god jul.

Happy holidays from Somerset/Sweden! I'm at home in PA this week; Anna flew to Gothenburg 1.5 weeks ago and will return on Sunday. Christmas in Somerset has been great so far--I've been hanging out at the winery and spending time with my family and the animals.

Anna's been sick, but has otherwise been enjoying herself at home with her niece and nephew.

We'll attempt a proper post next week.

Lots of changes

We found out in October that Erin has a pretty bad cat allergy. As many of you know, we have two feline co-habitants whose eviction is the last thing in the world we are wishing for, so after the initial shock and some internet research, we started to implement a number of changes in order to relieve Erin's symptoms while keeping the cats. The top tip on all "How to live with cats and cat allergies" websites we could find was "No cats in the bedroom!"

Our new apartment is even smaller than our previous one-bedroom, and keeping the bedroom door closed at all times consequently also means no cats in the bathroom. The result: we had to move the litter box into the living room/kitchen area. This is certainly not an ideal situation, but after lots of thinking and shopping around at various home improvement and certain Swedish furniture stores, we came home with "the White House" (see picture below). "The White House" is a toy chest of reasonable size with an entrance sawed into the side (yes, we also got the drill and the hand saw from Target - love that store!), fitting a litter box, a box of litter for refills, and a little trash can, while not looking nearly as bad as any standard pet shop litter box would in its current environment.

The White House

Along with the stress of toilet training, no longer being allowed to sleep on the bed or even enter the bedroom or bathroom seemed to be a bit too much for the cats: Annabelle developed some kind of sores on her eyebrows. We decided to just stop it all, and try everything we could think of to make things less stressful and more happy. That is how we ended up with the new Armarkat cat tree:

This was the best purchase we have made in a long time - the cats were all over the tree before we had even finished putting it together, and now they spend most of their day (and night) time on this thing! The cutest part is when we get home after dark and see two pairs of green and orange eyes light in the dark at slightly different heights in the window facing the stairs up to the mailboxes...

Enough for now - I've got to make some cinnamon buns!

trick or treat

Someone's been eating our jack-o'-lantern! Anna carved a pumpkin last week and put it outside our door on an upside-down flowerpot. It's a good carve job, not as toothy as I prefer, but not bad work for a non-native. Anyway, this morning Anna noticed that a few bites were missing around the mouth. At the top of the suspect list are the raccoons that hang around here at night, although I guess the squirrels could be potential perps, too. I think we'll continue to leave the pumpkin outside since I don't think we're attracting the animals, per se--there are pumpkins out all over town, and like I said, the squirrels and raccoons are around anyway. (I'll post a picture as soon as it stops raining outside.)

I don't have much to report on the cooking front. I've been working like mad and Anna is grading midterms and papers, and we both come home too drained to do much cooking. Sunday night I did manage to pull together a coconut curry (improvised) with cumin-scented sesame flatbread (Vegan Planet) and mango chutney (Trader Joe's).


The rest of the week so far has been Papa John's pizza (to PJ's credit, they do use rennet-free cheese), Tofurkey sandwiches, and Whole Foods pumpkin pie. :(

Toilet training continues. The litterbox is now completely gone and the girls are doing their business in the CitiKitty, which is a plastic tray mounted under the toilet seat. Keeping the CitiKitty and general toilet area clean is a ton of work right now, so I can understand why people get exasperated at this point and give up on the training. Still, the feel of cat litter in my sheets at night keeps me motivated to keep going.

Cuteness of the week:

home improvement

My parents are visiting next weekend so we've been feeling especially motivated to fix up the remaining chaotic corners of the new apartment. Yesterday Anna put up a shelf above our stove to hold pots/pans:
Today we road-tripped to IKEA (in our new car!) to get a small desk for me and a tall cabinet to go in the space where the litterbox used to be. The litterbox is now here:

We're already about 5 inches off the ground--good progress for only a week of training. Our CitiKitty toilet seat attachment arrived last week, so we're all set for those final steps when it's time. The cats don't appear to be bothered at all by the rising litterbox. They're so mellow--must be the years of constant catnip use.

vroom!

My awesome parents gifted us with a car this weekend! We are super super grateful for the Cavalier (and also happy that Mom finally got herself a decent car--Subaru!--to drive. the cheapie Cav is more our style than hers...).

Until we register in MD and insurance coverage rolls over from dad's policy to ours, we're hesitant to take the car too far from home. Last night, though, we couldn't resist driving to Udupi Palace for takeout. Spinach kofta = delicious.




<-- Anna is published! Search inside for Chapter 4. That's her!

We went to Silver Spring yesterday to check out the street festival, get some Coldstone Creamery ice cream for Anna, and visit the semi-new Marimekko store. We bought a cute watering can at Marimekko, but unfortunately, it leaks. (It also says "Made in W. Germany" on the bottom.) We can't decide whether to return it or try to fix it ourselves.

Latest culinary efforts include banana cupcakes and a red bean and sweet potato curry. Anna gives the curry 4.6 out of 5 stars.

We're attempting to toilet-train the cats. The book we have on the subject says to gradually raise the height of the litterbox until it's level with the toilet, then put the box over the toilet seat, and then finally get rid of the box altogether. We're in the preparation stage right now, that is, we're getting the cats used to using their box without the cover on top. In a few days, we'll switch to a shallower box moved next to the toilet. Stay tuned for toilet-training updates!

Reminder to DC friends: the Green Festival is next weekend, as is the Takoma Park Street Festival.

A Bright Yellow Kettle

As Erin went to New York this weekend to visit friends, I had envisioned myself finally getting some work done on that paper I am supposed to be co-writing – but oh, how wrong I was… Besides feeling obligated to fulfill the weekly cleaning requirements that we agreed upon (which I did Saturday morning), moving into a new place brings with it all kinds of other distractions. Hence, it is 3:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, and I have yet to start working on the paper and preparing tomorrow’s class…

Examples of fun things to do to get your home in better shape after a recent relocation are: cutting off curtains to the right length; cleaning and replacing the carbon filter in the air purifier, desperately moving around the pot with recently sown oregano into random spots of sunlight inside and outside (my mom claims that it knows that it is not the right season to be growing! I would appreciate any comments on that!); hanging pictures; attempting to unpack that last moving box that just doesn’t seem to want to be unpacked; and last but not least, traveling for almost an hour to get to that one store where you suspected that you might find that perfect tea kettle that you have been in need of ever since moving. Guess what. I found it. And it is bright yellow. Now that we pay both electricity and gas separately, it makes sense to get rid of that old defunct electric kettle and replacing it with one that does not risk setting the apartment on fire if you don’t turn it off on time. So, here it is! For those of you who live close enough – consider this an invitation to a tea party!


ps. Here are some more pictures of the new apartment. Enjoy!

ode to our kitchen

Here are some pictures of our kitchen, i.e., where the magic happens:



In my quest to find meaning (and distraction) in Life After School, I've taken up cooking. Anna has always done most of the heavy lifting in the kitchen, but I feel that in the past few months, I've started to pull my weight. I've been cooking and baking recipes from Vegan with a Vengeance, Vegan Planet, and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. We're not vegan--Anna eats fish and we both eat dairy when we're out and about--but we do like eating vegan at home. Tonight I made banana cupcakes with chocolate ganache icing, yum.

Anyhoo, our new kitchen is teeny-tiny, but features an enormous oven and refrigerator. The fridge is so big, in fact, that we've taken to storing things in it that don't really need to be refrigerated because of lack of space elsewhere in the apartment. We use the crisper as a sock drawer. Nothing like a cool pair of socks on a hot summer morning. I kid!

We hit the Takoma Park Farmers Market this morning. (I feel this should be written "farmers' market" but no one asked me.) We were on the hunt for eggplant, which we found, and some more of the awesome pears I got last week, which we did not find, probably due in no small part to the fact that I couldn't remember what type they were, only that they were brownish in color. We also picked up some apples and corn on the cob. Anna only recently had fresh corn on the cob for the first time, corn cobs coming only in cans in Sweden--the horror!

"berkeley of the east."

Hi all, friends and family. As most of you know by now, we just moved to Takoma Park, MD. We've fielded a lot of questions about the move, which I think we've answered in a different way every time we've been asked. There were a lot of great reasons for us to move outside the city (bike paths, cleaner air, quiet, darkness) but the gritty truth of the matter is that the price was right. That phrase has become a running joke between us and a few days ago, when I proposed starting a blog, Anna suggested our new tag line as the title.

coworker: So, how's the new apartment?
Erin: Good. We're finally unpacked and starting to settle in.
coworker: That's great. How much shorter is your commute?
Erin: Well, it's actually longer than it was before.
coworker: Oh, ok. But your new place must be a lot bigger.
Erin: ...
coworker: (puzzled look)

Right. The new apartment is smaller and farther from my work and Anna's school. But we now live next to a park with a paved path perfect for biking and skating, we're only 7 miles from IKEA, parking and laundry are both free, and we have beautiful hardwood floors, crazy vintage bathroom tiles, and ceiling fans. We also have windows on 3 sides, all with windowsills just wide enough to fit a 12-pound cat or two.

Apart from being about the Benjamins and the factors mentioned above, this move is also important to us because it marks a new beginning of sorts--Anna has finished classes and comprehensive exams, and will now begin the work of dissertation writing, and I am beginning my first fall as a non-student, a big change for me after 21.5 straight years of education. We both feel we're making a fresh start.

We're launching this blog to share a little of our daily life as we enter this new phase. Check back soon for apartment photos and other updates. Hej så länge!