Roomies

The San Francisco Places Where shall I begin with tonight’s entry? Michelle just went to bed, and the others crashed shortly before she did, so I’ve got another hour or so of energy left in me to figure out where to start. How about describing the three places we’ve lived together? Well, it’s two for Jamie, as I said in my last entry. I was going to talk about my early encounters with Michelle and Angela, but I’ll save that for another time. All I can say about Angela right now is that had I known we were going to live together when we first met, I would have laughed. Seriously. I just never would have believed it. After I finished laughing, I probably would have trembled in fear, LOL. Okay, so the apartment: It was a three-bedroom but not as large as the two-bedroom house we later moved into. Michelle rented it for four or five years before Angela and I came to join her, not too long before the move. It was on the end of a strip of apartments and pretty quiet. You had the kitchen, living room, and a quarter bath downstairs, along with one bedroom. Then you had two bedrooms and a full bath upstairs, but this was only directly above the downstairs bedroom, bathroom, and single-car garage. It had a spiral staircase going up to it. When you were standing at the top of it, you couldn’t see into the living room without ducking because the ceiling of the living room blocked your view. There was a slider at the end of the living room and a patio beyond. It was actually a beachfront apartment, so the patio was on the sandy part. You had to take maybe 50 steps to reach the shoreline. The house was a two-bedroom with a full bath and a three-quarter bath, but it was much bigger. It had a cute and unique layout. This one also had a double-car garage, which extended beneath the bedrooms. If you entered the house from the garage, you’d step into a little hallway where we hung our coats and found a shelf at the end. Right around the corner were a very open and spacious kitchen, dining, and living area. The living room had many large windows and a patio, and it too was on the beach. The shore was about 100 feet away. The kitchen itself wasn’t spacious because it wasn’t an eat-in kitchen and it was built in 1985 when homes tended not to have as much counter space since people didn’t have as many gadgets as they do today. Nor did they have many outlets. But we only plugged in a toaster, a coffee maker, a can opener, and a microwave. There weren’t many fryers, slow cookers, blenders, mixers, and all that fancy stuff at the time. The only things we really needed to plug in other rooms were TVs and radios since chargers didn’t exist yet, nor did computers, electric toothbrushes, and many other things. Life was harder back then but much simpler at the same time. In the center of the living room, opposite the slider, you’d go straight up a half a flight of stairs that split left and right. Michelle and I were to the right; Angela and Jamie were on the left. If you went through either bedroom, you’d find the full bath in back (technically the front, as it faced the street). It looped around. If you started at the stairs and went up the left side, through Angela and Jamie’s bedroom, through the bathroom, into our bedroom, then down the stairs that split toward the right, you’d be right where you started. It was a cute, clever, and unique layout—at least the upper level was. Since Michelle and Angela preferred to take only showers, they used the downstairs bathroom, which only had a shower stall. Because Jamie and I sometimes liked to soak in the tub, we used the upstairs bathroom, though anyone could use whichever toilet was closest and available at the moment. There was also a storage room outside and plenty of storage space in the garage, which had built-in shelves along the back wall. We all got new furniture for the place since most of the stuff we had was getting kind of old, or simply wasn’t suitable for the house. Jamie, for example, didn’t need her old twin bed here. Everything we did together was fun, including furniture shopping. We all went out together and picked out identical bedroom sets. The only difference was that Michelle and I liked light-colored wood, while Angela and Jamie preferred dark. We got a giant L-shaped couch for the living room, a couple of stuffed chairs, and a decent dining set that seated four comfortably, with a couple of extra seats we left in a corner for guests. I’m getting tired quicker than I anticipated, so I’ll describe this place more thoroughly some other time.