My kitchen is now blue, and the years-old layers of schmutz along the baseboards are happily covered by a blindingly white coat of paint. Saturday, in addition to disassembling the behemoth of a loft bed, Chelsea and I painted — or rather, Chelsea painted and I sat on my ass ordering her around. Thank god [...]

My landlord recently approved my proposal to paint the apartment by slipping the now-crumpled sheet of paper onto which I’d written the proposal back under my door with a nearly-illegible “APPROVED” scrawled on the corner. There’s another word under the mark of approval, and a date, but I’m not sure what the other word is. [...]