Tip-Top

I live on a porch now. I don't meant that I have a porch; I mean I really live on the porch.

I left my basement apartment that was nice and close to work and two or three blocks from the park. It was just not well suited for me. Basements here are different than back home because you can't dig into the ground here. The apartment was just on the ground level, but it provided all the amenities that a regular basement does. Poor natural lighting, cool, plenty of bugs. I am unrepsonsive to two out of three of those words.

So after deliberation, I made the decision and commitment to move. I heard a sermon once about commitment, and the pastor said that if you make commitment, you'll be surprsed at the outcome. I don't know if that is true in this case or not, but once I made that decision, I texted my friend Jennie that she should move down, do Literacy Americorps, and be my roommate in her spare time. And guess what? She did.

So now we have a three bedroom shotgun apartment with our third roommate joining us in the next week.

Let me refresh your memory about what a shotgun is. It's a house that you have to walk through everyone else's room to get somewhere. Two of the rooms are pretty private, being in the front and the back of the house.

My room is my favorite. It is in the front of the house, off the balcony. There is a door made entirely of windows, and two floor length windows next to it that can open like miniature doors. I've slept better here, even though it's brighter and noisier than I ever did at the basement on St. Ann.

The street outside is a parkway with a nice wide neutral ground (median). There's a playground and a bikepath. If you follow the bike path, it leads to Bayou St. John, a sort of park on a canal.There's huge live oak trees that shade us. There's people running or walking by, and always cars driving by. I haven't eaten but two or three meals inside. I make my food and carry it out to the porch, so I have something to watch while I eat.

My neighbors are great, too, albeit a little eccentric. That's another entry entirely though. For now I am tip top shape, feeling better about myself than I have for months. I won't attribute it all to the natural lighting and porch sitting, but it probably has something to do with it.