The Apartment

Once I had procured a part-time job, I could begin looking at things in a more balanced manner, rather than through panic tinted glasses. I made lots of lists: grocery lists, lists of things to someday buy for my bedroom (I’ll still need a full time job before I can obtain furniture), pros and cons lists, etc. I began to plan out how I would like the apartment to look.

Our apartment has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, dining room and kitchen. It has a washer and dryer. It has a garbage disposal and a dishwasher. It has a sprayer hose on the sink and an icemaker in the freezer. These appliances were the first things I listed under a column entitled “Apartment Pros”. Then I listed the curved shower curtain rod, the nearby dog park and proximity to the river, the decent sized closets, and the wood floors in the kitchen and bathrooms.

On the other half of that paper is a column entitled “Apartment Cons”. This list includes the outdated cabinetry and oven, the crappy closet doors that stick all the time, the thin walls through which I can hear noises in the two adjacent apartments, and the fact that all the windows are too high for Winston to see out of without standing on his back legs with his paws on the ledge. At our house in Indianapolis he liked to sit in the chair by the window and watch the comings and goings outside. He can’t do that here. The apartments are on a hill, resulting in half of our apartment being partially underground. The bottom of the windows in the kitchen, dining room, and my bedroom are level with the ground. It doesn’t provide for great views. The patio is concealed from the outside by eight-foot tall shrubs, obscuring my view of anything beyond my own concrete slab.

Just at the bottom of the shrubs there are less branches and the feet of people and dogs passing by are visible. Winston likes to bark at them because he can’t properly see them. He might bark at them even if he could properly see them. Winston also likes to destroy things when I leave him home alone. When he was a puppy he used to chew up my shoes if I left them about. He has always chewed open anything containing food or dog treats. Here, he does something different: he destroys the apartment itself. The first time I left him alone he tore up the carpet by the patio door and scratched the doorframe of the front door, trying to escape, presumably to come and find me. The next time I barricaded these places. My upstairs neighbor was having new carpet put in that day and the loud noises scared him, so he dug two more holes in the carpet trying to get into my bedroom. The third time I left the door to my bedroom open, trusting he would not chew up any objects I had left there. He destroyed the dining room blinds instead. He mangled them, far beyond just wanting to see outside. I decided this behavior had to stop. I understand that he is still not adjusted to living here, but I cannot allow him to continue to destroy the apartment, so I bought him a crate. (Those things are unbelievably expensive.) He had a crate when he was a puppy but we stopped using it once he was old enough to be potty trained and to know better than to destroy stuff while we were gone.

He doesn’t love it, but he tolerates it. I have left him in it once so far, while I went to the library.  He neither destroyed it nor injured himself while I was gone. I want him to like it, to see it as his space, his den, his safe place, but so far that hasn’t happened. I put his food and water in it and he will enter it on command, but he rarely goes into it without me telling him to.  I’ve also picked up several books from the library about dog training and obedience to begin working on correcting his new and inappropriate behaviors.

When I’m not reading about how to better train Winston, or things to do in the Pacific Northwest once Darla gets here, I work on planning out the apartment in my RoomPlanner app. There are several small “makeovers” I would like to do to improve upon the place (aside from obtaining furniture). One such project would be to take off the kitchen cabinet doors, place temporary backing in the cabinets (I read on Apartment Therapy about removable “tile” stickers), and containerize all of our food. I’d also love to use some of that removable “tile” on the fireplace, which is hideous. This is all hypothetical of course, as I haven’t got the money for it. I also haven’t discussed it with Darla, who should be arriving here August seventh. It will be strange to finally have a roommate after living here alone for a month, but I suspect my life will be greatly improved by her presence. 

General ideas for the living and dining rooms

general idea for my bedroom, the bookshelf on the right would be my beloved expedit

A page from my Apartment Penultimate notebook
showing textiles for the bed

Another Penultimate page, showing artwork I'd like
for the living room