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Until about 2 in the morning when all hell broke loose in my bowels! I woke up with serious, convulsing pain in my entire abdomen. I feel like I need to puke, and I am sensing all sorts of action happening in my system. I try to relieve myself, but just ended up curled up in our lazyboy recliner, balling like a baby. Food poisoning. I have felt this before. It literally feels like aliens are attacking my body. Andy wakes up to my wimpers, holds me, and gives me a priesthood blessing. About one minute later, most of dinner comes up. Kind of an answer to prayers. Progress. I am able to go back to sleep, minus waking up to pain every few hours.
I have a glucose test on the calendar for the next morning. While the actual test is not fun at all, I take comfort in the fact that my OB is down the hall and she can tell me what to do and tell me if the baby is okay. That is my main concern. WebMD has a tendency to make you think the world is coming to an end with every abnormality happening in your body. Dr. Newsom puts our fears aside and just tells me it's gonna suck for a few days, but that Baby Brown won't get infected. She hooks me up to an IV with some nausea medication to make sure I stay hydrated. Andy patiently waits for a few hours with me, holds my hand, and makes me laugh through the suckiness. We both finally get to go home, I plop on the couch and conk out for the next four hours and Andy heads to the office. We just hang out on the couch and entertain ourselves with Netflix that night and go to bed. Another rough night, so we have a lazy Saturday in our apartment. More Netflix, things going in slight disarray around the apartment, but a relaxing Saturday nonetheless. After all, I am keeping down food and we we have nothing pressing to get to--sounds like a good day!
Maybe it's all my bumming around on the couch that has made me think about our apartment quite a bit. I feel like I am on the border between "I've been stuck on this couch in this room for almost three days now, get me out!" and "Ah, I sure do love our little humble abode:)" We don't live in a quaint chalet up in the alps, like a lotta people picture we do. It's a 7 floor pinkish mauvish building with weird graffiti on the side of it and some unseemly construction going on right beside it. (We wake up to jack hammering every morning....awesome. We also occasionally wake up to what sounds like a golf ball being dropped over and over again on the floor above us.....more awesome.) We have a designated apartment building cat. Occasionally, they shut our water off for most of the day. And frankly, having food poisoning in this apartment is no more glamorous than having it back in Utah!
But dang, we love this apartment! It is actually our apartment that has helped make this whole experience ours. It's ours We miss our house back in SLC, it was a pretty special place. (A lot more space back there) This apartment is sure quirky and we definitely know every square inch of it. There are days I miss having a room to spread out all my art crap and not have it bleeding into other living spaces. I do tire of having my watercolor drafting table right by our bed and the oil painting station on our round dining room table. I guess I miss built-in closets! I do miss having a dryer. Sometimes I go crazy having a bunch of our stuff stacked on top of our Ikea wardrobes--a mess exposed for all to see!
But, a place like ours has its virtues! We don't collect stuff for one thing. I can get the whole place completely clean, dusted and wiped in a few hours. We get a lot of natural light pouring into our west-facing windows. It is a cozy place to snuggle up in on a cold snowy or rainy day. Two markets are one block away, so I can start boiling water, leave to get the two ingredients I forgot, and be back before the bubbles even start. I love that we have radiators. If you are feeling cold, you can just put your hands right on it or press your bum against it for some instant warmth. And it doesn't dry you out! I love that we don't have a dryer.....most of the time. Hanging up wet clothes is a much cheaper humidifier. (just have to some how hide our ginormous drying rack when unexpected company show up;) I love that we can roll down our window shades to complete darkness (except those days when my alarm doesn't go off, and noon still looks like the middle of the night:\) I love that our balcony (we have a balcony! ) is the only one in our whole building without a jungle of plants and patio furniture on it. We are trying to set ourselves apart and be minimalist people.....but mainly lazy. I love that every other time I plug in the transformer to blend something, a breaker goes out, and the breaker box is 5 steps away from the kitchen. I love that we still haven't gotten light fixtures for our dangling light bulbs in all the rooms. At first, we were just trying to save money, but now we don't even notice.....until someone else comes over and reminds us. I love that I can close the door to the kitchen and keep all the funky cooking smells IN the kitchen. Oh, and I can open the door to the balcony, so smells don't even linger in the kitchen very long:)
As I was walking around in my sweats this morning, looking at all the clutter and what I have not done the past week, I had warm fuzzies thinking about our place. Had to take some pics:)
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| Our entryway. This room actually looks pretty good, minus the dust mop sheets leaning against the shelf. Those have been there for a few weeks now:\ |
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| the bathroom. with the lack of fan and ventilation, we can actually create a great steam unit! |
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| yes, our bathroom is also our laundry room! We try to cram as much as we can into the shelf unit on the right, but some of it just ends up on top of the washer. |
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| Ahhhhhh. Bed. Our IKEA bed, bedding, and lamps. |
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| Not my favorite sight. Due to the lack of closets in our apartment, we have our IKEA wardrobes, and it's just convenient to put a bunch of our stuff up above them--shoes, blankets, our carry-on suitcases for our weekend adventures, and pillows of course:) |
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| view coming out of the bedroom. Andy's pull-up bar on the floor, a radiator, and our Pilatus Cogwheel print--one of the few things I could actually nail into these masonry walls! |
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| Another view out our bedroom door--the living room. The chair we always drape our coats on, the dining table that always has our stuff.....okay, mainly my stuff spread all over it, the wardrobe that stores our coats and my art crap, my easel set up, Andy in his lazyboy (a luxury here in Europe we heard) and more of my art crap on top of the wardrobe. Love my art crap. |
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| our living room. Andy working away, my blanket crumpled with my laptop on the couch, Christmas wreaths still hung on the wall,empty coke bottle, half-drunk green drink, and cashews amidst my coffee table books on the table, and our radiator. Can I just say how much I love our radiators? |
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| a closer look at this part of the room. Oil Paint, easel, rags closet of stuff, and my IKEA plant that I am excited to see blossom. IKEA Plants keep me sane--it's nice to have some life in here! |
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| View from the couch. IKEA furniture filled with Books, pictures and games. This is where we usually eat dinner--is that bad? (mainly because my crap is on the dinner table:\) |
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| My other lair--the kitchen. My pregnancy schedule and monthly food budgets on the wall, our IKEA chopping block with toaster, fruit basket and beloved Vitamix. Microwave below. Yeah, we don't really use this as a chopping block. |
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| Wow, this actually looks clean! The kitchen counter. Another pretty IKEA plant, our transformer for all our US appliances, and my other baby--the Le Creuset. (def. one of my favorite gifts from my man!) Oh, and my magnetic spice tins hung above the stove. This is awesome for the most part, until you bump your head on one and it falls into what ever you are cooking on the stove. And let's not forget the cute little oven. Had to buy smaller baking trays, apparently ALL ovens are this size here. But it works! |
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| Another view |
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| Funny corner in the kitchen. My stool with a box of clementines (maximizing storage people), 6 pack of Pelligrinos, my wheely shopping bag (saves me walking to and from the grocery store), extra bags, rags and pans. And that is the Kitchen tour! |
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| View out our living room window. Cute Swiss house from long time ago that is now surrounded by big modern apartments. Kind of a shame, but at least they keep the original homes. |
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| Apartment building right across from our bedroom window. Not the prettiest building and we would appreciate it if that one open window was closed more--both for symmetry and modesty (wear more clothes people!) Bike shop below that sells the cutest vintage beach cruiser. Way too expensive, which is why it is probably still there. We witnessed a car full of teens whip around the corner and wham into the bike stalls. It was pretty gnarly. Had to report the hit and run to the Swiss police....in Francais. We need to learn more Francais. |
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| Um, one more. Had to capture the back hoe that has become a permanent part of the landscape here at Rue de la Dole 2:) |
Cool to see.
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