Damn you burbs!

Heater boiler acting up, fractured arms, glaciers forming and now raccoons shacking up rent-free!!

Hillsy was down in the basement last night and I got the famous "I don't want you to freak out...but" line. I hate sentences that start off like that!!! "I don't want you to freak out, but a raccoon was just staring at me in the laundry room" There's a tiny window right in front of our dryer that looks out into the space below our deck - where the family or raccs have decided to settle in for the winter. Not only do they have ample space but because of our brilliant idea to start a compost heap, they also have had unlimited access to all sorts of fruits and vegetables :)

Hillsy began researching "humane" how-to's and found....
- play talk-radio
- keep the space lighted
wow, those are our options????

Anyone out there have any tried & tested tips?

Images: www.itsnotart.co.uk and www.city-data.com

Farewell East Village

Hello! I'm back!! I can't believe it's been 2 weeks aleady! So here's a quick re-cap of what I've been up to...

Remember my 5th-floor walkup in the East Village? Here's what it looked like before the nightmare of packing began. And here's what it looked like for about 2 weeks before we finally moved out last Saturday...



We decided to hire movers because there was no way Hillsy and I could've managed to move ourselves from a 5th floor walk-up apartment. There were 3 men in total. They were monsters - I was so amazed by their strength and speed.


The truck was all packed up after about 1.5 hours.


It was a bittersweet goodbye. It was in this tiny 500 sq' apartment where I began my "starting over". I will miss you a lot 524.


And I couldn't leave without taking a picture of the stairs. Imagine endlessly going up and down, up and down (while carrying 4 heavy Trader Joe's bags) these lovelies for 3+ years!