Window shopping.

Jury duty's over, which is why I've not been posting rapid-fire as I got accustomed to doing. Bad for the blog but better for my life not to have all that broadband access all the time.

The weather snapped cold out of nowhere this last week so a good portion of my time has been spent insulating my apartment from the cold. I refuse to turn the heater on, gas prices are so exorbitant. I had to get a little oil-filled electric radiator to replace the one that's barely worked these last three years -- it finally went dangerously blinky.

We've gotten down to 19° F and I've gone out with no more extra padding than a cardigan that makes me look dangerously like Mr. Rogers. As last winter, I've basically retreated to living in my bedroom and keeping that room clean and warm while not worrying too much about the living room and kitchen. That means NO CATS in my bedroom. It's been a big ordeal to get that idea through to them but they're catching on, slowly.

I got rid of the venetian blinds in the bedroom and living room and am in the process of doing the same in the kitchen. Figuring out how to insulate the windows has been trial-and-error tricky all the way. Weatherstripping is out of the question 'cause with the old casement windows you need someone pushing from the outside at the same time someone inside pushes down the latch. Not an option. My best bet, I figure, is a curtain.

I broke down and bought a curtain in sheer desperation from Linens & Things, which I nominate for "most horrible shopping experience of 2006". (No small feat in the same year my favourite Goodwill finally got "attitude" in pricing the donated crap they sell.)

Merchandise at Linens & Things is hidden a minimum of three different ways, and then finally stacked to the ceiling (unlucky you if you left your forklift at home). Everything's obscenely overpriced, and much of it is fraudulently labeled. The place reeks of cheap aromatherapy candles and is laid out like a maze in an animal experiment. Worst of all, there's *no one* there to help you select from between the Indonesian and Chinese sweatshop goods. The person in the curtain department -- assuming there happens to be one there (assumng there are three people on staff for the *entire* store to begin with) -- isn't there because she knows anything about curtains, she's there because there's not a line fifteen-deep at the cash/wrap right now. As for the range of colours and fabrics in curtains, it runs the gamut from "snotty teenager day-glo fluorescents" to "choleric diarrhœa brown". A simple Jacquard pattern with burgundy or maroon tones? Nope. My choices are puce or magenta.

I get the closest thing they have to "red" that will provide insulation without my having to buy four separate panels and it costs me fifty dollars. This was the cheapest option they had for my purposes, and I *needed* insulation on that window right away. The package indicated there were two 80-inch wide panels in it. I get it home and find out they mean each panel's forty inches. Fuck that. I'm getting a refund and *never* shopping there again.

I'll spare you the gory details of my search for curtains and curtain rods and concerns about balancing the need to keep out light with the need to let it in ad nauseam. But in the process of taking down the venetian blinds I came on what was *original* to this apartment.

Roll-up shades.

Yeah.

The cheap kind.

Don't laugh.

I know no one uses these anymore. But I do. They can indeed be a pain to roll up but the spring is adjustable -- something I never knew 'til I bought one of these. It's such an elegant solution to a number of real problems that the technology can only be a hundred years old. And there's *no* wasteful packaging.

I've been so emotionally attached to the stupid venetian blinds I couldn't see them for the horrors that they were even all the time I knew they bothered me without quite being able to articulate why. I lose the "nifty" patterns from the light through the blinds, but also the dust they collect, the spaces for stalkers to peer through, the blood splattered on them by previous tenants in other apartments, the noise they make when the cats play with them, the danger of the cord to the cats, the signature dents and folds from crackheads peering out from behind them watching for the cops, the fact that they were too wide for the window and amateurishly hung outside the window frame, and all the generally nasty Qi that I think tends to go with old venetian blinds that simply haven't been cared for.

I also get something I haven't had in the three years I've lived here.

PRIVACY.

I have two distinct modes now. "At home and open to the world" and "At home but please don't bother me right now". I can conceivably, if I want to, walk less than fully clothed from the bedroom to the bathroom now without looking over my shoulder all the time.

I also did laundry. I hate doing laundry. But since my bedroom was cleaned I needed to clean the afghan my grandmother made me since it's the only warm winter bedcovering I have and it hasn't been washed in three years. Some fine human being left a couple of old copies of the New Yorker on the rack where people leave free reading material. Searched at first for anything by Hersh about Iran, found nothing, opened up and poked around anyway and let's just say I've spent the last two days reading these New Yorkers and plan to get a subscription and go back to return these to the laundromat where I found them.

Long story short: everything I give a rat's ass about -- almost -- is in the bedroom. I'm reading actual periodicals now, not just stuff online. Never thought I'd do that. Checked out an amazing book from the library since I finally returned all my overdues and got my card cleared. Haven't left my apartment today -- not for *anything* -- which is extremely rare, but absolutely *wonderful*. I think I'll go offline now, make a couple of calls, maybe come back later to see if anyone's in palace, or maybe just go into my book and fall asleep in my clean warm bed.