quit work make crafts

Wikipedia tells me that there's a new Miles Vorkosigan book to be published in late 2010! Sahweeeeeeeet!!

Thank you everyone for your support re previous entry. Fortunately things are not turning out as overwhelming as they were threatening. Corey is recovering rapidly (has already ditched the crutches in favour of a cane), and the Zoo seems to also be recovering from the clingy grumpy whatever it was she was embroiled in for a few days. Also I have made a point of (a) going to bed early the past couple nights and (b) spending the evenings in totally mindless and non-productive entertainment, i.e. re-reading Miles Vorkosigan books and knitting. In sum, I am somewhat refreshed. And I found a $10 DVD copy of Labyrinth at the grocery store. Hee!

Tonight: Star Trek reboot movie (finally!) - with any luck it will not be all rented out, it being a weekday. Also I am going to try to make some curry for Rose. Not powerful curry, of course, just a bit of ginger and cinnamon and cumin with some chicken and onions. Also I will throw in peas and potatoes and raisins. And if she doesn't like it, well, I'll eat it :P Homemade baby food is surprisingly tasty, given how unappetizing it looks.

Today was actually going pretty well - tired, but otherwise ok. Until Corey somehow put a foot wrong and sprained his ankle. So he needs to stay off his foot and keep it iced and elevated for at least 48h, and then may be on crutches, and meanwhile everything in the goddamn house is basically on my head for as long as this bullshit lasts. I could just fucking cry.

I am about at the end of my rope for the day. Screamy non-napping baby is noodling peacefully enough for now with cheerios. I think she must be teething like whoa, but there are so far no additional teeth to show for it, just a clueless mother with fraying nerves.

The worst part of this gig is that when I get to the end of the day I get a couple of hours to myself to recuperate and then I have to go to bed and get up at the ass crack of dawn and do it all over again. Cheerfully. There are no days off ever. I cram what time off Corey can give me full of projects because I have no other time to do them, and I can never catch up enough to feel like I can chill with nothing else I should be doing instead. And the thought of trying to fit everything in around a full work week makes me want to cry.

raynedaze did a lovely tarot reading for me at amazon_syren's birthday party that seemed to suggest I should stop beating myself up about not getting shit done and try to look at all my competing priorities as being in counterpoint rather than competition...an orchestra, not a juggling act. Nice idea, if I only knew how to get there.

( Ta daaaaaaaaa! )

All right internets! Kitchen pictures to follow at the end of the day!! But meanwhile, what colour do you think I should paint the dining room?

The red is Behr's Ruby Ring:



The dining room is currently an almond sort of yellowy-off-white, as is the rest of the main floor. Should I just go with a similar colour? It needs to be warmish, to go with the red, and it needs to be unobtrusive, so as to not compete with the red.

VERY LAST kitchen tasks:

* get counter mess out of the way for tile guy
* put up trim around door
* move fridge once trim is complete
* find a spot for CD player
* more red paint if needed (please god no)
* paint ceiling and bulkhead
* trim under counter in DR
* paint DR
* get cracking on glass panels

I raise my glass to you, Sesame Street. Rock on.

Friday night I am going to fire up my swank new gas stove and make a bigass pot of tomato feta chicken. Oh, wait a minute - the stove will be in, but the pots will still be in a box somewhere downstairs. Well, okay, pizza can be my first dairy indulgence then, and I will save the cooking until we're all unpacked...which shouldn't take very long, there being actual space for everything. OMFG it will be sweeeeeeeeeeet.

Tonight I paint and mess with the light fixture; tomorrow I paint some more and pick up glass for the cabinets while the tile guy does his thing; Friday evening I paint the ceiling and bulkhead and start unpacking. Saturday I finish the trim and continue unpacking. Sunday I guess we'll paint the dining room.

Believe it or not, I actually threw down 600 words or so a couple days ago in a half-assed attempt to get with the nano program. Maybe it will get easier once all the renoing is out of my hair. I can hope, right??

I...hate...daylight savings time. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE.

Weekend of madness ahead! Countertop install confirmed for Wednesday, which means we are right smack on schedule. This time next week the kitchen will be DONE LIKE DINNER.

TO DO:

* painting (starting tonight, since it's a nice quiet chore)
* remaining three glass patterns (also quiet) one down, two to go
* fix stupid 1/4" kneewall screwup
* fix kneewall drywall
* window trim
* mess with light fixture
* get one more piece of trim from Home Despot, also drywall scraps

TO GET chez Home Despot tonight or tomorrow morning:
* more paint
* trim
* tiles

Up, up and awaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!

So while Corey was showering this morning I heard a suspicious rustling. At first I thought the cats were getting into something, but as it turned out, the rustling was the paper on the couch...which was being dripped on...FROM THE CEILING.

AUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH.

Plumber will be visiting this afternoon to take a look. Of COURSE any home maintenance issue we run into now WOULD call for the most expensive contractor we've dealt with.

Add this to the Zoodle being up since 4:40 AM and this is not looking like a good day.

You guys, our kitchen is going to be FREAKIN GORGEOUS!!!





What do you think, internets, about that 3" strip above the cabinets? It can be painted either white to blend in with the ceiling - which it does surprisingly well, actually - or red to pop out a bit like the accent walls. Thoughts, o design-inclined genii?

Still to come: handles, stained glass, backsplash, countertop, and appliances. I say again: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Spoke to the CHEO dietitian. To make a long story short (so as to not blog about baby poo) dairy will have to wait at least another two weeks. Siiiiiiiigh.

I am really tired today.

Reno is coming together apace, at least. Progress pictures to follow this evening. In the end (so far, anyway, knock on wood) we will be about $500 over budget and a few days over schedule (countertop installation can't happen as quickly as I had been figuring, which means shuffling backsplash and final plumbing back a bit). Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

I am toying with the idea of nanoing again with my poltergeist story. I have naptimes to fill and I am restless for a creative project and it's been years since I've written anything. I should start spending some time in the studio again as soon as the reno stops eating my evenings, but even twice a week for that would be a good start.

Not huge, just annoying. Probably inevitable when trying to organize this my ignorant self, and I guess annoying screwups are the kind you want, in the end, if you have to have em.

Screwup #1: I had forgotten this, but due to the dimensions of the wall and of the prefab cabinets, we can't center the sink cabinet under the window. I think we can get closer to centering the sink itself under the window, if we put it off to one side of the cabinet, but one way or another, something is going to be out of line. So: do we line up the sink and the window and let the cabinet centerline be off to the side, or do we line up the sink and the cabinets and let them both be off to the side of the window a bit?

Screwup #2: Two electrical items are a few inches off. I think this resulted from me measuring the window from the trim, which got removed, vs. from the frame. One just means patching the drywall a bit to move it over, which is probably going to mandate even more coats of paint, but not a big deal. The other one is going to be a pain in the electrician's ass, because it needs to move across a stud, which means drilling a hole. And hence also means mucking with the Vapour Barrier of Our Epic Struggle (ARRRRGH) and another patch in the drywall.

Screwup #3: The kneewall is not level and one side of it will not be able to fit under the countertop. I knew it was off level, but figured they could work with this via shims and whatever. Turns out, for various reasons, not so much. I THINK we should be able to fix this with tools on hand plus another big drywall patch, fortunately in a location that has not yet been painted. We'll see how it goes.

Cluttered and incomplete, but coming togetherrrrrrrrrr! SO MUCH STORAGE ZOMG I ♥ ♥ ♥ IT. What do you think of the red, internets? Does it work?

So thanks to the superstar powers of antibiotics, I am back on my feet today. With my mom's awesome help we got most of the painting done that needed doing. Come to find out, painting a wall dark red is a more persnickety business than lighter colours. Google unearthed some helpful tips, but it would not surprise me if we have a 7-coat paint job on our hands. Good thing it's just around the door and window, I think I'd go crazy trying to do a whole room.

Cabinets go up starting tomorrow!!!!

Ugh. Well, scratch that last entry. It IS mastitis. I have not spent a day feeling that lousy in a long time. Thank god for Canadian health care and antibiotics.

So here we are, the glorious weekend, wherein I had planned to get Timmy's for the first time in months and paint like a madwoman.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm sick.

W. T. F?!?!

Without getting into too much gory TMI, Telehealth Ontario says my fever isn't high enough/colour isn't off enough for it to be mastitis. Tylenol and toast have helped a great deal since early this morning, so I may yet have my Timmy's. But I am SORE AS HELL and also flat as a pancake when I want to be GETTING SHIT DONE. Stoopid universe!!

I had a dream last night that we were renting an apartment in an old building. At first it seemed charming, but it turned out to be much larger than it should have been (stairs and many rooms) and also haunted.

The ghosts didn't actually do much; they just appeared - only at night - and occasionally spoke. There was nothing special about their appearance, either, except for period costume and a certain lack of affect. But for some reason their presence was terrifying, they brought with them this paralyzing nightmare fear. In the dream I spent all night staying up with my mom, helping with some sort of woodworking project, in order to avoid them; I was relieved to wake up.

Ugh. Thank god today is over. Sometimes this whole parenthood business feels like a losing battle - if it's not one thing I'm fucking up or dropping the ball on, it's another. Tomorrow at least it will be sunny, so we can go for a walk if I start feeling stircrazy.

In other news, though, the mud is up and just needs to be sanded tomorrow night; then I prime and paint on the weekend. I hope the paint turns out to be the right colour, it seems brighter/pinker than promised by the swatch. But in any case on Monday comes the REALLY exciting part, namely cabinet installation! Two weeks down, two weeks to go!

Also: ONE DAY TILL DAIRY w0000000000000000000t