sweet, home sweet

a google search of the address i'm going to be living at showed me that my grandparent's house was built in 1911.  it's amazing, to think that this house was built at a time when my grandparents likely would not have been permitted to have a house in the area where it's located.  Youngstown had specific areas where black people were allowed to live.

this wasn't their first house either.  i remember they lived in a rowhouse on Oak street, the building no longer being there.  i remember also they lived down low on the north side, close to Logan, and that was my favorite place to visit.

my mom's parent's house is gone, smoked up by her youngest brother and eventually demolished by the city.  there is only grass where it once stood, and i can't even picture how such a large house could have fit on such a small plot of land, with a house next to it on the corner.  i realize, however, that what makes a house truly large are the amount of memories one can fit inside of it; almost as if the house grows to accommodate so many different mental images, as if it has to become what all the people who have experienced it see.  but that's just me, i suppose.

i'm up and starting today.  i feel pretty good right now.  i slept well.  i'm washing clothes.  i'm not rushing.  i have put in several applications.  i've said my prayer. i've started my mother's coffee.  i'm going to have breakfast, get dressed and head over to the house.  my task today is to try to scrape the glue on the upstairs landing, to mop the living room floor (shown above), and to scrub the interior of the fridge, dry it out and close it up, so that it can get cold and i can start putting food into it tomorrow.

i feel the blessing of the place.  i feel the  peace within me stir when i sit on the front porch.  i love front porches.  i don't know what i'm going to do for furniture.  not a clue.  but that doesn't really seem to matter all that much right now.  when the power comes on, i'm going to start washing curtains.  that's going to be part of tomorrow, i think.  wash and rehang.  tomorrow will be my last day of actively working on the house.  two days after that, trying to recuperate.  don't know if i'm going back to the lunatic house just yet, but i'll decide and act on it by wednesday.  meanwhile, time to search for a bed, time to get breakfast going, time to make the motherfucking donuts.  thank you, Jehovah, for watching over us.

pics of the fridge tonight.  before and after, i think.  truly trifling.  guess i'll work on the stove as well, eh?