One Week in PIttsburgh

So, after trying to compress 28 photos to send to you, my friends and family, and being frustrated that there simply seems to be no way to do it other than sending 7 consecutive emails, I thought I would just start this little link up and can post photos here.

So: after 8 days in Pittsburgh we are finally about settled in. Things are beginning to seem less crazy, though we are both looking forward to a return to a routine - for Lucas, that means work, and for me, that means school, which starts a week from today.

We've spent this week almost totally setting up our new home...unpacking, arranging, organizing, etc. This apartment is so beautiful and everything is brand new because it has just been refinished...after living in our "cabin" in Yellow Springs it feels like we've transcended our social status and are squatting in some rich person's flat. New hardwood floors, new windows, new doors, new outlets (outlets that work, and are copious), central air, dishwasher, clothes-washer and dryer...It's very different because there's always something softly humming in the background. And the counter is clean. And Olive is not able to eat pieces of the floor because she cannot get her teeth in between the cracks of the wood because there are...no...cracks! Here are some photos:

This is our back door. In the next installment I'll take some photos of the outside...but basically this is a very thin house that goes back pretty far, and we are separated from the two houses on each side of us by about...four feet. Yesterday our umbrella would not even go through the sidewalk alley without collapsing it. It is a large umbrella, but still. So, to enter we walk down an alley that is very nice now that Lucas has swept it and this is the door we come. There's a little (tiny) porch out there and the backyard...but that's a story for another day. We can also enter through the front of the building which is on a buzzer system, but we usually use this door. Although the first floor is the smallest of the three apartments it is the only one with a door to the outside...and a door that happens to give us direct access to the backyard. So, we dig it.

This is what it looks like when we step in the door. Living room, kitchen, bedroom in the distance. The whole width of this living space is...11 feet. Believe it or not.

This is on the left side of the 11 feet. 

...and this is on the right side. There's a cat, there's the bookshelves Luke built, there's the coffee table and the womb chair (with a new cover)...but wait - where is the couch? For those of you that do not know (everyone other than my parents and Lucas' parents, who suffered through the ordeal), my beloved   ginormous overstuffed red couch would not. fit. through. any. orifice. of this building. They even measured the windows. They took off the feet. They took off the doors. Rumor is that there was even discussion in the hallway about sawing it in half, bringing it in, and reattaching it somehow - but I don't know if I can believe this. Alas, at the end of a long day of moving and an even longer 3 years of being the select perch for cats, dogs, and recently babies, the glorious couch was given to an unwilling woman working the back door at goodwill in pittsburgh and left to fend for itself. RIP, red couch. Having only the womb chair and the wooden chair leaves me only with the bed as a place to stretch out which leads to far too many naps and this must be remedied. I feel like I should buy stock in ikea.