Life with the Air on

After living in my new apartment for two and a half months I am still trying to get my act together and be a grown-up. These 90 degree weeks forced us to cave and turn the air on which proved to be a huge' suck it up and accept the fate on the next bill statement' moment for all of us...a coming of age  to some degree.  Weeks of waking up in my own dripping sweat in a state of constant dehydration weren't enough to spur hitting the on switch. No, what drove me to break down and alleviate the sweat box we had created was due my mom was visiting.  I couldn't have her thinking this was some new crash diet or a new minimalist lifestyle choice (which would have been her first assumptions) that would just make me look bad...

Once I turned the air on it was like all of the unacceptable half-assing things we were doing to avoid fully living in our place grew mouths and declared how pitiful this situation was, like sentencing yourself to a state of constant heat stroke.  Whatever the on button turned on was much more than the cooling system.  The other issue I ended up breaking down on was the fact that none of our walls have anything actually hanging on them, in places where there could be something, things are awkwardly propped up in order to display the fact that even we thought it sounded fun to make this house a home.

cool tapestry that was hung no problem

So after finding a hammer and a total of four nails I was ready for my Martha Stewart moment. There are these white shelves that have sat in the corner since day one. The shelves are adorable, the kind of shelves that you look at and think 'damn I've got such sohpisticated taste'. I even tried to be really official and measure the nail points, but an inch of miscalculation (which should have been anticipated after a turbulent stint in geometry 4 years ago) forced me to have to remove my first and extremely anti-climactic nail in the wall. I searched high and low, finding nothing that was designed to help DIY idiots remove bum nails from ancient walls. I had to settle on jimmying the mess with crayola scissors. Great...even my make shift pliers were half assed.

Issue number 3000 in this undertaking occurred once I realize the walls, which apparently were built with the same materials that guard the Swiss Bank vaults, didn't allow the nail to go deep enough to support the shelf. This left my precious shelves hanging disturbingly lopsided teetering on crashing to the ground, it looked absurd.  After looking at the hack work I did to my pretty clean walls I felt beyond dumb.

finished product! somewhat lopsided I'm sure but no cardboard visible

The fan of the cool air hummed in the rafters okay... deep breath, fix this shit! I could not let my first attempt at home decorating be a complete and utter fail. Rummaging around for answers led me to some old cardboard that happened to be white, the answer to my problems.  I carefully folded the cardboard and wedged it in, filling the gap that allowed the shelf to droop. How's that for half assed??!

Needless to say it was a below average first attempt at domesticating my apartment of 2 months (2 months too late). Two simple white shelves turned out looking like a Goldberg machine.  Who knew four nails, scissors, and trash cardboard could accomplish such a project.  The shelves will probably come crashing down next time the wind blows through the window too hard, but until then I am loving living life with the air on.  Luckily this embarrassing attempt is only the beginning of my home improvement spree.

-R