can we talk about my house? man, i am obsessed with it. i bring it up because soon we are getting a new roommate! the third new one since i’ve lived here. the best news is that it is a dude so i can make tons of jack tripper jokes (actually, shit, i think this makes me the chrissy, so maybe nevermind). it is going to be truly wonderful to never have to see the idiot boyfriend of my soon-to-be-departed roomie, he doesn’t know how to close a door like someone who wasn’t born in a barn and also this morning the toilet was filled with his piss and an almost-delicate looking wad of phlegm. i suppose this is the universe’s retribution for when i let my boyfriend stay at erin’s & my place constantly and he doubtlessly annoyed the shit out of her.

i am definitely the house matriarch, i suppose by virtue of being the oldest lady and also the one who has been here the longest. i feel an odd sense of ownership over it, though it isn’t mine. it is the most perfect place i could have imagined. after spending two days looking at run-down shanties and hovels that you couldn’t pay me to live in, my mom and i arrived in front of the house not feeling optimistic. the landlord greeted us, i was taken aback by how young (and babely) he was. all i needed was one look at the kitchen and i knew this was the place. it is comparatively giant, and has a gas stove! fortunately the rest of the house was also perfect and we scrambled to get the lease signed before we flew back to chicago the next day.

additionally, i love my neighborhood so much. technically it is the hood, and we have definitely had all of our patio furniture stolen off the porch and there was a break-in last february two days after my roommate moved in (while i was asleep in the next room, talk about creepy). once mary and i were walking to get a much-needed margarita at red house late one night when a couple of dudes rolled up next to us in their hoopty and were like where do you think y’all are going? so we told them we lived down the block and they asked us incredulously, do you know where you are? you are in THE HEART OF THE EAST SIDE! which became a long-running joke for us after that. i guess seeing a couple of white hipster bitches walking in the middle of the street at 11pm is still an odd sight for some denizens of my neighborhood. i have never felt anything less than completely welcome here though, and i spend a lot of time walking cola all over and meeting and chatting to people and letting little kids pet him.

i have lived here for a year and a half- so has cola. in that time we’ve seen three roommates, two birds, and a cat come and go. now we get a dude, and another dog! we just got a fence around the backyard so now we can turn it into a real hangout space. last year we had a weekly movie series where we projected a movie every thursday night, hopefully one day it will stop being a hundred and fucking three degrees outside every day so we can start again (so far this year we have only shown slade in flame on labor day, with this amazing pre-show alice cooper concert video from the 80s where he does all kinds of choreography with a blow up doll). some day i am going to buy a hammock and sit outside and drink lemonade and read a book, soon.