Virtual Tour of My Apartment: After

It may not be totally finished yet, but it's close to it, and it's reasonably clean, so here you have it!  You can see the Before pics here.

This is my entryway.  I would like to get some sort of little table to put under that picture of the beach, but I haven't found one I like yet at the thrift store and I don't want to spend a lot of money on it.  I even talked myself out of spending $34 on one at Hobby Lobby the other day!  It was on clearance and everything, but that was not what I went to Hobby Lobby to get and I managed to leave without buying anything I hadn't gone in there intending to buy.  Good for me.

This is my kitchen, which I like because it has lots of counter space and lots of cabinet space, although I have almost nothing in any of the lower cabinets because it hurts my back too much to bend over to get things out of them, so I don't actually have as much usable cabinet space as it might look like I have.

I don't have a kitchen table.  I just put two chairs at this counter that is between the kitchen and living room area.  It works great.  I usually eat on my couch, anyway.

The picture over the sink is an image of Demeter.  Demeter, if you don't know, is a Goddess of the harvest.

This is the living room.  See the kitty curtains?  I made them.  I love them.  They are a little bit too long, though.  Maybe I will hem them more eventually.

This is a drawing of a cat I used to have, Eileen, that my friend Twyna did for me. 

 Here's something interesting.  I met Twyna through a program that matched volunteers with women in prison.  The volunteers wrote to the prisoners, providing friendship and support.  Twyna was doing time for drug-related offenses.  I think she ended up doing about ten years.  She was paroled about18 months ago.  After being released from prison, though, she went to a drug treatment program and then to a halfway house, so she's only been living on her own for a few months now.

But anyway, she was in prison in Texas, and in Texas, prisoners are required to work (she worked in the kitchen most of the time she was in prison) but they do not earn any pay for their work (in most states, prisoners earn money for work they do, although it's far less than minimum wage; they may earn something like one dollar a day).  However, prisoners are required to purchase things like personal hygiene supplies, including toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, and tampons.  In the prison where Twyna was, they were given a certain amount of toilet paper, I think two rolls a month, and if they wanted more, they had to purchase that.  To purchase these things, they had to have money in their prison account, and to get money in their account, family or friends had to send them money.  Well, as you might imagine, some people that go to prison don't have many friends or family members that can or will support them financially.   To get things like deodorant and tampons, Twyna decided to teach herself to draw.  She drew pictures and greetings cards and portraits and things for other inmates, who then "paid" her in tampons and deodorant. 

She also did these drawings of Larry and Cayenne.

And finally, she did this drawing for me for Christmas one year.

These are a bookshelf and a storage cabinet, obviously.

That wooden box on top of the bookshelf is actually an urn.  It holds Eileen's ashes.  I made a little bag for her ashes, using a piece of really pretty fabric and lined with a piece of her favorite blanket (which wasn't so pretty, hence the pretty fabric on the outside).  Cayenne's ashes will go in the urn when she's gone.  I don't know if I'm going to put them in the bag with Eileen's or not; the bag was sewn shut so I'd have to cut it open and then sew it shut again, I guess.  I haven't decided yet.

This is my couch.

And this is a close-up of the collage that hangs above the couch.

This is the bedroom.  Isaac's crate is taking up most of the space, other than the bed, at the moment.  I never use his crate anymore so I think I am going to take it down.  I just haven't done it yet.  It's kind of hard on my back.

I made these curtains, too, and I really like them.  I ended up spending a good bit more than I planned on that fabric, but I really liked it.

The wind chimes in the bedroom might seem a bit odd.  But I like them and I don't have anywhere outside to hang them here.

These are bookshelves, obviously.

This is the picture hanging across from the bed.  It's an image of Yemaya, who is a Goddess of the ocean.

And this is the bathroom.

That big ugly bucket is what I make my laundry detergent in.  It doesn't match my bathroom and I was going to keep it in a closet but it was hard to get to in there and it's much too heavy when it's full to drag it around.  I think I've either going to paint it or just find a green bucket or something that matches the bathroom better.  It's very convenient having it there, I just would like it to look better.


Here is what the emergency pull cord thing looked like (with the cord taped up).

Here is what it looks like now, with a framed quote over it.

The quote is from Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig and says, "There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that.  You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied.  You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember.  You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist.  But remember.  Make an effort to remember.  Or, failing that, invent."

I like my apartment much more than I did at first.  It feels very comfortable to me.  I think the energy feels really good, if that makes sense.  It doesn't feel as small as it did at first, either.