Elizabeth Reinking
Staff Writer
Upon first glance, my apartment appears to be very conventionally nice. A spacious two-bedroom located in the hills across from Zuma Beach, it has great big bedrooms, lots of storage and laundry for free. When my roommate found the place this summer and called to ask me if we should take it, I vaguely remember jumping around my summer apartment squealing “Oh my god I am so excited I am going to throw up.” Or something like that. Little did I know then, however, how many more surprises this new apartment had in store for us.
The kitchen is definitely a highlight. Well, maybe “kitchen” is an overstatement. The kitchenette is fabulous. Okay, maybe “kitchenette” is an overstatement. What we have is a sort of food-preparation closet with a refrigerator and an oven. Actually, I think it used to be a shower or laundry room of some kind, because there’s a drain in the middle of the floor. I guess it may prove useful later for cleaning up spills. “Whoops, spilled the (virgin) margaritas.” “Oh, whatever Ð just Swiffer it into the hole.”
The oven dial has no numbers on it, either. There’s a just a blank dial, labeled “oven.” That I don’t mind so much, because most of my cooking involves my freezer and my microwave. No, not the broken one mounted in the hallway outside the food-preparation closet, the one down the hall in the wet bar, where we keep all of our saucepans and eating utensils. It’s great Ð it’s like both cooking and exercising at the same time. You don’t get that in Lovernich, no sir.
Other parts of my new apartment life remind me a little of camping. For example, a few days ago, I came home to a bathtub inexplicably full of six inches of brown dirt-filled water. At least I’m pretending it was dirt. You see, my apartment’s plumbing functions using a septic tank. I’m still not sure what this means, except that my bathtub fills up from time to time, apparently, with sewage backup. Lovely. Don’t worry about me, though Ð the plumber showed up a mere five hours later. Lucky for me, my roommate had a class, so I got to clean out the tub afterwards. OK, I guess that story wasn’t really a lot like camping. Maybe more like the pioneers of the Old West, battling wild creatures and clogged pipes. Yeah, it’s just like being a pioneer. A sewage-cleaning pioneer.
And wild creatures I have in plenty, my friends. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love nature. My middle name is Nature. My middle name is not, however, Spiders All Over the Apartment. Which, coincidentally, is what we have. See, despite my deep and intense love for nature, I never actually pictured myself living in a nature preserve, which is basically what my apartment is. Although I guess “preserve” is somewhat misleading, because when a family of spiders took up residence in the corner of my ceiling, I did not begin a scientific observation of them. Instead, I threw shoes at them until they became tiny brown smears on my wall. They’re still there, as a warning to any others who attempt to move in.
Not all of the wild creatures around my home are bad, though. For example, a horse paddock right outside my bedroom window provides me with sort of my own personal petting zoo, including a miniature horse and two enormous pot-bellied pigs. Since I’ve never seen their owner, in my head I’ve adopted them as my own pets that I never have to feed or take care of in any way. Come to think of it, all I really do is look at them out of my window every few days and think in a self-satisfied voice, “There’s my pony.” It’s like the fulfillment of my own little childhood dream. Now all I need is an ostrich and 27 dogs and I’ll have achieved every goal I set for myself when I was 8.
Despite what this column suggests, I am very much enjoying my first “grown-up” apartment off campus. I wish it were sometimes possible to find commuter parking that didn’t involve 200 stairs, but whatever. I can also walk to Westward beach in about 10 minutes and nobody ever requires me to have BHRs or kick out friends at one in the morning. So you can keep your counter space, your shuttle service and your working shower. My spiders and I are perfectly happy where we are. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go look at my pony.