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lagilmanI am being a bad writer-suri today: I am not writing anything. Mainly this is because I got in at 4:30 this morning (ow, ow, and also ow) and didn't wake up until around 10 (and then only because the phone woke me up,) and making potluck pasta and watching Leverage is about all my brain can handle.
Am having some interesting backbrain thoughts about the subplot, though, and scribbled down some notes that should make for an interesting mid-book twist. Also, ties in neatly with what's already been implied but not established about Talent in the previous series. Should also give me a way to bring forward a secondary character without jarring the narrative. That will be fun (and when you guys actually read this part, two years from now, maybe one person will go "oh, that's what she was talking about. Cool!" For you, dear reader, I dedicate that scene).
Later, there will be bill-paying, and then I am heading back downtown for the evening. I r a soshal meerkat.
Tomorrow, the world goes back to its natural order of things.
As an aside: having seen possibly the Ur bachelor's apartment, source of All Jokes, last night, I wonder -- how would y'all define the such a thing? How about for a woman? This is actually for research, so speak up, don't be shy, share your observations freely...
Am having some interesting backbrain thoughts about the subplot, though, and scribbled down some notes that should make for an interesting mid-book twist. Also, ties in neatly with what's already been implied but not established about Talent in the previous series. Should also give me a way to bring forward a secondary character without jarring the narrative. That will be fun (and when you guys actually read this part, two years from now, maybe one person will go "oh, that's what she was talking about. Cool!" For you, dear reader, I dedicate that scene).
Later, there will be bill-paying, and then I am heading back downtown for the evening. I r a soshal meerkat.
Tomorrow, the world goes back to its natural order of things.
As an aside: having seen possibly the Ur bachelor's apartment, source of All Jokes, last night, I wonder -- how would y'all define the such a thing? How about for a woman? This is actually for research, so speak up, don't be shy, share your observations freely...
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Bachelor pad, Platonic ideal of
Date: 2009-02-14 08:16 pm (UTC)Do bachelors really live like this? I have no idea.
Female: a lot of her favorite color, whatever that might be. Plants and flowers and bookcases. Softness in the rugs and upholstery. Completely spotless, because she has a cleaning person. Tidy, because she wants it the way she wants it, but not so appallingly tidy as Mr Bachelor. A good sound system, yes, but also her piano/guitar/dulcimer. A huge, alphabetized collection of her favorite movies on DVD, already upgraded from video.
Well, you asked.
Re: Bachelor pad, Platonic ideal of
Date: 2009-02-14 08:27 pm (UTC)Do bachelors really live like this? I have no idea.
K's living area is totally dominated by the bitchin' widescreen tv w/ Sound System. It was Noted Upon.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 09:15 pm (UTC)Personal experience also suggests that empty pizza boxes may feature, plus underpants in places no underpant should be. At the other extreme: an unnatural degree of order.
Meanwhile, for your records, I give you Monica - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1144682/A-little-bit-Africa-pops-Wales-woman-discovers-meerkat-garden.html
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Date: 2009-02-15 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 03:56 am (UTC)(and yes, the same has been said of me. Several times.)
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Date: 2009-02-15 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 09:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 09:21 pm (UTC)The door opens to a staircase and you walk up to enter the maini floor. That is, you walk up if you can manage to get past all the books stacked on the steps. Actually, it's just every other step so a long-legged man can make his way up the steps while a woman is left... well... stunned is the usual word.
Having gotten part-way up the steps, you now look up and notice something odd over the room above. Is that really a... yes it IS a fishing net hanging from the ceiling and it's filled with... stuff. VCR tapes. DVDs. Just... stuff.
When you reach the top of the steps, you try to figure out where to put your feet next because the floor is littered with stuff. Copies of articles. Newspapers. Magazines. Books. DVDs. VCR tapes. There's furniture as well, but it's covered by the same stuff that covers the floor.
And I note that we have not entered that apartment in some years now because when we returned home from our last visit, I spent the next two months badgering my husband to declutter the house. He's afraid to let me ever go near the place again.
We helped B move from his house to an apartment and during the process, we found his vacuum cleaner. It was still in the original box.
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Date: 2009-02-15 03:55 pm (UTC)Are you looking for an ideal? Or the stereotypical messy bachelor's apartment? I have a lot of experience with messy, if you want details :-p
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Date: 2009-02-15 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 04:40 pm (UTC)ok, since you're doing research, and since most messy people are pretty shy about it when talking to not-messy people(being as well, cleanliness is next to godliness, or at least compliant with health codes), here are some details of the messy-type apartment, from personal experience.
I've never lived in an apartment all on my lonesome, so this isn't strictly about bachelor space, but both my bedroom in my parents' house and my first apartment fit the messy stereotype.
My room at my parents' house consisted of a few bureaus and a bookcase with the top surfaces covered by knickknacks. The bookcase was full of books, and there were additional stacks of books both next to the bookcase and under the bed. There was a tangle of "stuff" that I would occasionally sift through looking for something and transfer one item or armful at a time to the side of the room I started looking on, occasionally stopping to read whatever books/papers I unearthed on the way. There was usually yarn tangled up in the mess, tying it all together. I never did anything with the yarn, except occasionally spend an afternoon untangling it and rolling it up into a ball that I then tossed back in the pile. The room was pink, but only because that's the color I asked for when I was 3.
My first apartment, with then-boyfriend/now-husband, was remarkably similar except it was filled with two people's stuff rather than one person's stuff. There were fewer knick-knacks since I had left them in my old bedroom, but every flat surface had layers of stuff on it. (That much, at least has not changed. I know I need to clean my desk off when I stop being able to see the icons at the bottom of my monitor screen.)
I also picked up the habit of maintaining a dirty laundry pile and a clean laundry pile, because it wasn't worth the effort of putting away his laundry for him, or of pulling out just my laundry to put away... On occasion the piles would merge, at which point we'd wash everything and start a new clean pile. When we first got together, I noticed he would sniff clothing before putting it on, so the delineation of clean and dirty piles may have been a factor I added to the equation. I have no sense of smell most of the time, so the sniff-n-wear method wouldn't work for me.
The only real conflict between our messiness styles came on the matter of food - I was insistent that uneaten food needed to go in the kitchen trash and spills needed to be cleaned up as soon as noticed. He didn't really notice food once he was done with it and would leave it where-ever, occasionally then leaving papers or other stuff on top of dishes. This, of course, lead to maggots, which is why my mess-philosophy eventually won out on that point.
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Date: 2009-02-15 04:40 pm (UTC)Neither of us wanted to do dishes, but he was more stubborn on that point, so the sink would fill up, the counter beside the sink would fill up, and the card-table I put up for food-prep space would fill up before I eventually spent a weekend washing them all. Once, a visiting friend insisted on washing them for us, and spent the whole visit on it. I think my parents did that once too. I even hid a pile of dirty dishes in the oven once when the landlady had knocked on the kitchen door. I forgot about them and melted a spoon and knife-handle next time I pre-heated the oven. This incident also produced a lovely finish on one of my wooden spoons, which was my favorite cooking utensil for several more years after that.
We also disagree over whether dirty dishes should be left in the sink or kept on the counter. I think they should be kept on the counter, where they dry up and keep their ick to themselves until I'm ready to wash them. He piles them in the sink, where food bits rinse gently off the plates onto the glasses, and form a not-so-delightful rotting, molding funk that slimes up everything in reach. These are both approaches you might find in an ur-messy apartment. Just in case you were wondering :-p
The floor in the kitchen was usually clear, except for occasionally a rubbermaid bin full of dishes waiting to be washed. (we had way too many dishes) The floor in the bedroom was taken up by the bed (sans frame), the dirty and clean laundry piles, and a couple of bureaus that had no clothes in the drawers but lots of papers/books/stuff on top of them. The floor in the living room usually had a clear track to the sofa, but was otherwise covered with papers/books/boxes/stuff, as were every flat surface. The floor in the adjoining "dining" room had a dining table with a computer on it and a chair beside it, and was otherwise drifted with stuff about 1-2 feet deep, as well as the standard mix of stuff on the table surface. After a year or so, I actually cleaned this room and a large part of the stuff on the floor wound up being trash like packing material, boxes from video games or other computer programs, old class assignments, and junk mail. There was also a fair bit of lost laundry in the mix.
Among our college friends were four bachelors living together in one apartment, which was rather similar to ours. It was a little neater in general because they would clean up (or just move stuff out of the common areas into their rooms) for parties, which they held a couple of times a year. One of them would wash all of the dishes every few weeks, though on occasion they would use paper plates and plastic utensils for a while to put it off a bit longer. They were pretty good about getting all food-related trash into the trash and dishes into the pantry to await cleaning. (likely for the above-mentioned maggot reason) Their refrigerator had a mysterious leak that had eaten away the linoleum floor in one spot, but the landlord refused to replace it as long as it worked at all. So everyone just learned to avoid stepping in the gooey spot on the floor... Whenever one of them had a girlfriend, the dishes would get washed more often, because the girls would be too disgusted to visit without cleaning up.
Anyway, probably TMI, but I hope some of it is helpful at some point...
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Date: 2009-02-15 04:53 pm (UTC)2. please don't be offended when I say that I will probably never visit your place. *grin* Every other room may be a disaster, but my kitchen has to be clean. My grandmother's ghost will otherwise be tisking behind me until I deal with it.
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Date: 2009-02-15 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 09:25 pm (UTC)