Category: Expressive

  • going team bare windows

    Drastic times call for drastic measures.

    We bought our current house in 2021.

    This is the only house we have purchased that I actually picked out.

    And…..I have struggled mightily with my mental health in this house.

    It doesn’t get a great deal of light. Well, I mean, the ginormous living room actually does get great light, but it was outfitted with equally imposing dark royal blue blackout curtains. Here they are, this morning:

    And yes….the blue curtains in the living room perfectly matched the shade of the blue valances (and wallpaper) in the dining room.

    At least the people who designed our 1994 house, which this is all original to, had stellar taste. Everything still looks fabulous 30 years later.

    But….. I struggle mightily with my mental health, which is likely known to you all at this point by now. And when we moved in 2021, we moved from a house that I moderately despised because of its stairs.

    But what I loved about that Holmes Drive house was its light. That house had fantabulous light, in both the kitchen and the main living room.

    So, this happened today:

    The photos are not the greatest representation of how much better the light is in the house– I took them this morning just after taking the curtains down and it was overcast. And I am sort of rebelling against my camera gear at the moment, so all I did was phone photos. I might take better photos once the job is all done.

    The dining room photo above is after the work in there too– there were paper shades over the windows in there prior to about an hour ago.

    If I had my way, we would be team bare windows in the entire house. I am not much worried about privacy.

    But, we are taking down the paper shades throughout the house, in favor of brand new sheers. They arrive tomorrow, so tomorrow’s project will for sure be taking down the eight other shades in the windows of the house.

    The paper shades were my solution to the extremely off-white, very thin metal blinds that came with the house. I hated them and they came down as soon as possible.

    And they have served their purpose, and we certainly got what little money we put into them out of them.

    But many of them in the boys’ rooms (and the ones in the dining room, actually), had been torn by the cats, and Oliver’s in particular are in very bad shape because Mow, his cat’s scratching post is right beside one window and she has gotten it all furry and bent out of shape.

    So, I will not be sorry to see the shades go in favor of sheers.

    And honestly, I’d worry more about security, but our alarm systems, both furry and actual, are fantastic.

    I just desperately need natural light.

    The good news is, taking down the curtains in the living room has made me not feel like the room needs to be painted quite so much. I do love a basic white wall.,

    And we are not taking down the hardware fast, as I am keenly aware that the blackout curtain do actually do quite a lot of insulation in the winter.

    But…that is when I need the light the most.

    Regardless: I feel better about my house, and I feel better about my life. Which makes me more invested in both.

  • not a soul-sucking day

    Just outside Newberg, Iowa last February

    Picture of vastness nothing Iowa cornfields that I took last February because it’s pretty akin to a desert, and I am kind of in that sort of mindset right now. It was a cold day.

    I’m not exactly depressed but not exactly vibrant and bubbly like I prefer to be.

    Nancy is better, and she seems to be eternally grateful to be alive. For once, she is very loving and interactive, which we are taking to mean that she understands that we did quite save her life (or at least her tongue) by getting her to the vet the other night. No more black drool or black crusty stuff around her mouth, and she’s eating and drinking as she should.

    We are not holding our collective breath that Nancy’s change in disposition is at all permanent.

    We put Nancy in Porter’s room, and moved Bess in there too, along with all their litter boxes, and have been feeding them canned food since that is what Nancy needs for at least the next few days. They both seem to appreciate the treat, and probably the respite from chaos of the dogs.

    And, I have gotten beyond my frozen action on cleaning the house: Today I cleaned the entirety of our guest bathroom in our laundry room. I cleaned the floors, baseboards, toilet, corners of the room, and sink and toilet. And dusted off the top of the intercom even though we never use it, and cleaned the top of the trash can even.

    The whole endeavor took me about half an hour.

    If I can spend this kind of dedicated time on even a section of a room in the house each day, then the house will be relatively clean in a few weeks.

    That is encouraging.

    I have also started budgeting more in earnest. Or rather: I am making a concerted effort to not spend money we don’t have right now.

    While Jared and I went on a date to Gallery Row tonight, we are not likely to do that on a regular basis.

    I did try a little photography today. This is a cameo ring I made for myself; I have several of these cameo rings I made. I had planned to post them on Etsy but honestly, I am not feeling it a great deal as far as Etsy stores go right now. I missed focus on the girl in the cameo and had to clean it up with Topaz Photo AI. This was with the GFX camera and the 37.5mm Super Cinelux lens– it’s. a great macro lens.

    I do not know how old this bird is; Sarah Belle gave it to me when I was in third grade but she said then that she had had it since she was a little girl, and she was born in 1920.

    And tonight, I am going to bed with hope for the future. I am almost ready to seek out more regular volunteer opportunities. I am ready to reinvest myself in our home, which I did quite fall in love with in 2021 when we found it.

    And today…..today was a good day.

  • for real: anybody want two cats?

    Abby and Trixie did not feel like having their picture taken this morning.

    I joked in the post about Nancy yesterday about whether anybody wants a cat, but it really wasn’t a joke– we really are looking to re-home Nancy and Bess. They’re a package deal though; a bonded pair.

    Bess
    Nancy

    On a wild hair one Saturday afternoon probably 3 years or so ago now, I wanted to go visit the cat cafe. And I wanted a cat even though I was noncommittal to Jared and the boys. And we came away with Nancy and Bess– a bonded pair.

    They’re good cats. Nancy may have a slight death wish given her recent shenanigans, but they’re good cats. And to all appearances Nancy and Bess are not a bonded pair, but things do go wonky with Bess’s litter habits when Nancy is not around, in all transparency. She is fine when she has adequate litter and Nancy. And to be completely honest, Bess is the lap cat– Nancy is definitely not.

    I just cannot keep up with the care of 5 pets. And MowMow is for sure Oliver’s baby, having spent much of the last 3 years in Oliver’s room since she doesn’t get along with Nancy. And Abby and Trixie….well…. They’re here for the long haul. They’re our children as much as our people children. And Trixie is Porter’s baby, and Abby is my therapy dog as much as I am her therapy human.

    Note that in the photo above Trixie was ambivalent about the camera, but Abby….Abby looked away because big cameras terrify her. I do not know why but the longer the lens, the more afraid she is.

    Plus, being 100% real here: the financial cost of caring for 5 pets is astronomical. We couldn’t afford them when we took them on and we can’t afford them now.

    Nothing will change if we can’t find homes for them. They have a home here as long as need be. We do love them and want what’s best for them.

    And all the boys know, and they all understand. They don’t like litter duty any more than we do, and they know our financial situation as much as is appropriate given their ages. Liam wasn’t in favor of more cats when we adopted Nancy and Bess.

    Liam is the most level-headed person in the house.

    I am trying to be more responsible, and being more responsible is doing what is best for everyone in the house. Including the cats, including the boys, including Jared, including myself.

    But if anybody local wants two cats….. well, it’s a serious thing.

  • nancy is an asshole

    Several weeks ago now, I crocheted myself a jute purse. It is cute, and I am in love with it. It went with me to Kansas City and fits perfectly under an airplane seat, and it went with me through all three Universal Parks a week and a half ago.

    I love it.

    I don’t love that it sheds pretty badly. I’ve tried sealing it with mod podge, I’ve tried heat blocking. Nothing helps. It is going to shed. It’s not a problem with the outside, but it does get all over anything you put in it, and it’s the perfect size for both my camera and laptop so that was a big problem.

    So, I decided to finally line the whole thing. Here it is before lining:

    Yes! It has a pocket! A really great one.

    So, we went and got felt for the lining because I knew that would be easy on my camera.

    Jared was kind enough to sew the actual lining part into one piece, on the condition that I do the hand-stitching into the bag:

    All went well, until Jared was sewing away and here comes asshole Nancy, above, literally to bat the THREAD OFF THE SEWING MACHINE WHILE IT WAS SPINNING….

    Nancy took off with the thread in her mouth… got all the way to the other side of the house before Jared caught her and pulled the thread away.

    Or, so we thought.

    The finished bag is fabulous. Solved the shedding problem; here is the lined bit before I lined the pocket:

    I did decide to line the pocket, and it is all the better for it.

    This was all last Saturday. Today is Thursday.

    Nancy was low-key missing most of the week. I didn’t go looking for her, I saw her sitting in a chair yesterday morning, but I didn’t worry about her. She is not a social cat in general and will vaguely tolerate Jared’s picking her up to harass her, for very brief periods.

    Jared likes to cuddle cats. Nancy only just tolerates it occasionally.

    But yesterday, Nancy pooped outside her litter box for the first time in a couple of months. It was a problem previous to us getting two more litter boxes. But it hadn’t happened since. And I noticed, too, that she had black drool coming out of her mouth.

    So we thought maybe she had been eating her own poop or Bess, our other cat’s poop? That was all we could think of.

    But, she was also clingy. She came up and sat by me, but her fur was raised like something was wrong, too.

    It is not normal for Nancy to be clingy, so finally we decided about 8:30 last night to get her to the vet.

    We managed to get to our vet here in Carrollton at 8:30 before they closed at 9 last night, saving us a trip (and lots more in fees) to the emergency vet in Atlanta, thank goodness.

    They took Nancy straight back, and took us to a room. We were just starting to tell the vet tech the sewing story, that she did get into something last weekend, when the doctor came in and said, “I found this? I don’t think she’ll lose her tongue.” And set the surgical utensil with attached string on the table:

    *sigh*

    Apparently when Jared yanked the string to get it away from Nancy last Saturday, the string had only just broken, with a good portion of it lodged around her tongue. The string was deeply embedded in her tongue, and the black stuff was infection.

    So, Nancy got an antibiotic shot, and has to eat canned food for at least a week which means she has to be isolated from the other pets for that time, and we are out $230 which makes my homemade purse I love a lot more expensive than the $35 it had set us back to that point.

    Dumbass cat.

    Anybody want a cat?