Shifting views

Some months ago, I wrote about our impending move from our fabulous 11th floor perch to an unknown location. I've been meaning to post an update on said move, but I won't go into detail at this time. Suffice it to say, we moved from the 11th floor down to the 10th. Same fabulous building, even more fabulous apartment. I've moved many times in my adult life, and this move was by far the easiest. I didn't even need to use the elevator for most of it! Plus, we'd been renting furnished homes since 2008, meaning we haven't had any furniture, dishes, towels, sheets, ANYTHING of our own really, which made for even easier moving! Granted, we did have to purchase all of those items, which required a visit from my mother to keep me from losing my mind (I am not fond of shopping, not even a little bit), but that meant that all of the big items were delivered and installed and put together for us. Best move ever, into the best apartment ever!!

I won't do a full tour of the apartment now, but I do want to update you on our view. If you'll recall, one of the absolute best things about our 11th floor perch was the view. Our floor-to-ceiling windows faced south, and there were no high-rises for many blocks, giving us a stunning skyline view. Here's what we were looking at:

We're now one floor below, and we still have a southern view. Here's what we're looking at today:

Goodbye skyline, hello Honey Bucket. (Honey Bucket has to be the most awesomely inappropriate name for a port-a-potty ever, and it's currently hanging out on the corner of the 12th floor of what will eventually be a 17-story apartment building.) Yes, our awesome skyline is no more. Instead, I get to learn a bit about how concrete-and-steel buildings are constructed (which has helped me understand a little better how the concrete ceiling above me can so effectively fight off gravity). And I get to listen to buzz saws and drills and hammers from 7am till 5pm, 6 glorious days a week. Sigh.

But here's the thing that makes it all okay: our wonderful 10th floor perch is a corner unit, which means that we not only have a southern view, we also have windows facing the east. I wish it was a clear, sunny day today, so I could show off the Cascade Mountains beyond Lake Union, but I'm sure you can still appreciate what we've been enjoying out of our windows, even under the cloud cover:

The Space Needle is just a few blocks northeast of us, and we get to see it every day, from every room! We also look out at Lake Union, which is dotted with sailboats on sunny afternoons. And the view continues to the southeast:

Yes, there's that construction project blocking out our skyline, but there's still plenty of skyline to be seen. (Added bonus: check out the dueling construction/deconstruction projects--to the left of the view-blocking building is a building sheathed in black mesh, which is slowly being taken apart, bit by salvageable bit, after discovering just over a year ago that the 9-year-old apartment complex was a veritable death trap. Funnily enough, the construction is happening much faster than the deconstruction, at the pace of 1 floor per week. The deconstruction, well, it's much slower than an implosion.) And we also get a bit of western view from our balcony and my southern reading chair:

That's Puget Sound, and I like to sit in my chair and watch the ferries go back and forth to Bainbridge and Bremerton islands. It's awesome.

So, this is where I'm hanging my hat these days. It's the first real home Alex and I have had in a while. Well, I shouldn't say that, we've lived in great places, and our wonderful house in Jersey City (which we inhabitants named Maui East) was the perfect place to call home after our hellish year in Vegas. But this apartment feels different. Maybe it's the 2-year lease (which is long enough for our families to write down our address in actual ink), maybe it's the fact that all of the stuff in it is our stuff, nothing borrowed, nothing to be left behind when--or maybe IF, fingers crossed for dreams to come true--we move to the next place, maybe it's the fact that we both feel so at home here, in this city, in this togetherness we've created. Whatever it is, not a day has gone by that we haven't said, "I love it here." Even with the buzz saws and the hammers and the disappearance of our skyline. We love it here, and that makes it home.