2 posts tagged “karkin”

I wanted to tell you something, but I can't remember now what it was. Hmm. Well, since we're both here anyway, what do you say to my showing you a picture of the view out my window last Saturday night? There is a boat docked down at the water's edge, and some people were having a party on it. It looked awfully pretty with all the lights and the music was coming in through the window.

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OK, I think I'm ready to share my news. Here goes. After living in this house, which is owned by my in-laws, for the last nine years, I have rented an apartment. It's a flat, really, funky and relatively unspectacular, in an old building in downtown Karkin. Mine is the only residential unit. When I say old, I mean old: the original building dates from 1850, though my part of it was tacked on later (but not that much later). The kids and I were there earlier this evening, dropping off a modest assortment of treasures, and I told them that one way you can tell the place is old is that the bedrooms have no closets. In the nineteenth century, I told them, people had freestanding wardrobes, or armoires, and relatively few clothes.

The place is upstairs, over a salon and at the rear of a courtyard, and it has a wraparound wooden balcony that makes me think, to be perfectly honest, of a Wild West bordello. Coincidentally enough, I just did some research and learned that the building as a whole definitely did house not only a bordello, but a Prohibition-era speakeasy and a "Chinese lottery," whatever that is. A Pai-Gow parlor, maybe? Anyway. It has eight-foot ceilings, and the front doors are just as tall, so even if we stay there for years my children shouldn't ever bump their heads on the door jambs.

Naturally enough, there are disadvantages, several of them relating to the previous tenant's interest in creative paint finishes. I realize a lot of people are into these, but in my experience, they rarely look good when done by an amateur. These were done, apparently, by a very enthusiastic amateur. The biggest disadvantage may well prove to be the parking. I haven't had a problem so far, but the place is just off the main street of the town, which is routinely roped off throughout the year for various events. And there is no other way to gain access to my portion of the street, because the other end of the street ends in the Bay. Which actually makes me really happy, because I love being close to the water. (I don't know why; it's just one of my things. Some people want to start a restaurant. Some people like exotic pets. I like to live by the water.)

So I am excited, and nervous, and hopeful. At last, something is changing.