Author Archives: ruthek

40 Days of Moving: Day 5

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Back to the apartment this morning with more stuff. Then I spoke with Bill, the maintenance man and Ralph, the garage man, getting more information about the building and the apartment. Went to a nearby carpet and flooring store. They have wonderful things but everything is more money than I want to spend. Bill gave me the name of a company that spray paints metal cabinets. I will be meeting with them on Wednesday morning, along with another floor installation company. Tomorrow will not be a moving day. The car is going in for the yearly inspection and then I’m going to visit a friend who has also just moved.

40 Days of Moving: Day 4

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Yesterday when I bought the floor lamp I also bought 2 orchids. Home Depot sells them so cheaply I couldn’t resist. This morning I brought them to the apartment and they are enjoying the wonderful north light. I went with a carful of stuff: framed pictures, the new floor lamp, a few other things. I drove into the garage and introduced myself to the attendant, who brought a cart and helped put the stuff into it. I plan to do this with all the stuff I’d rather not pack for the movers. I have an awful lot of framed pictures. That will be the story for most of these 40 days.

I put the lamp together and put it in bedroom 2. I haven’t decided where to store all the framed pics. Some will go on the walls, some will be stored. I have not decided which closet won’t get painted. Each time I return I find more things I want to do.

Back to the before pictures. The hallway leads to the two bedrooms and the bathroom. The large bedroom is at the far end. It’s been painted a dark green. The carpet is relatively new and I will probably just clean it and leave it in place. The dark green walls suck up all the light, so they will go.

There is a wonderful, large fitted closet. This is just a peek at it. I’m sure all my clothes and shoes will fit nicely.

The second bedroom needs lots of work. A large desk takes up most of one wall (left) and is supposedly built in. It has to be removed. There is no carpet under it, so the carpet will have to be changed (needed anyway), and the entire room, including the closet, needs painting.

This is the other view of the room. I don’t know where the pink came from on the wall, which had a bed up against it. Maybe it’s the white paint wearing off. There are four bookcases against the left wall. I will probably move two of them into the other bedroom; maybe get rid of two of them. At least I know I’ll be able to house all of my books.

This is where I will work. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but I want it to be pleasant.

I never photographed the bathroom. Next time.

The kitchen needs a new oven, possibly a new dishwasher. The cabinets are metal; I think one of the old St. Charles kitchens. it was originally aqua, or I think they called it avocado.

My cabinets were sprayed white outside, but nothing was done inside, as you can see. The outside needs to be redone and I’d like to have the inside done. The built in oven looks like it had a fire inside. I’m thinking about removing it and replacing it and the cooktop with an ordinary range. Some of the cabinets will be sacrificed; not a problem for me.

The other wall has a newer cabinet that may have been used as a place to sit and eat. I have a nice butcher block table that may replace it. The door at the center of the picture is a large pantry. Since I do very little cooking this will become another storage room.

40 Days of Moving: Day 3

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Day 2 was yesterday, Friday the thirteenth. First we did the walk through; just a formality in this case. I have to leave my present apartment by May 31. It’s too late to look for anything else, and in fact, nothing else I wanted has come on the market. So I did not negotiate the price or any of the minor annoyances I would have liked to have changed. After all, it’s only money. The closing took less than an hour and was relatively painless, the painful part having been on Day 1 when I wired the money from my account. All the kinks had been worked out previously. I went back to the new apartment afterward and inspected and thought and photographed for about two hours. Here are photos and some of my thoughts.

This is the entry door from inside the living room. There are good closets on either side. I’m probably keeping the gold colored walls, but I’m thinking about making that entry area all white. I need some help making that decision.

The living room itself is quite large and I probably don’t have enough furniture. Empty rooms are nice. Actually, I have too much furniture–just not the right stuff.

Looking to the right there are mirrored, built-in shelves. I find the mirror confusing, but after I put stuff on the shelves it will probably be OK.

Then there is the wall. It sits between the living room and dining room, making the dining room about a foot too small. The wallpapering job is amazing. I could hardly find a seam. Amazing or not, I can’t live with large green peacock feathers. We’ll come back to the dining room.

There is a wall of windows, facing north, making the room very light. I will probably get shades that close from the bottom up, allowing me to hide the parking lots below, but let the light come in.

On to the dining room, smaller but in need of more work.

The chandelier is going, along with some enormous sconces that show in the next picture. I found some wonderfully funky looking fixtures in Home Depot online and ordered them. My dining room table and chairs will be very tight in there. I’m still thinking about it.

The floor seems to be travertine. I’m happy it’s not carpeted. I’m actually thinking about removing the living room carpet, which is relatively new, and installing a wood floor.

Next is the dreaded hallway.

That’s the dropped ceiling with florescent lights. Note the wall paper and the closet door. There are three of those doors, very high on my priorities of the things that go. I feel oppressed in there.

It’s is getting very late and I’m ready to go to sleep. I’ll finish this on day 4. Day 3 was uneventful. I put a stack of large drawing tablets, book board and foamcore into the car and took it to the apartment. I intend to bring something every day–all the things that would be difficult to pack. I also bought a cheap floor lamp. Both bedrooms and the living have no lights. Another thing to think about.

40 Days of Moving: Day #1

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It’s probably more like day 250, since I’ve been sorting, discarding and packing since last July. This feels like Day #1. Today my money is on the way to getting me the new apartment. Yesterday the closing company sent the settlement statement form with the accounting of taxes, fees, partial months, and all the money I owe. I arranged for the money to be wired to the closing company. Later in the day they sent a revised form showing I owed even more money. Fortunately, I didn’t do the transfer until this morning. This evening I received another revised statement. I guess they’ll have to take  cash. What a business. Also, yesterday I finally heard from the contractor I brought to the apartment last month to give me prices on things I would like to change.

That visit was like a circus. I came with my realtor and the contractor to find the seller, his wife and his realtor waiting for us.  Seller and wife live in a different apartment in the building. They were very pleasant and gave me all sorts of info about the apartment and the building. Unfortunately it made it very difficult for me to work with the contractor. I told him roughly what I wanted and left him to measure and figure. After we close on Friday I’ll go to the apartment and mull over the changes I asked for, and some I didn’t mention. In the hallway a false ceiling like a trellis hides two 72″ florescent tubes. The light is garish even to me who likes lots of light. I won’t mention the trellis. As soon as I walked in seller and wife told me they loved the trellis. I couldn’t bring myself to tell the contractor we were going to remove it. False ceiling goes, along with florescents, and wallpaper. I will hang pictures in the hall lit with track lighting.

Pictures to come.

No apologies

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I hate to admit it but I’ve been busy on Facebook. They finally got my attention. I don’t love Facebook, and I’m not sure I fully understand it, but several weeks ago, about the time Scott Walker was busy alienating unions in Wisconsin, I found a group called “One Million Pissed Off Women.” I realized I have been pissed off since I was about 10 years old and discovered my brother had better toys than I did. I won’t go into detail but be assured I was convinced at an early age that boys/men had it better than girls/women. I joined the group. Next I found myself fighting against the war on women. All of this keeps me very busy reading and sometimes talking to other women about it. I’m planning to march with them. I think it’s about time someone did it.

I’ve also been busy working on my move. I am buying a condominium located between University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon. I’ll be able to walk to all my classes, lots of restaurants and many events in the area. I won’t close on the apartment until the middle of next month and won’t actually move until the end of May. I’ve begun clearing things out of this apartment. I gave a porchful of stuff to the Vietnam Vets. I’m working on a large stack of books that I hope will go to a used bookstore. I’m losing my two built-in bookcases from this apartment and no replacements in the new one. I have some ideas about what I’d like to do in the apartment, like getting rid of some of the wallpaper and changing some of the lighting. I’ll try to keep posting as things happen.

Disappointment

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Sometimes delusions are so comforting we cling to them even though we know better. So this delusion was that I could get glasses and stop wearing contact lenses. My misshapen corneas are smoothed out by hard contact lenses and my vision can be corrected to 20/25. For years I’ve been told I can’t get glasses, or rather, my nose wasn’t large enough to carry the thickness of the lenses I would need. Two years ago my contact lens provider was able to give me a prescription for glasses, but the refraction was done immediately after I removed the lenses. My corneas were still reshaped by the contacts. After a day or two the glasses didn’t work. So I’ve gone without the lenses for the last week. I can see fairly well in bright sunshine so I’ve been able to walk around easily most days. (Pittsburgh has been unusually sunny this winter.)  Today I happily walked into Squirrel Hill for an appointment with another optometrist, thinking I would order glasses and wear the contacts only occasionally.

The poor optometrist. I probably ruined his day. He gave me a referral to someone else and now I have to decide if I’m willing to go through it all again.

More New York

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In addition to the last two doctor’s appointments we spent time doing some fun things. Steve is a big Dickens fan. Before he returned to Pittsburgh, we went to the Morgan Library to see their Dickens exhibit: a really great show. The last time I visited the Morgan was just after their famous architect enclosed their buildings in a glass shell. It was mobbed with all the other people who wanted to see what the FA had done, and it was unbearably noisy. I hesitated to return, but this visit was quiet and very pleasant. We also viewed a show of Persian art and enjoyed J.P.’s original office and library. I would like to own all those books and have my own librarian.

On our last day Robin and I went to Chelsea Market and walked on the High line. This was Robin’s first visit to both places and she loved it. We walked the entire park on this beautiful, amazingly warm day. Before our walk we fortified ourselves with a salad and sandwich from Amy’s Bread. Also bought some to take home; not nearly enough. Maybe it was the bread that set off the alarms when I went through security.

I’m back to my usual Pittsburgh routine, taking Osher classes and looking for another place to live. Robin is continuing to make great progress.

Travel (mis) Adventures

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Sometimes I think I am living under a travel curse–at least for that last trip. I haven’t been happy about flying since they first made me take off my shoes. The TSA doesn’t understand how important shoes are to old ladies, especially on hard floors. So I’ve been taking the train or bus–no security, no problems. Having more time than anything else I bought a ticket on the Megabus to go to New York the day before I had to be there. I chose Megabus over Greyhound Express because they had an 11am departure, in addition to the ghastly early and not-quite-overnight trips. On December 15 I made a reservation to go to New York on January 4 at 11am. I got to the departure point about 10:30 with a few people in front of me and about 20 or 25 people finally lined up after me. It was a bitter cold day. The bus from Harrisburg arrived and passengers dispersed. The bus to Washington D.C. came and went. The bus to Philly came and went. About 11:10 a Megabus employee asked us which bus we were waiting for, then told us there was no 11am bus; we would have to wait until 12. Megabus, which does most of its business online, never notified us the schedule had changed. We walked off to find someplace warm and came back a half hour later. The employee told us we could call and complain, which I did, but never heard from Megabus again. Needless to say, except for this public complaint, they won’t hear from me again.

Coming back to Pittsburgh I flew with Robin. She could not have taken the bus and I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to do it again. She had a huge, heavy suitcase and a heavy backpack for her laptop and other technology. She isn’t supposed to lift anything over 5 lbs. and I probably can’t lift much over 10 lbs. We got lots of help. A skycap took care of the heavy suitcase and someone from the airline walked us over to security. We took a bunch of those trays and put our stuff into them: my coat and shoes, Robin’s coat and shoes, her backpack, her laptop, her jacket, my jacket, my suitcase, etc. Etc. because I know there were more than six trays. I started to move the trays toward the scanner and suddenly realized I would have to move everything to another table next to the first but not connected to it. So everything had to be lifted over. This was obviously a tour de force of design and efficiency. I finally got everything going through the machine, then a little nervous about having it piling up on the other side without me, I walked through the metal detector and set it off.

I don’t know what did it. I had on my watch (plastic, but who knows what’s inside), my hearing aids (ditto), pants with a metal zipper, and of course, my pacemaker. I’ve walked through other times with same and no consequences, but I mentioned it and the TSA turned white. She literally did not know what to do with me. Finally, still in stocking feet, she patted me down. The advantage to being my age is that I’ve been to so many doctors and had so many other nasty experiences, I just didn’t care. The only really annoying part was being shoeless. She found nothing, but, surprise, something in my possessions set of an alarm somewhere. Another TSA (all female; a man would have been more fun) took me, shoeless, to another place and did another pat down. She discovered the dirty tissues in my pocket; the other one ignored them. They finally concluded I wasn’t a terrorist, then Robin and I got a ride of one of those electric carts over to the gate. We had help going down the jetway steps and up the plane steps with our stuff; by now just the coats, backpack and my carryon. In Pittsburgh we were met with a wheel chair. Neither of us needed it, so we piled all the stuff on, now including my suitcase, and walked with the attendant to the baggage claim where Steve met us. More about New York next time.

Home again

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Flew back to Pittsburgh last night. Robin in doing very well. I’m having minor troubles getting organized. I’ll write again soon and tell you about our last day in NY, being patted down, twice, all of the places I stayed and a few more things.

Back to Renee’s

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I think this is my fifth move. We are scheduled to return to Pittsburgh on Tuesday. Two more doctor’s appts and we are out of here. Steve is flying back now. Keep your fingers crossed that nothing else happens.

Robin is feeling much better; much of her energy has returned. Today we went to the Morgan Library to see an exhibit about Charles Dickens. Steve is a big fan, and he was very pleased.