I need to ask Lin if he listens to his songs on the Shuffle in order or on the shuffle setting. That’s not what I sat down here to gripe about. It’s just a personal reminder.

I have a set of battery operated Christmas lights sitting on the desk beside me, and I have no size C batteries. How am I supposed to rate their level of coolness and appropriateness for further ownership, if I can’t tell how they look turned on? They give me ideas, but I need to see them on! Dammit!

I was going to get rid of my vast collection of Christmas lights. I swear I own more Christmas lights than people who actually bother to decorate (and celebrate) Christmas. I suspect I will lose the battle and keep them all. I also suspect that at least one wall of the New Room, as I am now calling it, will be covered with Christmas lights and sheer white cotton sheeting.

Lin is going to have a cow. He may even have twins. We haven’t exactly discussed what is going to happen when that room is actually a usable room. Perhaps he hasn’t even considered what I might start doing in there once there aren’t any more boxes. My thinking is this: Much like conquering and exploring nations crossed treacherous and long miles to go to new lands, where they promptly claimed it, planted a flag, and began development, I too am making a dangerous and lengthy quest. And when I get there … I am damn well planting my flag, claiming it, and beginning development. Mine. My room. My Precious.

I have never had a room that was really, in any way, private and totally 100% mine to do with as I wished. Never. My childhood bedroom was the room off the kitchen and dining room … and it was the path to the bathroom for everyone. There wasn’t even a door between the kitchen and my bedroom, and the back door was right there at the join of the two rooms, so everyone could always see, and often walked through, my bedroom all the damn time. The first thing this meant is I had little to no privacy in my room. The second thing this meant was my room always had to look at least moderately tidy and clean. It also meant I was stuck with a room with bright yellow and white striped wallpaper — with a tiny pattern in the stripes — and a bright yellow ceiling, with white wood trim everywhere. I was stuck with it because the lady who owned the house previously, from whom my parents had bought it, and who lived right next door and shared a driveway with us, had done the wallpapering herself. Any changes to the decor were forbidden, and even posters were frowned upon. Even as a kid, I was not allowed to do anything to my room.

And did I mention little or no privacy in my room?

Then there were dormitories, more dormitories, small apartments with roommates, boyfriends, boyfriends, and then husbands. All the time presided over by landlords (or parents) telling me what I could or could not do to my living area, and in most situations, still no room of my own and no actual private space. Not that this ever especially bothered me. I was used to it.

The older I got, the more it started bothering me. It really, really started bothering me at the apartment. Twelve years with two adults, a cat, and a ton of unneeded stuff crammed into one small apartment for about twelve years and not being able to walk up to a wall and just splash paint on it … and nowhere, really nowhere, to get away from each other or everything? When we moved into the house, our level of heavy arguing fell right off. When you put animals in a cage that is too small for them all to have their appropriate amount of space, they do tend to try to kill each other. But even hear at the house, we are still somewhat on top of each other. Sharing the den with Lin has been nice, but it would be nice to see what it was like to not have to share space … and I need to take the New Room, because it has a door that closes and I need the cats to not get into my art supplies and projects.

But … I am going to have to set up a wireless network so I can remove myself from the Den. I’m not sure I want to move it to the New Room, but it has to go somewhere. It wouldn’t be fair to keep it in the Den and claim the New Room as well. I’ve been thinking of putting it in the living room, eventually.

Anyway…

I want my own room. I want to be able to go into my room and paint rainbows and flowers on the walls, if I feel like it. I want to string Christmas lights wherever I like. I want a door that closes. I want an Orb Cave. Maybe not forever, but for right now. I require control of some personal space!!! Just once!!!

Lin is sure to have a cow or two, and I don’t think it can be avoided, but the deal was we would each get our own room, and we haven’t kept that promise to ourselves. He’s been getting robbed of his room as much as I have. I’m going to fix that problem, and then I am going to land on the gleaming hardwood floor, plant the Just Orb flag, and claim the new country as my own!

Mine. My own. My Precious.

I better feel better tomorrow. I want to get back to work on it!

This was a useless sort of day. On top of not having gotten much in the way of sleep last night, it was grey and gloomy all day, and I have had a headache from hell too. Therefore, my only major accomplishment has been putting flea goo on the cats and coffee grounds on the tomatoes.

I’m cutting myself some slack though. I did get some stuff done this weekend I hadn’t planned to work on, I am completely and totally hormonal, and this dreary weather has sucked the life right out of me as it always does. If I need to move a little more slowly, or not at all, for a few days, that’s OK. I’ve been working like a champ for days on end now, and I have gotten a lot done around here.

Besides, there are other things I need to do, like go get groceries. I should have gone today, but we are going to make do with what we have in the house tonight. As soon as I realized it was Cinco de Mayo today, I knew there was no way in hell I wanted to be anywhere near a grocery store. Have you ever been in a grocery store on the Fourth of July? Pure insanity with everyone wanted sodas, beer, chips, BBQ stuff and whatnot. Well, Cinco de Mayo is just like that around here. It would have been suicide had I felt A-OK. Going on a day like today when I feel like crap? It’s not even possible for me to consider the ramifications. Just trying to find a parking space would likely have given me nightmares for a month or two!

Speaking of making do with what’s in the house, I suppose I should go get dinner started. We are having pork chops, boiled potatoes and salad. The pork chops are so large (bone-in style) I am going to have to fry them individually, as only one will fit in my large skillet at a time. Oh … the joy of an extended dinner-making process!

Orb: [standing outside closed bathroom door] Hey. You alive?

Lin: [brief silence] Um … yeah. Why?

Orb: [toddling down the hall] Just wondering.

It would take too long to explain. I have to walk Lin out to the truck and put today’s coffee grounds on one of my tomatoes.

Let’s just say I am probably an annoying person to live with and leave it at that, shall we?

I want a fully electric car that doesn’t look dorky. They all look so dorky to me!

Also, I could really use something to put the used coffee grounds in while they dry, like a can or cookie tin with a lid I could punch a bunch of holes in to let the air in but still allow me to give it a shake every once in a while to help the drying process. Why, I have something like that, don’t I? Oh … yeah. I threw all those kinds of things away last week. Oops.

It’s the little things that will always jump up and bite you in the ass.

The night is inching closer to the time my alarm is going to go off, and I am peeved with myself for having disposed of my vast collection of, well, refuse. No more sour cream containers, or cottage cheese containers, or cookies tins, or coffee cans, except for the ones currently being used to store things. I do use them for stuff. It’s an easy way to keep things out of the landfill to use all reusable containers. I just never used them as much as I saved them. They stack up quickly.

I haven’t gotten to the jars and bottles yet. It would seem I do indeed have hoarding tendencies, especially where bottles and jars are concerned. I do. It’s true. I never met a bottle or jar I didn’t want to keep for some reason or another. Never any sort of well defined reason beyond “looks cool and/or might be useful.” I guess I’ll have to find a wide-mouthed jar with a metal lid to put my coffee grounds into. I bet you I have one. I have one of just about every style of bottle and jar made. Wide-mouthed with a metal lid? What size and what color? I probably have you covered. I believe this hoarding of bottles and jars may be caused less by laziness in getting with the recycling program in an efficient way than it is by a “Mine! Mine! My Precious! I must have my Precious [bottles and jars]” sort of mental illness. I’ll know more about which cause is the actual one as this week commences, because the first load of those precious things taking up room everywhere are going to the curb in the big blue box on Thursday morning.

I feel somewhat certain I will be relieved to be relieved of the many and sundry glass objects stuffing the corners of my life on Thursday afternoon, but it is possible that on Saturday morning, I will find a sudden and urgent need for a bottle or jar … and I won’t have any. Depression may set in at that time.

Incidentally, do you know why it is that little things always jump up and bite you in the ass? Because that is as high as they can reach. Anything larger will just rip your head off.

[bah-dump-bump]

Please tip your waitresses, and thank you for coming. I’ll be here for at least a couple more years.

Since I have been sitting here babbling forever, I might as well go on about it some more, right? This reusable/recycled-from-the-groceries container shortage will be short-lived. It’s not like we won’t get more of them. What I need to do is come up with a sensible plan to make sure I have a few useful plastic, metal and glass containers laying around that I don’t mind messing up (unlike my Tupperware), but to not keep … them all. Not even most of them. I’m thinking maybe one or two of each kind on hand at any given time. They are useful for all sorts of things. They just aren’t so useful in mass quantities taking up valuable storage space in a small house entirely lacking in storage space.

And space in the back yard. The glass is all out in the yard. Well … most of it.

Will my stupid alarm go off already so I can start making coffee! Gah. Now time is moving so slowly. The whole night went by pretty fast while I was watching stupid movies, which is how I find myself sitting here at this outrageous hour pondering my plight of not having any sort of can anywhere in the house at all.

My gods, my life is exciting! I’m going to go drown my sorrow in a small glass of flat rootbeer.

It’s another Sunday night, and I am, as usual, doing what I am always doing at this hour on a Sunday night … finishing the laundry. I’ll never learn to start it earlier. I might as well just accept the inevitable and get on with my late-night laundry doing.

Since I have to stay awake a bit longer to wait for the last load in the dryer to finish up, I have been reading about natural fertilizers. I know the plants that aren’t doing well need more nutrients. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on an organic solution to the problem, and I really don’t want to spend any money on a chemical and non-organic solution to the problem. I was just about ready to break down and buy Miracle Grow tomorrow, but then I decided there had to be some household thing we have plenty of that would be natural and organic and work just as well. And … of course … there is.

Coffee grounds. More here.

Coffee grounds are an excellent fertilizing mulch, and apparently also good at repelling snails and slugs (even, joy of joys, possibly killing them). Well, we have the coffee grounds. Some of them get tossed on the compost heap, but admittedly, most of them just get thrown away. Not any more! Tomorrow, all used coffee grounds go out to my plants. Any leftover brewed coffee can be too, though there usually isn’t much of that around.

Also, crushed egg shells mixed with the dirt, at planting or worked in later, add calcium. This reputedly helps protect against Blossom End Rot on tomatoes and gives them a growing boost. Sprinkling the eggs shells around plants can help deter slugs, snails, and cutworms, who don’t want to crawl over them, as well as deterring those pesky neighborhood cats who want to pee and dig in flowerbeds. They don’t like stepping on them either, or so the rumor goes. Eggshells have all sorts of uses. Just so happens, I have a whole bunch of clean, dry, and crushed up eggshells I was hoarding for that canvas and then decided not to use. How convenient for me!

Tomatoes also seem to love milk, and it may combat powdery mildew.

And finally, here are some ideas for natural pesticides, which I am sure to be needing eventually as well.

Laundry is done. Time for folding it up and then … bed.