It rained today. The apartment is dark because I only have the one fluorescent ceiling light in the living room and it’s turned off indefinitely. I’d use it except that it renders the entire room some kind of liminal space hellscape.

Addendum to Express Gratitude: But it’s my liminal space hellscape.

More gratitude: I’m immensely grateful for my new bidet and scented wipes because holy shit (ha), there is no toilet paper left in the Western Hemisphere. Not a single four-pack of Quilted Northern to be found. I haven’t even two squares of Scott’s one-ply to rub together.

Somehow, the news of the pandemic has caused the entire country to lose its collective mind and descend upon its poor, unsuspecting grocery stores with intent to abscond with every cleaning and/or paper product it can find.

…but toilet paper? The priorities of the American people never cease to confuse the fuck out of me.

As of earlier today, I’ve finally started working on diminishing the previously mentioned hellish liminality of my apartment. After a full hour of Google-searching, I found almost no helpful websites for second-hand stores and so was driven unceremoniously to the URL of the mid-century modern paradise that is IKEA and, eventually, a social media marketplace.

Scandinavian minimalism never really appealed to me so IKEA was a bust, but my tentative exploration into the marketplace was astonishingly successful - I found an ad from a woman uptown who had a ton of old furniture to unload (and really, who can resist a title like “$500 VINTAGE FURNITURE, PROBABLY HAUNTED”?).

The accompanying photos were all uncentered and poorly lit, and really only served to express how dismal the wallpaper in her dining room is, but all of the pieces looked like solid wood (if a bit scratched and dated). A brief conversation over messenger informed me that the lady had recently bought an old house and intended to renovate it - she just needed to get rid of all the “junk” inside (a solid attempt at convincing me to buy her shit).

I was really only interested in a roll-top desk and bookshelf which were included in the ad, but there were a number of little tables and things that seemed to align well with my original idea so I offered her $400 and pickup as soon as tomorrow. She accepted so hopefully dad has no plans for either himself or his truck this weekend.