Why Metric Boulevard?

In August of 2006 Josh and I took one months worth of his salary, and moved from Magnolia, Arkansas into a 336 sq. ft. one-room apartment in North Austin with no jobs, and without ever having seen where we'd be living.

It was empty at first, besides the TV and one nightstand we had brought with us. Then my brother gave us a table & 4 chairs. We slept on the floor for the first year we were there, on a pile of sleeping bags and blankets. Our TV sat on top of an upside down box. Eventually we found an oval table that we used for our computers. We shared a vacuum cleaner with my brother, and collected used furniture people would put by the dumpsters when they were moving out.

We lived off macaroni, rice-a-roni, cereal, and cheap booze. We shopped at Goodwill. Sometimes we couldn't pay the whole electric bill. Our cable got cut off once.We didn't have much, but we had each other, and we learned to trust and rely on each other.

We'd been there for about 3 months when he proposed, after a rare dinner at the T.G.I.Friday's downtown, on the river. At that time we'd only been together for 8 months. I didn't get a ring. I didn't care.

We made friends, we had adventures, crazy adventures. We had good times and bad times. We argued, we cried, we made up, we really and truly fell in love.We adopted a cat, and when he left us for the great outdoors, we got another. She stuck around, and made our family complete for the time being.

Things started to pick up. We finally got our furniture moved down, and then we had too much. Our tiny place was packed, to the gills, and trying to arrange everything proved quite a challenge. We got married (in a courthouse on a rainy day in January of 2008; I wore a pink dress and black cowboy boots.) We partied, met more people, had more adventures, got better jobs.

We spent three of the craziest, weirdest, and happiest years in that tiny apartment on Metric Boulevard.

1 comment: