Friday, December 14, 2007

Domus Domain

The other day it occurred to me that I have total control of what goes into the house. For the first time in I don't know how long, I can LIMIT tha stuff. What a concept. Usually a house is an accumulation of things acquired over many years--things you inherited or bought along life's way.

I've always liked the empty, echo-y barren house mode. It brings back Navy transfer memories of the period when you land in a new place and all your stuff is on the moving truck, winging it's way to you. The-camping-out-in-the-empty-cave concept. I still like it.

As I mentioned before, we only brought a Suburban-load of stuff. Besides two dog kennels and 4 suitcases and various clothes space bags and file boxes, we were able to pack in a few things:

One dismantled Le Corbusie chair.....one of the most comfortable chairs EVER invented. I sat down (reclined-more like) in this chair in a Seattle furniture store and immediately wrote a check. (But I must note, it wasn't anywhere near the designer store price, but much, much cheaper--it's an Italian replica.) It wasn't that hard to shoe-horn this chair into the van, believe it or not. It always was a superfluous piece of furniture in our old house, lounging around in part of the living room looking totally out of place.

Is that what they mean by "Casual Furniture?" Something that just lounges around.........casually?

Other stuff: Two vintage goose-neck lamps, WWII era ones that I somehow wound up with after about ten years of being an antique dealer. A mahogany drop-leaf table was indecorously bungied and turned upside down with it's horse-like legs in the air and winkled into place behind the driver's seat. My Mac was nestled into quilts and wedged into the cavity of said table and padded with more space bags. (I jammed two bags full of fabric for quilts I've been intenting to make.) We also had the PC that owns my husband, and a few books. We topped the load off with two rugs, a roorkhee safari chair (dismantled and in a bundle) and the caned-seat balloon back chair I just repaired.

Two boxes of various office supplies, household tools, utensils, etc. were also stuffed in. I figured it would prove easier to throw this in and too annoying to have to run down to resupply in the new place. So now, at this point, we're filling in the gaps of the things we didn't throw in, but suddenly need........like wide tape for mailing Christmas boxes. (forehead smack)

Really, I'm trying to limit my trips and be thrifty about gas usage, but you just have to invest time and mileage to get your bearings. So I tried to combine the tape trip with continuing on to the post office to mail the packages and on the way, cruise a couple of strip malls to try and remember what stores are where. (I hate shopping, but I hate driving around looking for something even more.)

I did locate a great French bakery with real pate (!) great croissants and baguettes. I think Mr. le Bak-air and I will be seeing a lot of each other. How many croissants can I get on a platter?

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