So, the boxes are packed and we're basically sitting around in Jersey counting down the minutes until the big move to Chicago. I'm so excited that all I can do is daydream about the new apartment. Here's the thing about the rectory*: the priests, while they kept the place immaculately neat, had some really weird taste in tile. Here's our master bathroom: brown tile on the walls, powder blue accents in the floor. Why? I don't know.

There are, of course, cool things about this bathroom. The tub is stoppered by a twisting mechanism that says "WASTE." I am in love with that faucet. There is a giant, built-in closet for storage right there in the bathroom, which is handy. But the colors! Hm.

As you may remember, He-Mouse and I go for primary colors, nice bright bold ones. We both really like mod-Mex. At first I thought maybe the solution was to keep the brown as an accent and do a bunch of different shades of blue--maybe something like this.

But I don't know, something about brown and blue really reminds me of freshman year of high school. 

Then I started to think about letting the brown tile be a neutral, and just sort of powering forward back in to the brights of mod-Mex. What do you think? This shower curtain from Anthropologie would pick up the blue tile but incorporate bright primaries...

* We gots to name this spot, micies

 (Images from Design Seeds via Pinterest, Anthropologie)

RAAAAWR. I hate moving. I lost my marker. There is a mess that moves from room to room, following me. And I am out of bubble wrap.

After this you won't be able to get me out of Chicago without a crowbar.

Any moving tricks, micies?

It got stupid hot in New Jersey. Walk out the door and your sunglasses fog up--plus it's so humid that showering doesn't really make a dent in the sweat or the smell. It has me yearning for the piney windy Northwest. This lake cabin in Oregon, near Country Mouse and the tiny people,* should do the trick. Inside would be all white and linen, with the cool early-morning lake smell lingering in my hair. There would be iced mint tea and watermelon, avocado and salty large-curded cottage cheese; we would spend our afternoons dangling our feet in the cold water until we felt alert again, and then we would run up and down the soft corrugated boards of the dock and think free, joyous thoughts. Want to come? There would be plenty of hammocks for everybody.

* Who are now six (happy birthday, Tiny Nephew!) and eight-and-a-half. Can you believe this? Time goes by so fast.

Dock shed in St. Helens, Oregon, photographed by Wayne Denman via Free Cabin Porn.

Look what He-Mouse gave me for finally graduating (from 24th grade, thank you very much, get out of here finally, no more school for you)--delicate stainless-steel earrings laser cut to show street maps of Chicago! (Aminimal Studio) I love this. I love this extra much because we're in our countdown, in which we regularly wake up and yell out the number of days left until we leave for our real home city. Chicago--what can I say, Chicago has been good to us.

And he's been good to me. 24th grade could not have happened without sweetie He-Mouse, who doesn't mind that school took the better part of both my retinas and my temperament, and who has supported me through all of it, and has even done most of the carrying around of my library books since he met me. Hurray for wonderful He-Mouse.

Now that we're back, I want to get back to a long-lost idea about talking about books with you. I can never find anything when I go to look for Kindle things, partly because (let's face it) I do sort of judge books by their covers--good fiction tends to come with a design that tells you it's going to be good fiction, and also a typeface that says the same. On Kindle, I accidentally stumble into trash lit and then I cry cry cry. Anyway, here are three books I think you'll like. Can you give me some ideas in the comments?

Oh, I should say: I consider good fiction (for me) to be something with strong female characters, excellent writing, vivid images, and something that will transport me but will also impact me sometime the next day, when I'm going about my life.

So here are three books that you'll like. All of these books have to do with striking, completely absorbing landscapes.

1) A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley. King Lear in the Idaho farm crisis of 1979. Melancholy and luminous.

2. Fall On Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald. An epic about a family in Nova Scotia, about war and opera and love and mostly the way people carry each other's burdens.

3. Swamplandia!, Karen Russell. About the Everglades and disappearing landscapes, aligator wrestling and faux fame, about the attempts of children to make good on their parents' promises.

-NEWS FROM THE APOCALYPSE-

Attention, Girlpocalypse preparers: there are a few excellent developments this week that don't involve anybody eating anybody else's face.

1) I can drive stick shift! You know that's gonna come in handy. He-Mouse taught me in six ten-minute lessons. He is the soul of patience.

2) Have you seen this iPhone app Zombies, Run!--it's expensive ($8.95), but it's AMAZING. It's a video game about a zombie apocalypse, and you play by running. It tracks how fast you're going by how much your phone is moving (you tell it where you keep your phone while you're running). Then, in the game, you have to put on bursts of speed to outrun zombies, which you can hear behind you, grunting. The faster you run, the more supplies you can collect, and there's an unfolding story across all these missions you can run. IT IS SO SCARY AND SO FUN. Also I burned 520 calories in the time it usually takes me to do 200. You can do this on the elliptical or treadmill or running on the street. Try it!

3) The entire arc of Survivors is on Netflix--it's an awesome British show about a global flu survived by only 10 percent of the world population. Obviously it's apocalpytastic.

Mouse: Um, so, you know the emergency money?

He-Mouse: What?

Mouse: You know, how I made you stick $20 in an envelope and put it in your glove compartment in case there is an emergency. Like Mama Mouse always had me do.

He-Mouse: Oh, yeah. For emergencies. What emergencies would those be, exactly, where you need $20 in cash? You couldn't even get anywhere in a cab for $20. Although they take cards.

Mouse: Um.

He-Mouse: So, what about the emergency money?

Mouse: Well, I was going through the glove box, getting ready to sell the car--

He-Mouse: BECAUSE YOU CAN DRIVE STICK NOW!

Mouse: YES, WE CAN SELL THE CAR BECAUSE I CAN DRIVE STICK NOW! In six lessons! You are the bestest teacher!

He-Mouse: So you got the $20 out of the glove box?

Mouse: Actually, I got the $60 out of the glove box. Apparently I forgot that I had stuck emergency money in there already, because I found three "emergency" envelopes, sealed, with $20 in each.

He-Mouse: Your weird hoarding always yields such pleasant surprises.

Mouse: Let's go buy a sangwich.

Hear ye, hear ye, nice mice! We are going back to Chicago! In July! So soon! Get me the eff out of here!

 I'm thinking about reviving the blog, which, as you may have noticed, has been sort of puttering along because I've been too busy* to post much of anything. I dunno, are yall still out there?

 Our new apartment is going to be a project, one that I'm really excited about. It's a beautiful old place, with no dishwasher and a sink from 1924. It used to be a rectory**, so it has vestment closets, wall safes, and a bunch of other cool and crazy details I can't wait to show you. It also has some decorating challenges. Brown tile on the walls of one bathroom, for instance, plus powder blue on the floor? Hrm. Any ideas?

 Missed you guys...

 * busy-slash-hating New Jersey and utterly without aesthetic inspiration. Look, a strip mall! Look, another strip mall! ** According to Twitter consensus. It's the place priests stayed when they visited in Chicago on church business.