Okay, so I am behind on my cure-ing.

I missed out on most of week three (i.e. landing strip week) because I was a frenzied mess prior to a work/fun trip to the south of France.

Then I missed out on week four because I was in the south of France.

I did, however, have lots of time to think about the way I want my apartment to be and now I’m back and ready for work. Boyfriend also happens to be out of town this week, which means I have more time and space to do the cure-ing I want to do.

Since arriving home last night I have:

• Unpacked and started doing the immense amount of laundry that has piled up since my departure.
• Taken a huge bag of clothes out to the curb that have been sitting in the apartment for months waiting to be given away.
• Organized the hanging section of our wardrobe closet
• Put all my wool sweaters into storage until next year (I probably have way too many for Tel Aviv, but a native Oregonian can never have too many sweaters… what can ya do?)
• Consolidated the many suitcases/storage units in the bedroom by filling them up with each other (like Russian dolls)
• Begun a preliminary narrowing down of my clothes and adding things to the outbox (more to be added when boyfriend returns and can go through his half also)
• Vacuumed EVERYWHERE.
• Oh, and I changed the sheets and made the bed.

… Sometimes I think maybe I’m taking this too far when I go on these cleaning/organizing binges. My friends think I’m crazy (in a nice way, I’m almost sure), but once I all done organizing I feel an incredible sense of calm and only a tinge of anxiety from having parted with old belongings. I think it’s also becoming easier for me now that I have a steadier income and sense of permanence in my apartment. Next week we are signing the lease for a second year in our apartment and it feels so nice to know that I’ll be sticking around another year and won’t have to start all over again from the beginning.

Okay, enough reflection. Here are the things I have assigned myself to do this week:

• Catch up on living room week by cleaning and rearranging the salon (that’s living room in Hebrew) and office area.
  • Including: Changing room layout and taking the TV out of the middle of the room and installing a wireless card into our desktop computer and hiding all electronic gizmos under the TV.
  • I am giving myself bonus points if I find time to: Spray paint and reorganize the bookshelf, spray paint the computer chair, and wash the couch “slip cover” (but all the other laundry comes first).
• Take a pile of clothes to the tailor to have zippers fixed, pants hemmed, etc.
• CATCH UP ON LAUNDRY. We don’t have a dryer, but the weather’s heatin’ up which means everything will dry quicker.
• Mattress shop and maybe even BUY (I can’t sleep on our awful bed anymore, but the budget is small so it’s not going to be anything too fancy.)

I bought a bunch of postcards as well as a small 8.5×11 print of Chagall’s “Abraham and the Three Angels”:

I saw this gorgeous painting at the Chagall Museum in Nice and it made me think about how much I love hosting my own dinner parties and I decided I had to have it to hang about our kitchen table. It can come off as a bit dark, though I think it’s actually a rather celebratory image up close.

I plan on framing it and I want to keep our little apartment bright and cheery and I have never framed anything before in my life, but apparently it’s pretty cheap to do here so I figure what the hell. The question is: How?? Ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Okay, that should catch me up for a few days. I’ll try and take some pictures soon as things begin to progress.

Oh and check this out: Someone has to walk up all these stairs everyday just to get home.