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I feel weird, almost bourgeois — or maybe, "like a grown-up" says it better.
I type this entry from my office on the second (third: I'll explain) floor of our townhouse (apartment? I'll explain my confusion, never fear).
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A week ago, Raven and I were still living in our, mouse-ridden, slum-lord owned (Hi Chi! hovel with poor lighting and whose every amenity had been slapped to gather at the absolute minimum standard. A place who landlord I had two or three times called the city about in order to have Giant Piles of Garbage removed from below our fire escape, and who had once sent me an "eviction letter" by email. (We just ignored it, of course. The back-dated rental increase I went to the office to argue about and laugh at.)
Today, for $100.00 more per month, we find ourselves ensconces in a two-bedroom unit with twice the square footage on the top two floors of a town-house owned by a non-profit housing corporation whose goal is not to gouge tenants for everything we've got but rather, to works towards ensuring that Ottawa has a growing supply of affordable housing. (They're also prepared to supply us with plants for our balcony and/or the community gardening plots on the roof of the parking garage that sits on one side of the courtyard upon which our bedroom looks.
Rather than a four-lane, one-way arterial artery (Kent Street, for the locals), our new abode sits on a tree-lined residential street home to kids and dog-walkers. And Girl Guides, who managed to sell me a box of cookies about 10 minutes after I'd first used our new keys to get inside. But I digress. We're a half-kilometre or so closer to the airport, and a few blocks closer to Chinatown, which makes us happy. Not so much for the restaurants as for the convenience of picking up fresh vegetables more often.
The place isn't perfect — in fact, we already have a fairly long list of things that need fixing. But the CCOC also provides several convenient ways to contact the Maintenance Department; I'm optimistic that repairs will be made sooner that later — but so far, so most good. The furnace is brand new and our hot water is a modern, utterly sensible "on demand" system, which means no wasting energy keeping a giant tank of water hot 24 hours a day when it is only going to be needed for one hour.
Aesthetically, it's going to take me a while to get used to having carpeting everywhere but the kitchen, bathroom and vestibule by the front door, but I suppose I'll manage.
Speaking of aesthetics, while the Christian world is celebrating the Resurrection, I'll be emptying boxes and trying to make our internet wiring discrete, if not quite pretty.
