweet potato fries. So.)

2. You can get from anywhere to anywhere in 4-10 minutes. The no-traffic thing is pretty great, though the roads are utter crap right now after their terrible winter.

3.

Midcentury modern advertising is alive and well and living in Michigan.

4. "It's hard to park in downtown" means something different to people who haven't lived in the DC area for 15 years. We had no problem finding parking in downtown Ann Arbor.

5.

Grocery stores sell wine and beer! And the one just around the corner from our apartment (by the way, we have an apartment!) has a "Build a Six-Pack" program, with a fantastic display of local beers! Also, both Flying Dog and Dogfish Head distribute in Michigan, which means we get two more years before moving to The Land of No MD/DE Beers, aka Missouri.

6. Ethnic foods abound in college towns! We ate sushi in a restaurant full of Japanese people, so you know it was good.

7.

Fairy Doors really are a Thing! I found two of them on our brief trip: we randomly passed by the one set in the front door of The Ark (pictured on the left), and I sought out the one at Sweetwaters Coffee and Tea (pictured on the right) while we were waiting to be seated at a brewpub across the street. They're awesome. Two down, five to go!

8. Marriage Equality passed while we were there! We immediately saw a car with tin cans attached to the bumper. In real life!

9.

There is no shortage of fantastic places to get fantastic drinks in Ann Arbor. Besides the three (?) brewpubs within spitting distance of each other, there are also great wine and cocktail lists. The above is an Ill Fashioned at The Ravens Club.

10. There are bookstores. Honest to god bookstores with books made out of paper. While walking up Main Street, Jake and I counted three used bookstores within two blocks of each other, as well as two stores for new books. I can.not.wait. to go to there.

While making these epiphanies, we also had time to find an apartment in an awesome location, and toured three nursery schools...which we've narrowed down to two. It's a hard decision, but I'm sure whichever choice we make will be the right one. I'm crazy-nervous to move, but also crazy-excited. This was a good visit.

Finding One's Place

We have a spreadsheet all ready. An itinerary of apartments and townhouses we're going to look at when we visit Ann Arbor, with some nursery schools thrown in for good measure. I think we have a nice variety of places, which I guess it has to be because we kind of have to find Our Home for the Next Two Years on this visit.

It's a bit nerve-wracking, you know? We've been scouring Craigslist, apartments.com, and rental-realtor websites, trying to find a place within specific parameters: 2+ bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms, a specific budget, a specific distance from where Jake is going to work. But we won't know for sure what we like until we're there. And whatever we end up choosing, it has to be on this list. Eek!

I'm excited to visit Ann Arbor, excited to get my first look at our new town, excited to find a place to make home. I'm excited to figure out where we'll fit in, how to organize our things (though not at all excited about getting them packed up), excited to have new walls, new windows, and maybe just maybe a new fireplace and/or outside space.

Jake got me To Your Taste, a decorating book, for my birthday. It was the perfect present: full of ideas about finding a stylistic voice and creating a home, without being prescriptive, telling the reader what to buy, or what a room should look like. I'm really enjoying reading it.

One of the first things Celerie Kemble says in the book, before talking about color or style, before discussing the ways in which you actually use your house is, "Show me where you were and I will help you figure out who you are." The places that were important to us as children dictate our styles now, whether the impulse is to copy or veer away from them. That made so much sense to me, since some of the things I'm looking for in a space--whether rented or bought--are:

1. A fireplace, picture window, big backyard, and oak trees nearby (like the house I grew up in)
2. Built-in shelves and big bright accents (like my Grandma Lo's house, whose kitchen wallpaper was very nearly Marimekko)
3. Beautifully organized tchotchkes and furniture that are a wonderfully chaotic mix of mid-century modern, kitschy old-world, and gorgeously-crafted wood (like my Grandma Florence's house)

It all doubly-clicked for me when I thought about my most recent dramaturgical process, Orlando, based on a book which at it's core is about a woman and a house. Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando to celebrate her lover's life, which was inextricably linked to the house she grew up in.

So I'm going into this apartment/condo/townhouse search with a couple of it-would-be-nice-to-haves from my past, knowing that while the place we find might not be perfect, it'll be an awesome opportunity to start figuring out how to really make a Place a Home. And who knows, we might find someplace we do fall in love with, a place with promise and potential for the next two years. I'm excited to explore!