The San Francisco Places in Fragments of Life

Where shall I begin with tonight’s entry? Michelle just went to bed and the others crashed shortly before her, so I’ve got another hour or so of energy left in me to figure it out.

How about describing the three places we’ve lived together? Well, it’s two for Jamie as I said in my last entry.

I was going to talk about my early encounters with Michelle and Angela but I’ll save that for another time. All I can say about Angela right now is that had I’d known we were going to live together when we first met I would have laughed. Seriously. I just never would have believed it. After I finished laughing I probably would have trembled in fear, LOL.

Okay, so the apartment. It was a three-bedroom but not as big as the two-bedroom house we lived in. Michelle rented it for four or five years before Angela and I came to join her not too long before the move. It was on the end of a strip of apartments and pretty quiet. You had the kitchen, living room and a quarter bath downstairs, along with one bedroom. Then you had two bedrooms and a full bath upstairs, but this was only directly above the downstairs bedroom, bathroom, and single car garage. It had a spiral staircase going up to it. When you were standing at the top of it, you couldn’t see into the living room without ducking low because the living room’s ceiling was in the way.

There was a slider at the end of the living room and a patio beyond. It was actually a beachfront apartment so the patio was on the sandy part. You had to take maybe 50 steps to reach the shoreline.

The house was a two-bedroom with a full bath and three-quarter bath but it was much bigger. It was a cute and unique layout. This one had a double car garage too, that slipped under the bedrooms. If you entered the house from the garage you’d step into a little mini hallway where we would hang our coats and where you would find a shelf at the end of it. Right around the corner was a very open and spacious kitchen, dining and living area. The living room had many large windows and a patio, and it too, was on the beach. The shore was about 100 feet away.

The kitchen itself wasn’t spacious because it wasn’t an eat-in kitchen and it was built in 1985 when homes tended not to have as much counter space since people didn’t have the gadgets they have today. Nor did they have many outlets. But we only plugged in a toaster, a coffee maker, a can-opener, and a microwave. There weren’t many fryers, slow cookers, blenders, mixers and all that fancy stuff just yet.

The only things we really had to plug in the other rooms were TVs and radios, since chargers didn’t exist yet and neither did computers, electric toothbrushes, and many other things. Life was harder back then but much simpler at the same time.

In the center of the living room, opposite the slider, you’d go straight up a half a flight of stairs that would split left and right. Michelle and I were to the right and Angela and Jamie were on the left. If you went through either bedroom, you’d find the full bath in back. Well, technically the front since it faced the street. So it looped around. If you started right where the stairs split you could go up the left side, through Angela and Jamie’s bedroom, through the bathroom, through our bedroom, down the stairs that split toward the right, and be right where you started. It was a cute, clever and unique layout. At least the upper level was.

Since Michelle and Angela preferred to take only showers, they used the bathroom downstairs, which only had a shower stall. Because Jamie and I sometimes liked to soak in the tub, we used the upstairs bathroom, but of course, anyone could pee in whatever toilet was closest that was available at the moment. ;)

There was also a storeroom outside and plenty of storage space in the garage, which had built-in shelves along the back wall.

We all got new furniture for the place since most of the stuff we had was getting kind of old anyway or simply wasn’t suitable for the house. Jamie, for example, didn’t need her old twin bed in this place. Everything we did together was fun, including furniture shopping. We all went out together and picked out identical bedroom sets. The only difference was that Michelle and I liked the light-colored wood and they liked dark. We got a giant L-shaped couch for the living room, a couple of stuffed chairs, and a decent dining set that sat 4 comfortably but that had a couple extra seats we left in a corner of the room for when we had guests.

I’m getting tired quicker than I anticipated, so I’ll describe this place some other time.