Our temporary one-month apartment in Amsterdam is furnished with enough things to get by, and enough things to make the things it’s not furnished with really stand out.

The apartment comes with three cutting boards, but no paring knife.

The apartment comes with floor cleaner, counter cleaner, toilet cleaner, dish detergent, laundry detergent, but no hand soap.

The apartment comes with dishes, but instead of mugs it has tiny little teacups the size (but not shape) of golf balls.

If a higher power designed dishes instead of animals and planets, all teacups would be the exact size of the tiny ones in our temporary apartment. That way I wouldn’t drink half a gallon of licorice tea before going to sleep, and then wake up twice in the night. But licorice tea is delicious, so I just refill the golf-ball sized teacups many times, or line up a few cups of licorice tea and drink little tea shots, like someone at a crazy college party with the queen.

There’s also a small saucepan with a lid, and also a large lid for a large pot, but no large pot. The large lid to the nonexistent large pot keeps me up at night, when licorice tea doesn’t. There must have once been a pot. And that lid knows what happened, but it will never tell.