We moved almost everything last weekend, and have spent this week going
over to the old apartment after work cleaning it up. Keeping rabbits inside your home is in fact, a stunningly bad idea and thank god El Yo can wield a planer, an electric sander and a paintbrush all Shiva-like, or we'd never see our deposit again. Also, what the hell is that stuff collecting onthe ceiling of the oven? I swear we've never cooked anything that color. So it's been a long few weeks. We have, however, drawn the line at sanding and repainting all the radiators as no, we weren't hired to renovate the house and yes, that is in fact lead paint on the radiators.

Housing is complicated.

Moving was complicated, but less so than I thought it would be. El Yo is an engineer, and what I didn't realize until we got the moving truck to the apartment, is that that means that he already had a mental plan of how to carefully arrange everything we owned in the back of said truck so we'd only need one trip. That was truly amazing. Less amazing was the drive over with two rabbits in a carrier on the floor between the front seats, one rabbit in a travel box on top of the carrier, and one rabbit in a towel-wrapped regular box on my lap. Out of the four, guess who peed madly the entire time? Poor little guy.

The rabbits continue to be unimpressed with the new house, almost in directly inverse proportion to how impressed El Yo and I have gotten. We've had the unique experience of having things fall into place, items seem to know where they should be with little assistance from their owners. The kitchen is beautiful, even with one bright orange door and dual-tone orange and blue baseboards remaining. It feels homey already, and after an initial period of immense protest from the larger rabbits ("We will not poo here! NO! We will not poo in this strange environment! Not. Pooing. No! We will instead throw everything in our cage with a satisfying thwak! We will pull the ears off our stuffed rabbit! Take that! And that! And now we are tired and coincidentally, what time is dinner?")

The little rabbits haven't gotten enough out-of-cage time lately, and so are verging on mopey, which is kind of a bummer, considering that our only couch is currently in their room, so if you want to be comfortable at all you get fixed with two pairs of hairy eyeballs. The first night I let Neo out to run around, he ran too close to the screen door and suddenly heard crickets and other insects. They are all apparently predators, so there was peeling out too quickly on linoleum and then the falling down and the hiding in the box.

This weekend we aim to fix the carpet in the front room, which needs to be ripped out so that the last vestiges of cigarette smoke exit the ground floor. Then we'll be able to unbend time and space and get all the books and bookshelves out of the small bedroom. Apparently there are a lot of books. I am hearing this comment from my engineer.

There is also the small matter of locating, obtaining and moving another couch. When I bought our existing couch 2 years ago, I failed to measure the door to the basement in our new house. So there was a brief period of swearing and heroic pushing and a large quantity of paint leading towards the basement door which now needs to be touched up. Also, there was the immortal quote, "Go ask the teenager next door if he'll help you. Tell him you broke your midget." Which I think you'll agree just gives and gives.

Good luck with your own house hunt. House repair is empowering as long as you're willing to learn to do it yourself. Bills from people who know more than you, like, say, oh just to take an example totally at random, electricians bringing your house up to code, bite. I say go for the fixer upper.

More later,
Audrey Clare

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