BOB VILLA WOULD NOT APPROVE!


so when i lived in boston i lived in this crappy, ugly house that was basically falling apart. but i lived there for 4 1/2 years because rent was ridiculously cheap and it was a month to month-- very rare, plus it was wicked easy to catch a bus that would take you to two different train stations. oh and let's not forget that it was within walking distance to a "market basket" (ghetto cheap grocery store), harvard square and my favorite inidan restaurant in union square. it doesn't get much better than that!

however when i say it was falling apart i mean that literally, not figuratively.

for example: the bathroom floor is rotting out. the wood that surrounds the bathtub is so rotted that the tiles above it have fallen out and the wood is so soft you can dig a hole straight through it with your fingernail. and because the wood is so bad in the bathroom, the toilet can't be properly bolted to the floor and so when you sit down on it, it moves and when you stand back up, the whole thing feels like it's going to get up and walk out with you! we were just waiting for the day when the whole of it would drop down into the basement.

moving on to the kitchen... aside from the fact that someone painted it lavender... yes i said lavender and the fact that the linoleum and the cabinets look like they are from 1955, the stove is probably from 1955 as well-- the problem with that being that you can't read any of the numbers on the dials... so you have to guess where 350 degrees is. we were just waiting for the day when the stove would spontaneously combust!

now to the front room. i will only complain here about the carpet that probably was put in around 1973 and then subsequently NEVER WASHED. it was disgusting. we were just waiting for the day when the carpet would get up, do a tap number and walk right out of our house!

then the hallway-- where the wall was lined with the pipes to our gas heat. this lovely gem apparently had several small leaks all along the length of it, according to the gas guy that was finally called in by my last roommate to live in the small room where the pipe ended and seemed to leak the most into. we were just waiting for the day when we would all die a silent death in our slumber or when someone would light a match and our whole house would explode!

then i will sum up the rest of our house by saying that the outside looked just like the scary old houses they describe in horror stories, the front of the house was covered by a huge shrubbery that would grow out of control and try to eat you as you walked up onto the porch that is dying a slow death and going to collapse one day and the "sun room" as i liked to call it, looks like a perfect place to put crazy people. and last but not least our basement... which consists of a million spiders and cobwebs, a hard-packed dirt floor and a shovel in the corner so we can bury all of our victims!

okay so did i do a good enough job of describing this house? if i didn't just ask any one of my friends that used to make fun of me for living there. but i didn't care, it had character.

but the absolute BEST part about this house was my room! truly i loved my room. when i moved in it was hideous. someone had decided to be "artistic" and the top half of the wall was white and the bottom half was lavender (just like our lovely kitchen) and then they had taken a darker purple and attempted to sponge paint from the middle down getting heavier with the dark purple the lower it got. i just can't fathom why anyone would do this- ridiculous! anyhoo i moved in and painted the room a nice taupe and all of the trim was white. it looked nice if i do say so myself. but really the coolest part of my room was that the floorboards had absolutely no insulation so every winter the cold air would seep in and make my room a balmy 14 degrees. i'm pretty sure that i am the only human on this planet that could LOVE this feature of my room. sure it sucked to have to get up in the mornings... but oh the joy i was in snuggled under 5 blankets, all warm and toasty-- i loved it more than i can describe!

so it's funny because ever since moving in with my sister, i have the window to my bedroom cracked and i LOVE the cold air that seeps in. call me crazy, but i can't stand it if i'm not freezing my butt off while i'm in my room and it's all because of my ugly old house! gosh i miss it a lot!