Intern Chick

If you haven't picked up on this yet, this apartment is a real fixer-upper. Not 100% ready to be lived in, but it's better than riding the train knowing that at any moment, I could be settling for an awkward ride with that guy. Lately all I think about is which little job I should do next, and I wait for work to be over so that I can come home and mark at least one thing off my never-ending to do list.

Monday night I painted the dingiest bookcase I've ever laid eyes on. Then I taught myself to sew. Tuesday night I sewed some more, washed some dishes, and did some decorating. Tonight, I swore I wasn't going to do anything but relax. Yea, right. Not only did I find a job for myself, it was probably the most difficult one to be done.

I have these great windows, but there are huge metal gates covering them. My cousin must have felt extra unsafe here because there are no regular gates. These come with locks and wheels and nails and screws, along with what felt like a hundred pounds of metal. I inspected the gates and saw all I had to do was unscrew the hinges. Easy enough, right? I should have known when I had to get the Vise Grips out that this was going to be more than I bargained for. As I pressed on I realized that I would have to finish what I started, since each piece was connected to another piece. I finally got the first hinge off when the gate came swinging at me, hanging only by the one screw still holding the bottom hinge. I wrapped one arm around it and unscrewed it with the other hand. I lifted the gate and almost toppled over from the weight of it. Somehow I managed to get it down and over to the other side of the room. An hour had passed.

I spent another 30 minutes trying to get the track down. Some of that time was spent scraping paint off a nail so that I could take it out. What someone was doing nailing that into that gate I will never know. I disassembled the track and threw out the pieces, cleaned up the window sill and admired my work.

Score one for Intern Chick.