The Bohemian Life Part II

Last time I showed off pictures of the adorable outside of my husband's new bohemian abode but now it's time to enter the darkness. Here are the pictures of the inside, a place that has been affectionately nicknamed "the cave" by his co-workers.



This is the door to his room. It's a precarious entrance. The platform doesn't really meet up with the very steep steps so you kind of have to step over to get there. There's also a lovely water heater taking up part of the platform and you can see a gaping whole in the wall. Inside is a nasty mess of who knows what. The door didn't have a lock on it, which was fine with the Bohemian, since the outside door locked, but when an interesting neighbor moved upstairs and had to share his kitchenette/bathroom he decided to invest in a pad lock.



Here is my husband standing in his room. Stooping is a better word, neither one of us can stand all the way up in there! You can stand when you first walk in but then it steps up. To his right, going up to his elbow, is the bed's mega platform. It's built over all the heat/air ducts so when the heat kicks on we get to really experience it. We can hear and feel the rumbling. I have to get on a chair to climb up on the bed! That's why we get to cuddle with the restaurant upstairs.



Down down down the stairs. The green door on the right goes directly into the quilt shop. When the Bohemian first moved in they didn't have it locked, actually the door is too small for the frame, so we could have just roamed around the shop at night. We didn't have that desire though. They did add a lock after the interesting character moved in upstairs, hmmm, are you sensing a theme with this neighbor? The door to the left is the entrance to the kitchenette/bathroom. There is no lock, there is no doorknob and it is shared by the quilt shop! In between the doors are some lovely farm implements. I think they really add to the cozy feel of the place.

The kitchenette. Need I say more. This is not our mess but the one left by the owner, who clearly has trouble getting rid of anything. I just can't bring myself to touch anything enough to clean up. I would expect more from a gay man, honestly, where's that famed gay man cleanliness and style?

More of the same in the bathroom, none of this stuff belongs to us. Atleast the toilet and sink were clean. There is a shower but not one we want to step foot in so everyday we haul our stuff to the church and shower. We're such waifs.



Up up up. So many stairs in Hot Springs. Not just the apartment but all over town. I guess that's what happens when you build a town on the side of a cliff. One entire side of the main drag has a sheer cliff right behind all the storefronts and there are hills behind the buildings on the other side. I like it, this town is full of character and characters.

I have always had a thing for old buildings and old doors.

The Bohemian Life Part I

As I have written about before, my husband has moved to an artsy town four hours away to start a new job while the boys and I are staying behind to try to sell the house. On my last visit I was kicking myself for having left my camera at home but I got to visit again this week and this time my camera tagged along. So I have pics and here they are, a window into my husband's new bohemian lifestyle.

Hubby's apartment comes with a nice feature, the Exchange Street Cafe directly overhead. It not only provides wonderful food that we can run up on a tab, so quaint, but the added bonus of waking to the sounds of wooden chairs being shoved across wooden floor, the murmur of customers and the soft sounds of music wafting down through the ceiling. As you'll see in a future post, the ceiling is very short and the bed very high so that when laying down in bed you can't raise your arm straight up before touching the ceiling. So the restaurant sounds like it's cuddling up with us for a morning snuggle, or trampling us, that really depends on how busy it is.

Pretty cute from the outside. The brick part anyway. The rest of the building going off to the right is in a sad state of disrepair, as is much of Hot Springs. It's a strange town so grand and beautiful and run down and dirty and loved and neglected all at once. If you look closely at the far left of the photo you can see the Bohemian Man in his natural habitat.

A few words about what I associate with Hot Springs: dust, cold, stairs, water, old, doors. This is the apartment door, it is sunken down a foot or so into the sidewalk and for some reason I find this incredibly humorous and fun.

There is lovely art all over Hot Springs and everyone wants to be an artist of some kind. Here's the work of a blossoming graffiti artist who's work you can view all over the ally, classy.

Keep your eye open for future installments of The Bohemian Life. Next time I'll take you out of the sun and into "the cave". Sounds like a cosy home eh?

Mr. John Steinbeck Everybody

So, the other day I was tagged (the blogging equivalent of an email forward for those of you, like myself, who are ignorant in the way of the blog) for the first time. I've seen some tell-us-about-yourself tags but I thought this was a cool one: find the nearest book with atleast 123 pages, find the 5th sentence and post the next three. The closest book was a dictionary so I'll spare you that. The next one was East of Eden by John Steinbeck and it is one of my all time favorite books.

"I don't want to go to California."
"You are my wife," he said softly "I want you to come with me."
She was silent and did not speak of it again.

After doing this one I'm now a little obsessed with this excercise. I keep walking over to the bookshelf to see what other books have to say on page 123. I'm finding that alot of my favorite books sound horribly boring in this context and more than one sounded incredibly vulger, though I know the books on a whole aren't. And some of the worst books I've ever read sounded like literary masterpieces, full of sage wisdom, atleast through those brief three sentences. As interesting as this all has been, just like the forwards I receive in my email, I will not be passing this on.

One of Those Days

Sometimes I feel like my to-do list has a to-do list!

Second Generation Scrapper

My husband isn't the best with picking up around the house but he is the master of knowing when I need some time away from the glorious title of "MAMMA!!!!!!" He not only has the indispensable talent of walking in the door and immediately seeing "frazzled" written across my forehead, he is also one of those blessed men who recognizes the fact that being a mom is a job, a hard one, one that affords few breaks, so he gives me a weekly break. Every Tuesday was my day off. From sun up to sun down I didn't have to do a single mom-related chore I didn't want to do. This usually meant a blissful day of my beloved crack-filled mochas and scrapping with my buddy Kim at our beautiful local scrapbook supply store. That is until the move. I was very reluctant to give up my scrapping day-o'-bliss so I decided I would put Jackson, aka. Lil' Spitfire, into Mother's Day Out on Tuesday and I could try entering the world of scrapping with a 3 year old. Much to my amazement it's going pretty well! He does some work on his scrapbook, which is heavily Thomas and Cars themed, and I actually get some work done on my own scrapbook! So I'm busily training up the next generation of scrappers.

When dropping little brother off at MDO Graham was asked what he was going to do today. His response, expressed in his usual slow and contemplative way: "I'm going--with my good friend Mamma--scrapbooking." Well, just melt my heart with sweetness Mr. Golden Curls! Graham is scrapping pictures he took himself (sooo much fun!). My favorite layout so far: bright blue Thomas paper and a photo of our bright turquoise bathroom and, somehow, Pappa's hand.



Such a literal little man: "Put the page under your chin so I can see it!" "OK, Cheese!"

Visitation

It has been three weeks now since my husband started living 4 hours away, but I got to hang out with him for most of this past week. On Monday afternoon I drove down to visit feeling giddy, like a school girl visiting her crush, and I had so much fun! It was like a little vacation and I got to get to know this future home of mine a little better and must admit, I'm warming up to it. It's pretty artsy and the downtown is cool, I haven't gotten to venture much past that so I don't have a good feel for the whole town. I had planned on doing a photo documentary of how my husband is living these days because it's so bohemian, and more than a smidge odd. After he was all moved into his apartment, I use the term apartment loosely, we walked back into the ally, I looked around at the beautiful rundowness of it all and said "Jack Kerouac would be proud." Unfortunately in the hustle and bustle of getting kids and dog out of the house and on their way to Grandma's house (yea for Grandma!) and my over excitement to get on the road to see the husband I hadn't seen in two weeks, I forgot my camera, so pictures will have to wait.



I felt inspired visiting this town with it's moderately neglected oldness. We walked up and down the main street, in and out of boutiques full of really cool stuff I will never afford. We had breakfast in the restaurant upstairs from my husband's apartment. It's so closely upstairs that the scootching of wooden chairs on the wooden floor above and the soft rumble of customers' voices was my morning alarm. We visited "The Poet's Loft", a little place about a block away. The first night they had open mic jam session. My husband is a Jack of all Musical Trades so he was up there drumming, singing, and playing guitar. The next night was their poetry slam. I'm not a poetry writer/reader, actually I'm not much into being on display in front of people, I leave that to my husband who on this night read a poem by Mother Theresa and sang a silly ditty.



My husband even got to come home with me for a day or two but now he's gone. Drove off in the cold, dark night in our as of yet topless '68 VW convertible bundled up to twice his size. While he was here he felt a little like a stranger in his own home, having had to live out of a suitcase. As he was leaving I had the feeling that I just have visitation rights to my husband, I guess that makes Hot Springs the evil stepmother. It seems there is still some warming up to be done!

Life Gets In The Way

Tonight I was feeling a little frustrated that I can't seem to get much crafting done. Today I managed to make only two cards between feeding, bathing, diapering, and catering to two kids and dealing with two different bedtimes and being a temporary single mom. My youngest is getting in two very nasty second molars and being very clingy with Pappa gone. He's also likely to either not sleep through the night or wake up at 5:30am ready to start his day. I was so focused on getting those silly cards done that every little thing that distracted me was extremely aggitating and I had to work really hard at not snapping at the boys. Now that the house is calm I'm realizing life isn't getting in the way, but I often get in the way of enjoying my life. Besides, I wouldn't want any other life getting in the way of my crafting than the one I have now!