Exclusive: Tour My Third Apartment

Welcome Home! You're in Northampton, Mass.

This was my third apartment. There was one in between my first and this one (also known as The Second Apt) but I'm still poking around for pictures. That apartment was just meh and was down the street from my well-loved first place; a nonsensical move, really. I loved my time in Northampton (Noho as locals refer to it) and bounced back a couple times between there and Cambridge.

This was me flirting with small town living. I loved the people I worked with and there was an amazing bike trail that went on and on though cornfields and forest...and buffalo farms (did I make that up?). It used to be train tracks so was known as The Rail Trail. I rode it once a week at least - several miles. Trees and peaceful quiet then you could turn off of it and be at Target and Whole Foods. Bang. Hot Dog Stand. You could keep going and pedal around Amherst which was pretty sweet, too. Comic shops and a summer roll restaurant. Then you could go some more and wind up.............somewhere further than that.

But this is the first of my two apartments there so I'll try and focus. I made a lot of rocking friends while I lived there. I'm telling you, LiveJournal was such great geeky networking tool. I know I've written about the girl I met (LJ-met, that is) who lived in "Hawaii" and was "most similar to me on LJ" and when I told her we should be friends it turned out she only wished she lived in Hawaii and was two blocks away...IRL.

We'd walk her dog Toto and talk about our projects and dreams while her cat drooled on my lap. She's living hers now - not in Hawaii or Noho, but is an artist and we still KIT.

Memories are like butterflies here. They are the books I'd read in the sun on the top of the stairs and the tiny snowmen I'd build Calvin & Hobbes style along the railing each time it snowed.

I'd gotten much better at container gardening and tended it with much love. That watering can in the bottom left picture was handpainted by a couple of children I was close to in Cambridge. It was for my "country" adventures. Treasure. The hibiscus was hard for me to part with because I'd never gotten one to thrive so well but when I left I gave it to the family whose house it was (I rented their top floor). She planted it in her beautiful garden and I have no doubt it's still there. She helped me learn to grow things better; green thumb. She'd make lemonade and we'd chatter under a curtain of trees, birdsong, and squirrel chirps.

When I moved back to Noho I almost returned to this apartment but they'd decided to close off and keep the room with most of the daylight and it became too dreary without it so I found another spot off of Gothic St (perfect, right?) where the squirrels also sang from the trees every morning. I'd buy fresh bread from a cottage every Saturday morning and go to the farmer's market. My cats loved having a sun porch of their own and it was equally perfect in different ways.

Those memories are also floating butterflies...but I must stop now. That's jumping ahead to Apartment Five.