Grass and Sky

One bright moment. My knitted celery arrived today and I was able to find a ziplock bag to stash it in until I get the bug sitch sorted out.

Landlady called Orkin and they're coming out first thing tomorrow morning to do an inspection and see if there's any sign of bugs. A couple people have suggested that it might be fleas. It could be, but the cats have shown no sign of discomfort. Every great now and then I see one of them chewing or scratching at something, but never persistently or often. And I checked Zoe, who will actually put up with being poked and prodded, but didn't see even one little speck that could be flea-like.

Almost all of the bites are around my ankles and on the backs of my legs, butt, or lower back. Which could mean they (whatever they are) are in my living room carpet - I live on the floor. I almost never actually sit on my sofa, it mostly just holds my mail and other random crap that would otherwise be taking up too much space on the floor.

A friend from work, M, came over this evening to help me clean-up, do a bug search. She helped me go over the bed, sofa and carpet. We found a couple of suspicious little black things that we taped to an index card, but no actual bugs (live or carcass). And then she made me eat when she realized that I hadn't eaten more than a Powerbar and a tiny little bit of pasta all day. I was so brain dead that it was almost more than I could do to focus well enough to make a salad with some lettuce, tuna and dressing. Stupid Meeshie Brain in action.

Now I'm torn between wanting to wash/vacuum/etc. everything in sight and wanting to leave any evidence that the Orkin man will need to decide what's going on.

Oh, and when I talked with the landlady this evening, she let me know that she has very reluctantly decided she needs to sell the house within the next year, so I need to start looking for a new place to live. I've been expecting that conversation for a while, but it just adds that little frisson of extra stress. Yay! I can't even really focus on that right now, though. I need to get through the rest of the summer, make it to Dragon Con without taking a cheese grater to my skin to get rid of the burning, itching, horror that is these bug bites. And then it's do or die time. Find a new job and a new place to live before this place disappears out from under me. It's time, anyway. I've been here for four years and haven't even unpacked some of my stuff. Time to do a huge purge and find a tiny/cheap place to live. That has enough room for two cats.

Oh the second, my steampunky choker necklace shipped today. I can't wait to see how feasible it's going to be to take it apart and remake it in the colors/style I want.

My goal for today was to get the living room tidied up and vacuumed, and start laying out pieces for the costume.

Well, I got the living room tidied up and vacuumed. Then I decided that before I start working on the current costume, I should really do a bit of organizing. Previous costumes, props, fabric remnants and sewing supplies were scattered all over the apartment in bags, boxes, storage bins and even still packed in an overnight bag from last fall. So I spent the past two hours mostly just tearing my apartment apart. But. I trashed a bunch of stuff that I was hanging on to for no particularly good reason; found five or six packets of photos from 2003-05 (Carriage House kids, DragonCon, New Hampshire stuffs); found a bunch of knickknacks I forgot I had (I'd love to unpack them but the cats would destroy them in a red hot minute); got a framed photo hung up on the wall; sorted out most of my past costumes; folded and put away all the fabric remnants that are big enough to be of possible use again some day; and got all of my old patterns sorted out and tucked away in a dedicated drawer.

Man, Mal gets so stressed/wired whenever I work on anything like this. He was bopping around, jumping at every noise or movement, and then his favorite stressed out behavior - sitting in the middle of whatever I'm in the middle of that's stressing him out and attacking me every time I move. I need to remember to just put him in the carry box whenever I'm about to start something like that, because he feels safe in there and is always able to relax a little.

Oh, and while I was unpacking last year's costume, I found my little black ankle boots and had a brainstorm! I obviously don't actually wear these boots as everyday shoes anymore, since they've been packed away for almost a year and I didn't even realize they were missing. And I've been trying to figure out what to do about shoes for this costume. I wanted something that would be reminiscent of Davison's white leather sneakers, without having to spend $80-$120 dollars on new shoes that I'd never wear again. I think these boots might provide the perfect solution (if it works - if not, well, I think of something else). I could spray paint the boots white - or maybe use something else that would stick to the boot without flaking off - and then make a pair of white spats to go on over them. I'd then put some fake lace-up fronts on the spats to make them look like they should. There are details to figure out and it's more work, but significantly less money. I am cautiously optimistic that this will be a viable solution to the problem.

And now I suppose I should finish tucking away the last few things still adorning the living room floor, vacuum again, and start the original plan for the day.

Just made out my grocery list. Yikes, it's gonna be a bank-buster! But I'm getting a ride with a friend, which means stocking up on everything.

I've got the second load of laundry in the dryer and the first load folded and put away Laundry's all done. All of the dishes except a few pots and pans are done and either put away or drying in the rack.

Still to do:

*go grocery shopping
*finish cleaning out the fridge eh, mostly done
*sweep the kitchen again, I got some of it
*mop the kitchen (with isolated patches of scrubbing - I'm not in that much of a cleaning mood that I feel like scrubbing the whole floor, although it probably all could use a good going over) - I got the isolated scrubbing done but still need to do the general mopping
*clean the stovetop
*clean off the table
*emtpy, scrub out and refill the litter boxes.

Yep, today is a kitchen day. The poor room has been sadly neglected for a good long while and lots of little things have been piling up.

If I manage to get all of that done, I get rewarded with Doctor Who this evening!

I also had a lovely Skype chat with westwindschild and Mom. I almost never even remember that I have Skype, but I signed in today and had bonus fun.

Update: Well, I feel as if I've spent a full day in the kitchen and it's still not as done as I'd like. But I think that I'm done. So the kitchen is as done as it's getting, for now at least. I've still got grocery shopping in a couple hours. Maybe that will spur me on to get a bit more done. In the meantime, I'm ready for a rest.

One of the things I wanted to get done before Christmas (and obviously failed to do) was get my kitchen counter completely cleared off and unpack a few knick knacks to display there. I finally got around to it this morning. Just a little late. So now I have my hot chocolate set out for the first time since I moved to NH in 2005. I also have a few little tea sets and things out. And, bonus, I found all of my missing Christmas lights in the box. I guess I didn't lose them after all. Yay!

Today is off to a much better start than yesterday. It's not even noon yet and I've:

*washed a sink full of dishes,

*vacuumed the living room and bedroom,

*scooped all the litter boxes,

*got the laundry half done,

*and changed a light bulb for the landlady. This involved climbing to the top step of a fairly tall ladder and then clinging to the new gas piping (in the basement) in order to reach the insanely high up light fixture. I'm really glad the landlady didn't try this on her own!

( Now, on to a question for you hobbit-minded folks out there. )

I'm finally getting some long overdue housework done! I've been going through stacks of papers that have been accumulating in various corners of the apartment since I was in school. *coughfouryearsagocough* To make it worse, I'm also sorting through stuff that westwindschild was storing for me. And it all got mixed up with the more recent stuff, so I'm going through papers from 2007-10 and then all of a sudden I'm looking at bank statements from '94. Anyway, I got through the worst of the stacks and only have two smaller piles to go through still. I've also tidied up the books that WWC brought at the same time, that have been lying about in shameful slumped once-piles because I have no more shelf space. Everything is going to remain cluttered no matter what I do, but it's much more organized, already. I also found an under-the-bed storage container so I was able to put away my summer clothes and make some room in the storage cubes.

Tomorrow night I'll do laundry and get the kitchen cleaned up, and then the apartment will be in decent shape for the first time in far too long.

Somewhen around April 7, I realized I hadn't paid my phone bill, wondered why I wasn't getting increasingly nasty messages from AT&T, and ran off to pay the bill. Today, going to pay this month's bill, I was told I had a zero balance. Oh yes, I set up automatic payments for my phone in March and then immediately forgot that I did so. I swear, my brain does actually work on occasion. Just, only on occasion.

I did a bit of actual housework today.

*one and a half drainers of dishes washed
*three loads of laundry washed, dried, folded and put away
*living room floor decluttered (I can't say the entire room, because the sofa is still a cluttery mess).
*trimmed the claws on one of Zoe's paws.

Now my arm is very sore and cranky, so I think I'm done for today. I've started a Doctor Who story, more out of desire to do some writing than having any actual story to tell. I may work on that a little bit more while waiting for this week's episode to become available/download. And, as always, there is exciting hockey in store this evening. Game six of the Pens/Sens series, to be fought in Ottawa. Pens better get their tushies in gear and win this game, that's all I have to say on the matter.

*It's Spring! Good-bye snow and cold. Hello birds, fresh breezes, buds and flowers.

*I filled out and mailed in my Census form. Last time around I never got a form and the time before that I was still living at home, so this was my very first census.

*I need a new vacuum cleaner. Two cats plus a lack of interest in vacuuming means that when I do get around to it, I need a heavy duty machine. My little Dirt Devil, while adorable, is not such a machine. I had to empty it out and clean the filter at least three times while vacuuming one small room.

*Mal is such a sweet little coward. Despite the vacuum being put away at least twenty minutes ago, he's still lurking in the kitchen, looking terribly betrayed and traumatized.

*I've started transfering bookmarks from google to firefox. It is a long and boring process, but it does at least give me an excuse to weed things out and reorganize. I'm such a geek - I love coming up with organizational systems, even if just for my bookmark folders and tags.

*Peanut butter and dark chocolate may not be a healthy or filling meal solution, but it is very yummy.

I'm once again all caught up on Supernatural. Man, this show alternates between deep, dark angst, and utter crack like nobody's business. SGA could deal out the utter crack, but they generally avoided the darkest angsting. And BSG, from what I recall (I've only seen the first two seasons) did dark angst really well (too well for my taste, truth be told) but they avoided the crack. They've maybe even surpassed Farscape levels, and that show certainly had it's fair share of both dark and crack. Ah, damn, now I'm gonna have to go watch me some Farscape (this is how my brain works, people - SPN to Farscape in three easy sentences).

I didn't get much done today. Made it to the grocery store for the first time in months, got all my laundry done, and pretty much utterly failed to do much cleaning. Well, that's not true. The fridge is now sparklingly clean, and alarmingly empty despite the trip to the store. And I've finally got rid of a disgusting collection of old pizza boxes. And I washed one dish drainer of dishes. So, some improvement, but i'm having friends over for lunch tomorrow and I have a lot of work to do before then. Which leads to...sitting on my ass watching four episodes of Supernatural in a row. Because that's how much I love cleaning. *sigh*

Speaking of tv shows, I wanted to watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles and cannot find the first ten episodes of season two anywhere. Very frustrating. I suppose I could just read the synopses for those eps and then watch the remaining ones, but I don't like doing that. I'd really rather see the episodes in order. I guess at this point I'll have to wait until they come out on dvd to see them.