Paintapalooza – A Story in Pictures

So! This weekend I determined to do some painting at Timely Manor. The upstairs was still this default… well I don’t even know what color to call this, really. Greenish beige yellow tan? Grbeigetan? It sucks. I started hating it more and more as the weekend progressed, but details on that later. Anyway, this is some oddball nondescript color and I wanted this room, my reading room, to be lovely and soft, pale pink. Restful. Girly. I also thought I’d paint the office and maybe the bathroom. I mean, I had the whole weekend, right? I would knock out this reading room in no time, then go on the the larger office and paint that dusky pale purple-gray, then have time to chill out and take a bath and read a book. Oh yeah, this would take no time at all.

Here is the reading room, in all it's Grbeigetan glory. Look at my charming angled ceilings. Charming! So lovely!

On Friday night I went and bought paint and supplies, then came home and started prep work. Look at me taping things and removing the outlet covers and light switches, like a boss/adult! It's awesome how many outlets there are in each of my rooms, BTW. Until you're doing something like this, and you realize that six double outlets in one room is... well, a lot. And it's kind of tedious to go around unscrewing them all. But! I am a boss/adult and I do prep work! Look at me!

Continue reading »

Random Randomosity

So, for the past few weeks I have been eating lunch at work because A) It’s cold and B) I am trying to save money and C) I am trying to eat healthier food. The consequences have been A) I have saved money and B) I am bored out of my fucking skull and my now- unbroken work days are long, soggy gray humorless corridors of unhappiness and potential deep-vein thrombosis.

Seriously. Not getting out for lunch? Makes me want to die. Right now it’s 1:51 and it feels like it ought to be about six hundred o’clock. I just sit here staring at screens. All day. Oh fuck me, but it’s awful. Yesterday I had a late afternoon meeting, and my head started swimming from trying to focus my eyes on the guy all the way across the table. My brain forgot objects could be so far away. Blergh.

In other news, I cooked last night! I made some more of that chicken with white wine that I made before, but this time with crushed dried rosemary instead of fresh, and I made mashed sweet potatoes with goat cheese and I also made a package of wild mushroom risotto that I had in the cabinet. It was all very tasty, with crusty bread and white wine. Although there was a minor mishap when I forgot that the rosemary does not have a sprinkle-top lid, but is just in a wide-mouthed jar, and I dumped half a bottle in the pan and had to try to scrape it out without also scraping out the garlic I had carefully chopped and browned in oil. :-/

In the end, it all turned out well, I thought. I will definitely make the mashed sweet potatoes again, as I am embarking on a longstanding love affair with all things sweet-potato-y. My hands smell like garlic though, and that is not my favorite thing.

I got a new dress and a new skirt and some new tights and new socks in the mail today at work, in a particularly serendipitously synchronized feat of shipping. Everything looks agreeable, and I am excited to have new things right now, especially had I realized before I bought them (with some unexpected work bonus money) that I should be saving my money for new-house things & down payments and moving costs, and not buying myself treats. But what the heck, sometimes a lady needs some treats.

Things looking up on the housing front, will hopefully commence serious house shopping over the winter break. Now my only impediment to moving is how quickly I can find a house I like – so that’s good. I mean, it’s stressful to house shop, but I think now the hard parts in terms of legality and finances have been sorted out, so now it’s just buckling down and making it happen. I keep trying to look forward to myself installed very peacefully in a new home somewhere, and picturing myself shutting the door and really being alone for the first time in what feels like years. It will be nice. I remember a time when I didn’t want to leave the house because everything I wanted was AT the house. And now a combination of changes in circumstances and personality have made me into the kind of person who prefers not to be at home “alone*” a lot. I am interested to know how that will change once I really love my home again. I would like to think that I can keep up a healthy mix of social/private time. But to just sit quietly and read, or write, or make some artz, or do something creative without listening to whatever ungodly banging and hollering is going on next door to me, or sitting tensely and waiting for it to start up, on the rare occasions it’s quiet… that will be a novel sensation indeed.

Lastly, I am not barefoot enough at this time of year, and I think my feet may be choking to death.

I think that’s all the random I have today, kids.

*technically I am never actually alone, as I can always hear strangers next door and smell their cooking and feel them walking around, and they can always hear me.

I will be so glad when this day is over, so then I can look forward to a new day to dread.

I have had a lot going on lately, only most of it has been in my head. A lot of the things that are in my head are hard to translate to written word in a way that does not make me sound batshit crazy, or maybe just reveal my batshit crazy in a way that makes me uncomfortable and exposed, and because of the copious amounts of aforementioned things, I have been too tired to attempt the translation. Mostly I have hidden under covers, and smiled big fake smiles of “Everything’s A-OK!” and then retreated back to the covers again. Which, as a strategy, seems to be working for now.

Hrm, so how about instead of what I have been thinking, you hear what I have been doing? That’s fun, right? Let’s see. I’ve been learning that my new car drives pretty well in the snow, and is warmer and heats up faster than my old car – yay! Also, anti-lock brakes and anti-skid technology are really very odd feeling, and they make crunchy noises and I really thought my car was terribly broken when they kicked in with the first snowstorm of the year. Turns out, not broken – just crunchy on purpose!

I attempted to attend a gathering on Friday, which was listed as “from 9 p.m. -3 a.m.” on Facebook, and gave the address. When I showed up at the listed address at 9 p.m., it was only to discover that the portion of the evening’s festivities that was to take place at that address began at 5 p.m. and ENDED at 9 p.m. and the 9-3 part was at another location entirely. Imagine my dismay at this lack of logic and standard invitation protocol. So, instead of joining up with that group of socially maladjusted improper-invitation-issuing deviants, I met up with some other social maladjusts at the Jade Room, or Barbarella, or whatever it’s called nowadays. And there I feasted on a nutritious dinner of margaritas and crab rangoon, and had considerably more fun than I’d have had at the other gathering, anyway.

Let’s see, I am working on a new blog project, which I hope will be fun. It’s been some time since I wrote anything, or made anything pretty, or did more than sit and fret and stew, basically. So, a project might be good for my brainz. I don’t know. We will see.

I am working on defeating Super Mario Bros. Wii, and it’s making me want to kick someone in the face. Sort of in a fun way, I guess, maybe. Sometimes I think I am allergic to relaxing. The things that other people find fun are really stressful to me. Or, maybe I just don’t have enough proper outlets for my anger. Or maybe everyone gets childishly angry at video games, and that’s part of the experience. I don’t know, I can’t figure it out, like I said, I  have other things on my mind. But anyway, I am doing that.

Last night I got to do that while having a loud angry man screaming on the other side of my house’s shared wall. He screamed a lot, you guys! People were motherfuckers, and had done him wrong, and it was bullshit, and these motherfucker’s better shape up, apparently. And he went on and on and on. I got home at 3:30 p.m. and he was screaming, and then I went and took a nap and I woke up at 5ish and he was still screaming. And then I cooked and ate dinner and I played Mario and then I ran the dishwasher because it’s really loud and it covered up the screaming, and when it was done he was still screaming! Apparently these motherfuckers were really some serious motherfuckers, up to some motherfuckery of an extreme degree. So at 7:30 I called the landlord of the people who live there. And he was very soft spoken and shocked and apologetic – like – “OMG how can this be happening, it is so terrible, I am so shocked.” Which is pretty much how he always reacts when this happens. When, living next door to this insane bitch and her horrible awful daughter and the freakish feral child and assorted LOUD AS FUCK friends and relations who come over sometimes, you know, I was not all that “shocked,” I was more “fed up.” And his whole shocked routine wears very thin with me these days. So he called over there to tell them to be quiet. And I knew pretty much at once he got a hold of them, because the angry man became angry at me! He started yelling at me through the wall, some very ugly unpleasantries, if you must know! For instance – my physical appearance – it displeases the angry man! Perhaps it’s the root source of his anger? I do not know. Also, I am a bitch! The kind of bitch who likes peace and quiet, one assumes. And also? Unattractive cranky women need to walk over and knock on someone’s door to explain that they are unhappy with the noise levels of the angry screaming men inside. Which, I have to tell you, I don’t think that’s a workable life plan right there. Like, perhaps this is too much self-preservation mode ACTIVATE, but wandering around the freezing snow-blown ghetto to knock on the door of an already incensed, 4+ hours raging man, and tell him to STFU, that doesn’t seem like a great plan to me. But, what do I know, I can’t even make myself passably attractive to angry screaming men, and they seem like a pretty easy demographic to crack.

So, after 5 minutes more of raging, he finally DID shut the fuck up, proving he was actually capable of same, and that he also did not want the police showing up over there, which he was about 10 minutes away from getting. And then I sat on my couch thinking about what had happened, and trying to be calm about it. Well, calm with a loaded 9mm next to me, naturally. And then I thought – hey. This is a hard thing, right here. It’s a Sunday night, I want to sit on my couch in my PJs and play this game. All my friends are Twittering about movies and hot chocolate and warm socks and cozy good times at home—but instead of my being able to do that in any kind of relative peace, I am sitting on my own couch, in my own home, and some stranger is screaming at me and calling me names. Think about that. I mean – is that not the opposite of what “home” is supposed to be? I think that if when in your own private sanctuary you still can’t escape strangers screaming invective at you and making you afraid, then you’re in a really weird and bad place. Things have gone wrong.

I try to not feel too sorry for myself about this whole situation, because I don’t think it helps and I would rather focus on trying to get it fixed and get out of there. But I cannot help but wonder how many things I have done incorrectly in my life for this to happen—for all the very worst facets of the world to intrude into my living room, and attack me through the walls when I sit on my own couch, in what should be a place of peace and retreat. It sucks, pretty much.

And then I could not sleep, as I was convinced he was going to break into my house overnight. And maybe that’s paranoid and maybe it’s not. All I know is that I could not sleep for shit. I bet he slept like a big, angry, loudmouthed assfuck baby, over there. 10 feet away from where I was not sleeping at all. I bet he had nice dreams about ponies and otters swimming in sparkling brooks.

Anyway, the quest to get the fuck out of this house continues. More happenings on that tonight, which I am dreading, but it’s part of what I have to do to get out of there, and so I will do it. When this is done I really want to go live in a cave somewhere with a big rock pushed up to the entrance. I will make peace with the spiders, even.

Hrm. I feel like I should end this on a happy note. Let’s see – I had some lovely meals out this weekend, and spent some really enjoyable time with people I like a lot. I got a fantastic bit of news at work on Friday, which made me happy. I made two small dogs pee in the snow instead of on the carpet. Not everything is horror in my world, not really. And someday soon, I am hoping things will get better.

Wordage

I wish that people would stop correcting me on the difference between grout and mortar and caulk. How’s this?: It’s the shit that goes between the shit and I do not give a fuck what it is called, I only fucking want it fucking fixed.

Adventures in Responsible House Keeping

Please add to the list of peeves I keep as companions: when you buy a bottle of [whatever] as the bottle you have is nearly empty, and then somehow the two bottles mate, or the first bottle senses the replacement and gets competitive or something, and then suddenly the first bottle is magically way more full, actually, than it seemed. So you have to keep using that bottle, and the new, shiny bottle is sitting there looking resplendent and yet also redundant, and your everything is cluttered with multiple bottles, and you don’t dare put the new bottle somewhere out of the way to store it, as you will no doubt forget you have it and purchase a third because the original is, you know, running low.

Don’t you find that shit irritating?

I am looking at you Tide and Euphoria.

Another time I will post about soap that wears itself down into an awkward broken sliver right away, and then that awkward broken sliver refuses to be used up for the rest of your life, even if you’d really like to switch to a new scent of soap at this point, as you’re sick of the old smell.

Not Like the Others

As I type this, I am sitting in my kitchen, ostensibly cleaning it. My method of cleaning is not really what you’d call orthodox, however. So far it’s consisted of running the dishwasher and standing next to the sink to scoop all the overflowing dishwasher draingage water into a bucket, which I then take in the bathroom and pour down the toilet.  Simultaneously, I am running the oven at 420 degrees, trying to burn off the very last of the caked-on olive oil that I could not scrub off. After that I may just be able to use the oven again. To ensure that the smoke alarms aren’t activated by my unique oven- cleaning method, I am running the exhaust fan over the stove on high, as well as running the exhaust fan in the bathroom. I am also sitting near the oven to watch in case copious amounts of smoke start pouring out, so I can intervene. Much like I am intervening in the kitchen sink/dishwasher drain fiasco that’s happening behind me. Since that’s not really enough to keep my interest, I am also washing some clothes downstairs, hoping that the drain down there is unfrozen, and that I won’t go down in a few minutes to a flooded basement full of soap suds.

It’s Extreme Household Maintenance, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

Epic Handbag Adventures

Only now am I able to discuss with a reasonable level of calm the HORROR, the TRAGEDY, the ABSOLUTE CALAMITY which befell me last weekend. While returning to my humble abode on Friday night, in no slight state of inebriation, I chanced to discover that my BAG, my FAVORITE GOING OUT BAG had sustained an injury most grievous. Namely: one of the straps was broken loose of its mooring, and flapping most ineffectually in the chill night air.

This bag and I have a history dating at least 10 years, and possible 11. Purchased at the Esprit store in Amsterdam in 1998 or 1999, it was one of the first “expensive” bag purchases of my (at that time young) life. I can’t remember what I paid for it, and even if I did it would have been in guilders and the price wouldn’t make any sense now since the debut of the Euro, but however much it was, it was purchased at full price (!) and I remember that it made me a little nervous to be spending that much money at the time, and I hid the receipt from my boyfriend. My friends in Amsterdam teased me constantly for my grandma-handbag fetish, but when I saw this little black number sitting on a shelf I knew it had to be mine.

Numerous are its charms, and hidden features, but a few of the highlights are:

• It is black. This is key for any bag I am to carry long-term.
• It is leather, not some icky-sticky fabric.
• The sides are hard, not soft, carefully protecting all my delicate goods within
• The top has a most cunning silver clasp, which snaps closed with a satisfyingly deep click
• The top of the bag closes entirely, preventing things falling out, or falling in
• It is deceptively small and almost Mary Poppins-esque in its ability to hold things. I have had a full night’s load of stuff in it and still found room to add my gloves, a scarf and paperback book that a friend gave me. It’s much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
• At this point it’s well-worn and loved, so I don’t mind taking it out to bars and getting drinks spilled on it and whatnot
• It has the perfect strap length, enabling it to be held loosely in the hand (to attract purse-snatchers, if one is of a mood to do that) or over the shoulder, with the bag fitting closely under one’s upper arm (not bouncing annoyingly against one’s hip) This also is perfect for being out at bars, because it frees up one’s hands to hold a drink and gently prod malingerers out of one’s way, but it doesn’t leave your bag dangling so low down that it is vulnerable to pick-pockets and getting carelessly jostled/caught on barstools.
• It is most stylish and classically granny-ish, still as delightfully in fashion today as it was the day I bought it

In short, it’s a perfect fucking bag. So I am going to have to get that strap fixed. I’ve heard there’s a place on Big Bend that can do that, but by all means if you have a suggestion for a good bag-fixer person, please let me know.

Observe how epic, and the sadly broken strappage.

I have a replacement bag pinch-hitting for my fave bag, but even though it’s of a similar size/shape it’s fabric (gross if you spill something on it) with only short/hand-held handles and it only snaps closed on the top, which means things can fall in and out of it. And  I have to carry that one out tonight. Boo.

Attempt at replacement bag 1. Wrong color, good length straps, but too large with unwieldy top-flap.

Attempt at replacement bag 2. Good color, good size, but fabric, with odd length handles and only a snap closure on top.

In other news, I bought two new dresses, a new top and two new pairs of sandals today. I am having the hardest goddamn time finding shoes right now, since I need shoes that are loose enough to not squeeze the broken part of my left foot. That usually equals something like a slingback. However slingbacks are exactly what you don’t want to wear when you have plantar fasciitis, like I do in my right foot. For that I need a closed-back shoe with a slightly elevated heel. But that puts too much stress on the broken foot, and it also doesn’t help my right knee, which is all jacked up from walking funny to accommodate the left foot. See how ridiculous this gets? I need arch support on the right, which aggravates the left, and I basically only feel totally comfortable when I am barefoot. And to top all that off, I would actually like to have shoes the are, you know, cute. Pretty much impossible. So  you can imagine my delight at  finding two new pairs of sandals today which I think will actually be comfortable on both sides of my fucked-up lower extremities. And I debated buying both pairs, and then I realized how hard it was to find anything that suits my weird-ass needs, and totally bought both. Fuck it.

Totally random, but this is the only pretty thing in my garden at the moment, so you’re getting  a picture of it.

Bleeding Hearts. Glad they survived the snow/frost.

Laundry Woes

OK, so I have been thinking lately that my whites weren’t as bright as they should be. Because that’s the kind of thing you think about when your life is made of 1/3 FAIL, 1/3 stultifying boredom and 1/3 OCD. And I want my whites to be nice and bright so I can use my massive brain power to ponder other things, so I decided to try a different detergent, convinced that my Tide Pure Essentials With Baking Soda and White Lilac wasn’t cutting it.

I got this Arm & Hammer with OxiClean! stuff, thinking that sounds, like, extra cleantastic. Arm & Hammer, we like that, that’s good stuff, that’s baking soda. We like their toothpaste to clean our teeth, so their detergent to clean our clothes must also be nice, right? And Oxiclean has those commercials, so that must work well, right?

NO!

By the power of all that is holy, NO!

I washed my darks in the regular Tide this week and my whites in the Arm & Hammer shit.

Let me let you in on a little-known secret. This Arm & Hammer with OxiClean! smells extremely offensive. More than just “Hrm, that’s not as nice as I would want.” It’s OFFENDING MY ACTUAL NOSTRILS REALLY BADLY.

I kept thinking that the smell on the clothes couldn’t be half as bad as the smell of the actual substance, but I can assure you that it is!

Today the only thing I am wearing that was washed in this treacherous, nose-hair-singing morass of chemical stew is my bra, and just having the bra on, under my clothes, has been enough to aggravate me all day long. It stinks so bad that I think it is psychosomatically giving me a rash. Last night I was going to put the white sheets on that I had just washed in this mess, but already I was thinking “What is up with the stink, for serious?” and I put on some sheets that I had in the closet instead. Thank all that is holy that I did so, because if I had to sleep next to this INFERNAL, UNGODLY, DISGUSTING, NAUSEATING STINK I think I would really die of the odor. To death. By the stench. I can’t even describe what it smells like. I think what most closely describes it is if you took all the chemicals in your high school science lab and mixed them up in a large beaker of water and put them on a hot plate with on old sweat sock sticking out of it and left it for about 17 hours, until it was a boiled down stew and then you blew that up with a car battery, Arm& Hammer detergent with OxiClean! is about the smell you might get.

In short, this stuff smells VERY VERY BAD. I am not joking, it’s gross. I would rather have some seriously dingy whites than smell so patently offensive. Better to launder your delicate lacy unmentionables in the Bog of Eternal Stench than even contemplate purchasing this horrific, stinking stuff. Now I am going to throw all my whites back in the hamper to be rewashed, and throw this bottle of crap in the dumpster. Barf.

Winter/Summer Garden Animation

Grabbed a garden shot this morning, loved the contrast between winter and summer. The summer picture was taken in early July, right after I got back from my Savannah vacation. The garden was at the height of lushness. Ah, some day it will be summer again.

(Note the absence of dogs in the winter picture – chihuahuas have no patience for snow.)

Water Heater Saga, Part #Whine

The guy came again to fix the water heater. Well, a guy came. Not the same guy. After a week with no hot water I had to get this shit fixed, but I couldn’t have another day out of the office to wait for the repair people.

So my parents came out here. No wait, first they went to UPS at 7:30 a.m. to pick up the spare part, then they came out here and waited at my house from 8-3:30 for the guy to actually come, just so I wouldn’t have to miss work. I am so suffused with guilt at that that I kind of want to vomit up part of my brain. Of course the guilt is combined with loving them and a sort of horrified gratitude for their doing something so tedious in order to help me.

When have I ever been able to accept help gracefully?

Never, that’s when.

Heater was fixed and running when the guy left, then my parents stayed around for about 45 minutes after I got home from work to make sure it kept running. Since then I haven’t checked it. I am so sick of that thing that I just can’t bring myself to care about it anymore.

Because I was anxious and upset and guilty about my parents, I had an anxious and upset day. Work was the same level of nonsensical bullshit as ever, but I hadn’t any sanity reserve with which to tolerate it today, so I had a minor freak out. And now I am depressed and don’t know what to do with myself. Everything I look at is freaking me out, everything I think about is upsetting me. I should just go take some tranquilizers and forget about it.

I should be happy and satisfied and grateful. I should feel blessed and lucky and content. Instead I want to rip off my skin and throw it in the backyard, just to rid myself of whatever it is about me that makes me feel this way.

I just think I am the wrong sort of person. I got beamed down into the wrong world, at the wrong time, and nothing is ever going to fit.

Tranquilizers ho.

Wait, did I miss November somehow?

I can’t believe how this month has passed. All in a hazy swirl of neon lights and a big fat cloud of cigarette smoke. It’s been all words, drinks and drama. It was October when Jake originally got sick, because I was home for Halloween, remember? How is it possible that I’ve been compulsively checking him for red spots for more than a month? He seems to be doing well on these medications, and I will take him in soon for more blood work. Not too soon, though. I am tired of them jabbing him.

I took off every Friday in November to give me more time to get my NaNo book written, and it really helped. I finished NaNo a day early, and will post more on that later. It was amazing, and I can’t believe I did it. So I am glad I took the time off. I also needed this break from work, and I needed to be able to look forward to not being in the office one day a week. This month it has seemed more like work is just something I have to do sometimes rather than the All Encompassing, Never Ending Badness That Rules My Waking World.

And now it’s December. Well, tomorrow it will be. Holidays, festivity, snow. I have to work THREE WHOLE WEEKS in a row with no days off except weekends! Eeek! But then I get a nice chunk of time off work, almost two full weeks. So that’s much to look forward to.

The house… well, I am continually challenged by the perils of home ownership. This time coming to me in the form of a malfunctioning water heater. I loathe dealing with things like this. The interminable phone calls, the arguing with people who don’t speak English, the waiting for repair people, the phone calls back to India, the arguing, the realizing it’s still not working even though the guy just left and swore it was fine. The having to shower at your friend’s place. The feeling that if only you were somewhat smarter you could sort this out. The feeling that you’re the only person in the wold this kind of thing happens to.  Bah to all of it. And when this gets sorted out it’s just going to be something else, some other broken down malfunctioning thing. It wears on me, wears me out. I am trying to just breathe deeply and deal with it as it happens, but it’s hard.

One day I am going to learn to roll with the punches, but you know better than to think today’s that day.

Anyway, that’s all for this month. I blinked and I missed it. But if I recall correctly, it was a lot of fun.

Dear Total Shitbag Night: You Suck.

Gah. What a night I have had. Day? Fine. Well, not exactly fine, because great heaving wracking menstrual cramps woke me at 4 in the morning, leaving me to writhe in agony until 6, when the alarm went off and I realized I looked like I’d been hit in the face with a sack that was chock full of “Holy shit you look awful!” bricks. Given the fact that I knew I was going to be feeling worse not better as the day progressed, I gave up and called in sick.

The rest of the day was halfway decent. I am almost out of any serious painkillers, and since apparently I have the only doctors in the world who want their patients to suffer excruciating pain, I can’t get anymore legally, I was carefully rationing them. But still, I could deal. Until around 5pm I went to try to take a nice hot shower, to help me work out a plot issue I was having with my book.

No hot water.

Continue reading »

Adieu… Adieu…

Parting is such sweet sorrow…

Help me bid a fond farewell to what I presume will be the last of the summer’s roses.

Today’s Image Brought to You by the Letters “P” and “G”

On My Windowsill

Still kind of fascinated with this begonia on my windowsill. It’s beautiful, but somewhat meaty and terrifying as well.

See full size at Flickr, if you’ve an interest.