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the box arrived on wednesday. it was larger than i’d anticipated—which is always the way with mirrors, objects that exist in their digital catalog images as confident, well-proportioned things and arrive in your foyer as an indictment of spatial planning. julian had to hold the door. we stood in the foyer for a moment,…

the housewarming happened. people were in the apartment. the stoneware was used for actual food, the lighting was warm in the way i’d spent two weeks making it warm, and julian was so pleased about the whole thing that he made the same joke three times and nobody minded. the room delivered. the table…

the managed community apartment comes with a kitchen that has, i’ve decided, already made its opinion about blenders very clear. there are two counter tiers in this kitchen. the first holds the coffee maker, which is sovereign and non-negotiable and has been since day two. the second is nine inches of beige laminate that…

the housewarming happened. i want to lead with that because i’ve been building toward it in this space for three weeks and i feel it’s only fair to report back on what actually occurred, rather than letting the anticipation accrete into mythology. the housewarming happened. it was a saturday. people came. the room—which i…

julian suggested paper plates for the housewarming. i’ve already documented my immediate response to this elsewhere, but i want to use this post to explain the reasoning, because i think there’s something worth pulling apart here that goes beyond personal preference or the question of who does the dishes. a plate is a formal…

eleven days ago i declared war on the lighting in this apartment. i want to provide a status update. the overhead is still there. i want to say that first, before anything else—i haven’t solved the fundamental infrastructure problem, which is four recessed leds designed by someone who has never sat in a room…

julian announced it the way he announces most things: as a neutral fact of the universe, already implicitly agreed upon. “we should have people over,” he said, making eggs in a way that suggests he has never been afraid of anything. “a housewarming. just a small one.” i had to put my coffee down.…

there’s a specific kind of dread that sets in when your apartment has a “smart” thermostat that sends you push notifications. mine informed me this morning—via a badge on my phone, the way one might receive news of a celebrity death—that the living room was “2 degrees above optimal.” i didn’t ask. i never…

i’ve been staring at the carpet in the guest “suite” for forty-eight hours. in this managed-living ecosystem, they call this color ‘oatmeal,’ but i know a psychological vacuum when i see one. it’s a synthetic polypropylene blend—the kind of low-pile dross that’s designed to survive a high turnover rate without ever actually looking clean.…

i’m currently sitting in the kitchen at 7:00 pm wearing my old celine shades, the ones with the thick acetate frames that make me look like a grieving widow or a hungover session musician. julian just walked in from the hospital—or whatever he calls that glass box where he manages medical logistics—and found me…