Niece!!!

So having Matt live at the house has cut pretty significantly down on my alone time. Not that I mind, but that just doesn't leave me much time for the internets. Well, that and the fact that my mom's computer was so slow that it took 15 minutes just to boot up and sign online. I fixed that--actually, I wiped it and did a complete reinstall--so maybe I'll be getting online more now that it's not such an ordeal. Needless to say, I have not yet figured out what's the deal with my modem upstairs.

The update: Matt's apartment came through with only minimal smoke stinkiness, but we moved so much of his stuff over here already that he's just living here now. He sleeps in a room downstairs, so it's all very proper and respectable, FYI. Garnigal was right when she said it would be an adjustment, but so far it's been mostly an enjoyable one. I just like having my guy here. And the not having to drive for 40 minutes to see him is a huge bonus.

The cats are, well... they're being cats. Sasha has adjusted pretty well to her surroundings, but she learned pretty quickly that she could kick Niblet's hinder (surprising, since she's like half Niblet's size; I guess she's got speed and agility on her side, the little spitfire). Obviously, Niblet is not a happy kitty. She mostly hides in my bedroom and mopes. Poor kitty.

And now the big news: I'm a great aunt! To a grandniece! And here she is! Sorry, the pictures are huge. My big sis sent them from her digital camera and my mom doesn't have the software to resize them. But her name is Dakota, and she was two months premature. Here is another one showing her in scale next to my brother-in-law's fist. So tiny! She's doing very well, though, and gaining weight at a good rate. I haven't got to visit her yet, since they're trying to keep visitors to immediate family only for now, but I knitted her some premie hats. I've been waiting forever for a niece, and now that I've got one I'm ready to commence spoiling her. Eeee! Niece!

In other news, the temp agency has thus far failed to come through for me, and having Matt live here has nullified most of my reasons for not getting a job yet (i.e. I would never, ever be home and it would depress me something severe), so I've started the hunt for a fulltime job. Yayfun. I sent out half a dozen resumes yesterday. I'm trying to cast a pretty wide net and include both jobs I'm experienced for, jobs I'm educated for, and jobs I'd actually like to have. Here's hoping I get some bites soon. Cross your fingers for me.

And that's all the time I have for today, guys and gals. Hopefully it won't be so long before my next update. Ciao!

More drama than Shakespeare

So late last night I'm pining for Matt, as I'm wont to do, when he calls to say that his apartment complex is on fire and he's being evacuated, can he please bring his cat and stay the night at my house? He could, natch, and as much as I hoped to see him earlier in the week than originally planned, it wasn't under those circumstances.

He showed up about 1:30 in the AM, frightened kitty in tow, and he was of course much too wired to sleep. He had a pretty good sense of humor about the whole thing, despite having left behind his guitar and his prosthetic leg, which cost more than an Italian sports car. And it's good to know that he's got his priorities in order: his first impulse after grabbing his cat? Save the liquor! Hee! A more level head prevailed, though, and he ended up leaving his vodka and grabbing all of his financial paperwork instead.

I don't think the poor boy got more than four hours of sleep last night, if that much, but he was apparently still running on adrenaline this morning when he woke me up at 7 to tell me he was going to go back and see if his apartment got hit. I haven't heard from him yet (he was going to go in to work for a few hours afterwards, despite having already called in a personal day), but according to the local news, the fire only burned the apartment where it started and the one immediately next door, so it sounds like his was spared the burn. Now here's hoping it was also spared smoke and water damage. Assuming his stuff is okay, I'm going to borrow my mom's van and meet him this afternoon to bring another haul of his stuff over here. I don't know if we'll be bringing the liquor, but this time we'll be sure to pack up his leg.

In other news, I now have two cats. They haven't yet been introduced. Niblet's stashed away in my bedroom while Sasha (Matt's kitty) gets used to her new surroundings. Neither of them are very happy right now. Matt asked me to wait until he gets back to let Niblet out so he could watch when they first see each other, which should be a trip. I think before I sign off that I'll Google up some advice on how to acclimate adult kitties to each other. Here's hoping we can do it and keep the fur flying to a minimum.

My computer now lives in my bedroom. I only sustained a few bruises while moving it in there, including a blackened pinky-toe which, thankfully, doesn't appear to be broken after having a desk dropped on it. Yowch.

Anyway, now it's near a live phone line once again, which so far does me not a lick of good, since for reasons beyond my ken, my modem is refusing to detect a dial tone. Everything is hooked up properly. The phone line itself is fine. Diagnostics on my modem say that everything there is okay, but nevertheless, I uninstalled and re-installed the driver anyway. Nothing is helping, and I have no idea what else to try. If I can ever figure this problem out, I'll have 'net access on my very own computer once again. If not, well, then I won't. Which is not the end of the world, but it is a pain in the rear. Of course, I had good reasons for getting rid of my internet in the first place. Maybe God is trying to tell me something.

The move wasn't completely in vain, at any rate. The view from my desk now is absolutely gorgeous, looking out my bedroom window, across the street and over the cliff beyond, where I can see countryside for miles and miles. And now I can shut Niblet out of the bedroom and work without a kitty tail hanging down in front of my screen. Plus of course there's the other main reason for moving it, to make room in the living area for Matt's massive computer desk. In that regard, at least, mission accomplished.

Sigh. Aside from fighting with my modem and updating my resume to e-mail to the temp agency, both of which I'm finished with for today, I'm taking it easy. Between moving all my crap around and repurposing and refinishing and packing and unpacking and blah blah blah organization-cakes, I'm dog tired. I have no energy to do anything even remotely physically demanding today. So now I'm going to go put my feet up, work on my knitting and glut myself on DIY and home decorating shows for the rest of the afternoon. My only objective for the rest of the week is to make my place presentable enough for the pigeons my li'l sis and her hubby, who are coming over Saturday night for Matt to practice his poker skills on. Poker is his new thing. He's trying his best to make it our new thing. Depending on how well (or how terrible) I do on Saturday, he might succeed.

Mystery Kitchen

The TV cabinet, she is finished. And she turned out very nicely, if I do say so myself. My sore muscles are surely glad that the project turned out to be worthwhile.

For my next trick, I'm going to convert an old writing table into a rolling kitchen island. Y'know, I firmly believe and trust that the Lord will provide all my needs, and I'd been wondering how the heck I was going to afford all the extra cooking and counter space I'm going to need for my kitchen. And then suddenly I got hit with all of these ideas for repurposing things I already have. The writing table will solve my island problem, and the new-old media cabinet frees up my TV cart, which will become a microwave/appliance cart, which will free up a lot of counter space in the kitchen. AND! Matt's old dresser that will absolutely not fit in the bedroom (nor go with any of my bedroom furniture) and that he doesn't want to let go will, it occurred to me the other day, make a perfect buffet cabinet. The Lord works in mysterious ways, yo. Now if He'll just mysterious me up a new fridge, my kitchen will be all set.

I'm getting married in September, ding dong the bells are gonna chime!

I've updated the wedding blog, in case you're interested.

In other news, stripping varnish and woodstain off of fifty-some-odd year old furniture is a pain in the ass. If you're ever considering doing such a thing, I would suggest that you forget the natural wood look and just paint over the sucker. Seriously. I started trying to strip my grandpa's old radio cabinet four hours ago, thinking I'd have it re-stained and ready to put the new hardware on by now. But I'm still trying to get the old varnish off of that thing. And it is not fun. My back hurts and I'm covered in antique shelack and paint thinner. And then will come the sanding. Oh, the sanding, with the dust and the rubbing that feels like it will never end. I tells ya, this had better turn out to be one damn fine looking media cabinet by the time I'm finished with it.

But on a more accomplished note, one quarter of my living room is organized, I have a new rug in there, and it looks lovely. And I now have an actual bed, as opposed to just the box spring and mattress on the floor that I've been sleeping on. Now I need to hurry and store as much as possible under it before the monsters find out about it, so that they won't have any room to hide under there and attack my feet. My cat already figured this out. Hopefully she won't tell them before I can fill up the space.

And now, back to the paint stripping I go. Sigh.

Oy what a week

This past week was both crazy and crazy-busy, and I'm about as worn out as one can be right now. Without putting anyone to sleep recapping the nitty-gritty, here are the highlights.

THE GOOD:

Finished Tess's bridesmaid shawl, narrowed down availabilty dates at the chapel, and made an appointment for next week to take a tour. Matt managed to get out of his lease early and has two months to move, which we started yesterday. Got new tires on my car and got the body properly aligned. Met Matt's dad's side of the family and ratcheted up our guest list by at least a dozen people. Worked out a lot, and wrote a little.

THE BAD:

Matt's uncle died, hence why I met the family. He'd been out of touch with that whole clan for several years now, so he wasn't planning on inviting them, but now of course they're back in touch and so they're all invited. They're very nice people and I'm happy to have them there, but man that's gonna hurt the budget. The car improvements were my mother's doing after hearing me complain conversationally about how my car shimmies over 65 mph and doing what she always does and deciding OMG it must be taken care of NOW and becoming very controlling about the whole thing, so now I'm indentured to her for another several hundred dollars, yay. Overdid it on the workouts, so now I'm very, very sore, and having to be the one to do all the carrying when we moved a van-load of Matt's things over yesterday didn't help. Ow. And Matt only got out of his lease after the crazy "Don't kiss in the parking lot!" leasing manager completely inappropriately went off on the nice lady who was looking to take over Matt's apartment for talking to him about it, thus scaring her off of the deal. But it worked out because she felt sufficiently bad for screwing him out of that deal that she found another renter to take over his lease and got a bunch of ridiculously exhorbitant fees waved as a mea culpa. Also, I wrote a very little. Oh, and there's the whole bit about no longer having a job. Which, relief, but my last day (Tuesday) was a lot sadder than I expected it to be, and also frustrating, what with my internet refusing to connect and let me say my goodbyes.

So today I'm forcing myself to take it easy and let my poor muscles and my frazzled emotions recover. It's a perfect day for it--rainy and chilly and I've got plenty of knitting to do and gourmet teas to sip and DVD extras to watch, plus I've got the house all to myself, which never happens anymore. Even so, I say "forcing" because for once I'm feeling inspired to clean and organize my space at the same time that I actually have the time to do it, so it's turning out to be harder than you'd think to make myself sit still and relax. But whenever I get up my muscles scream at me to sit back down OMG stop it it hurts, and that's keeping my cleaning jones in check. At any rate, next week should be much less hectic, and I'm looking forward to having plenty of time both to arrange my part of the house, and to write. Matt's staying at his place for the next several days to conserve gas and to work on packing, so I've got plenty of boy-intereference-free time to get things done. Of course, this also means plenty of boy-smoochie-free days, to which I say boo! So it's not the best trade-off ever, but at this point I'll take what I can get.