Lately, I've been having interior design fantasies, nest-building daydreams, if you will. If only our long-term residency at this rental was assured, I sigh, using that as my excuse not to beautify the apartment with art and trinkets, and actually haul in furniture that would be worth keeping. Matching dinnerware, framed posters, solid wood bookcases painted in brilliant rainbow shades... hell, maybe I could even be reunited with the rest of my media collection from Kalamazoo! I've been thinking about this for years, but only recently have these thoughts really driven me to distraction.

The previous tenant, another student in my department, lived here for six years. She had this dresser that she was pitching, but since R. and I arrived with nary a stick of furniture, I asked her to leave it. And so we used it as it gradually fell apart, day by day.

Then it tried to eat my hand and give me tetanus. The threat of bodily harm is what it took to get me to buy my own damn dresser.

I was looking at the thing the other day and just cracked up laughing at this ruined piece of furniture, and myself, for having ignored its junked presence for so many months. Somehow, I had just willed it beyond the very limits of my consciousness, like I wasn't sharing the room with it every night. This is a condition of my cheapness and inability to conceive of permanence, perhaps. By denying this dresser's uselessness, I was delaying the confrontation with obsolescence which would further remind me how almost nothing I currently own is fit to last years, let alone "Forever".

Someday, I will find THE place -- not just the city, but the abode -- where I can look forward to living for several continuous, undisturbed years. At this point, I would love to have just three years without moving. That would be awesome. I can't even romanticize transience anymore, because you're not supposed to romanticize the life that you actually know. So I yearn quietly for what I don't have.

Yet.

Speaking of wanting things, here is the Super Bonus Bowdu picture for the month (which is actually from last month). He has perfected his mooching face and posture. The effect is potent.