<aside> 💭 Prompt: Our homes, while always important, have become the dominant space in which we're spending our days. Now's a great time to take a look around your space and see what you're working with.
Write about the particulars of your home. The quirks, the perks, or the headaches. Detail a favorite room, talk about the one drawer that only opens so far because they built it right next to the door, wax poetic on what it feels like to be home.
</aside>
By Angela Black
Having just moved from a 780 square feet 1-bed apartment in downtown LA, to a brand new 2 bed / 2 bath home in San Luis Obispo — I'm very short on complaints. I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT. Well, we did suddenly have the tub drain into the garage ceiling but even that was quickly resolved by our landlord and a plumber. Our rent is basically the same as it was in LA (still kookoo, tbh) but we're getting a lot more for our money. We have every finger crossed that we'll be okay work-wise through this but know it could change any moment. That's a worry for another day.
As for the place itself, it's new, modern, bright and spacious over three levels. There's a 1 bed unit on half of the main floor occupied by Kevin. We enter off of one street and he enters off another. I still haven't met him but have seen him go up the street for walks. He seems nice. The four houses have 2 apartments each and are owned by one guy who I think is Canadian. The bank account we pay rent to is a GST Tax Exempt one which is all the evidence I need.
It feels weird to talk about how much I love our new home when things are sideways for so many. But it gives us great comfort and that is something we need more than ever. We had a sense of foreboding living in downtown LA that was wearing on us. I'll be honest, a global pandemic wasn't on our list, but we're glad to have escaped it either way. We're in our late forties and a normal day makes us tired so we're happy to leave behind all the things that got on our nerves. Like, low-flying helicopters, two kinds of poop, party people and police pursuits.
When it comes to the particulars, the thing I love most here are the nearby hillsides full of birds, ground squirrels, rock succulents and wildflowers. I even saw two tiny quails yesterday and I almost died. Their lil head doodads kill me. There are turkey vultures, scrub jays and other birds with names I don't know. Most days I venture to the same two spots up the hill where I sit quietly and see what's what. There is always something different, today it was a cat complaining in a tree. He was fine.
Inside the home, I'm pretty in love with the white tile backsplash and the bleached tone of the laminate wood floors. Our property manager Kelly picked out all of the nice touches and if the relationship were different, I think we could be best friends. Speaking of which, we haven't hugged faces yet but one of my favorite people lives in SLO. Her name is Kim and she doesn't know it yet but she's going to teach me how to sea kayak. Hooray for friendship!
So that's that. I love it here. I love our home. I still miss my kiddo in Toronto a ton and can't wait for when he can come visit again regularly. I'm doing my best to keep him close and cared for throughout the day but we'll all feel better with some awkwardly long momhugs. At some point, we'll have a new normal (or a series of new normals) and we'll all get to enjoy each other's faces and spaces again. It's gonna be great. I just know it.
By Sean McBride
My house, the one I normally live in, is fine. It suits my needs, I have a bedroom, and a studio to work in, and the house is mostly workable and tidy, my room mate is perfectly tolerable and mostly friendly and we share some interests.
But right now, in all this madness I am not at my house, but I still feel like I'm home. With the locking down of society, me and my partner were facing the notion of navigating this uncertain length of absolute uncertainty apart, unable to provide support or share fears and dreams, so we moved to a friends empty apartment in the city.
It felt, and feels, a tad crazy, to leave my comfort zone and the space that had all I need to stay home and work, but it also seemed crazy to go this mostly alone. Our new space is incredible, in Bernal in the city, everything we need is close, stores in one direction, parks and one of the coolest neighborhoods in town in the other. And we are together, we eat together, we have lunch time dance parties and we enjoy the ability to support each other through the madness. It's a bit unsettling to not be able to stay head down in my creative outlet, but I'm finding new routines and new ways to pass the time and stay sane, and that feels good too.
I suppose if anything, this experience shows me that "home" is a lot more than a house.