I finally got up off my behind at about 5 pm and went to a craft store further from the house to get a new seam ripper. Oh, you may not have heard the griping over here at the blog, but yes, my new seam ripper went missing. The one I just bought the other day and hadn’t even used yet. I suspect cat involvement. Well, I went to a different craft store to see if they had anything better than that cheap piece of garbage one of the cat’s stole from off the couch when I wasn’t looking.

Had I thought about the fact it is Mardis Gras weekend, I wouldn’t have left my house at all, let alone drive on the expressway to a store in an area I have personally never driven in … as evening was coming on and the sun setting. I didn’t realize why the traffic was so horrendous until the news reminded me that everyone in Austin has a party to go to somewhere tonight. I was ever so thankful to get off the roads when I got home. It was as packed as rush hour everywhere, but everyone was driving even more insanely.

Anyway, this store had a selection of three seam rippers. They had the $2 one like I bought for twenty cents cheaper, the same blade on a slightly different (but still very cheap) handle for $3, and the most expensive one that still looked remarkably cheap and flimsy but had a soft gel handle for almost $4. I bought the most expensive one. It will likely be adequate. As I was about to leave, I noticed Simplicity patterns were on sale 5 for $5, so I checked to see if they had any of the ones I keep trying to find every time they go on sale. They had two of them, and in my size, so I went ahead and bought them. That was an awesome stroke of luck.

And since there is a Home Depot in the same shopping center, I went ahead and stopped there as well to look at paint chips. Glidden paint is on sale for $15 a gallon until the 17th, and that’s a good price. After spending entirely too long fussing around looking at paint chips, I selected a few which are now propped on the top edge of the wainscoting in the kitchen. If I decide I like any of them enough before the sale is over, I might be buying some paint.

The colors? Oddly, one set is Parchment White (almost ivory – wainscoting) and Sunbeam (yellow – walls). Why oddly? When I put them up in the kitchen, they are nearly the same colors as the walls and wainscoting are now. Great, I seem to like yellow and white with some twenty or so years of life ground into it. The other set is Tawny Birch (a beige/tan – wainscoting) and Cyprus Grass (green – walls). I do like those colors together too, but I really, really love the late afternoon sun in the kitchen, and I think the yellow and not-so-white in there now has something to do with it. I’m concerned that putting green on the walls will cool the light too much. I’d hate it if that happened and have to repaint immediately.

I’ll know a day or two whether any of these colors will work in the kitchen. I have to see how they look in my favorite late afternoon light tomorrow. I wasn’t home at sunset tonight, because I was wasting too much time looking at paint chips and then having a stressful drive home.

Other than that little adventure, Lin and I watched some Olympics^†, I did some more scrubbing in the kitchen, we ate dinner, and now I think I am off to bed. Or at least off to the couch. I think I might do something other than working in the kitchen tomorrow. Why, I might even think about sewing something now that I have those patterns.

Though I am pretty beat, so it’s entirely possible I might just do a lot of lying around on the couch watching winter sports.

1. † OMG! Did you see the two Korean speed skaters take each other out when they were just about to get the silver and bronze medals? I’d say Apolo Ohno was a little lucky. [↩]

Fell asleep early and so I am up early. I feel pretty well-rested finally, which is good, because I want to get some more stuff done in the kitchen. I didn’t get much of anything done in there yesterday, because it was cold and nasty … and I felt less than spectacular. I want to at least get the recycling out and the floor finished today.

One very exciting thing did happen when I was cleaning some more of the dark and hidden corners of the kitchen yesterday. I found two tiny potatoes from our last crop, and they have already sprouted! In case you haven’t been keeping up with the gardening babble, I only saved the six most perfect potatoes to plant, and then all six of those plants were lost when that one deep freeze blew through for a few days. It looked like the Great Potato Experiment would need to be started anew, but now I can kind of pick up where I left off. I can’t really plant them in the garden just yet (too cold and way too wet to be digging around in the dirt), so I’m going to put each one in a little container with some dirt and find a nice warm and dark place for them to wait a couple of weeks to be planted outside. I am very, very excited about this.

Also, I scored some more of the butter potatoes I originally started this experiment with earlier this week, so I’ll be planting some more of those as well. Now I’ll have to begin labeling the plants, because I’ll have original source plants and F1 plants going at the same time. The Great Potato Experiment goes on!

But don’t talk to me about the rest of the garden. It’s still pretty depressing out there.

The weather is supposed to be a little better today. Not so much warmer, but at least they are saying it probably won’t be raining. Good thing, because I need to go to the store to get weekend snacks and toilet paper. Probably a couple other things too. I forgot a few things when I went on Tuesday. I always forget a few things. Well, didn’t so much forget them. I had to trim the list a little to fit the budget. But it’s payday, so time to get those things we can live without but shouldn’t have to, like French Vanilla Creamer!

In other news, one of my domain names expired, because I wasn’t keeping up with it. Thankfully, the registrar sent me an email saying “Hey, you do know your domain name has expired and someone could come along and snag it don’t you?” I quickly went and bought it again, after having a moment of panic. Not that I think there are too many people in the world just waiting to buy Orbizart.com, but you never know. I may not be using it at the moment, but I can’t lose it. Someday, OrbiZart will be used again, possibly even soon.

Let’s see, what other silly things can I babble about this morning?

Oh, I repaired my tabletop fountain yesterday, and it is happily gurgling away on the kitchen table. Ronin and Myu are thrilled to bits about it, because it was one of their favorite things in the world when they were tiny little kitties. Tora has never seen such a thing before, and she seems pretty certain that whatever it is, it is evil. Pretty funny watching her look on in horror as the other two play with the water. I am sort of surprised by her reaction, seeing as she is the one who just loves to dump out their water bowl and play in the puddle.

And my mouth is healing up just fine. Not that I can see all the way back to the wisdom tooth area of my mouth, even with a dental mirror, but my tongue informs me the gum has already pulled together, and the itchy feeling inside tells me the bone is filling in nicely. Interestingly, with the removal of that wisdom tooth, my jaw is now aligning perfectly, and I have zero mouth pain. It’s the first time in … my lifetime. Well, my adult lifetime anyway. Also interesting is that the lisp that came back when the dentist corrected my front teeth has almost vanished, so I’m not walking around sounding goofy. Next appointment is on March 18. I wish it would be the last, but I suspect there will be one more after that. Then I’ll be done with all of this. Sometimes that feels really weird to think about, because I have lived with dental and jaw problems my whole life, and now I really won’t have that hanging over my head and bringing me down anymore. Not complaining! I’ll adapt to not having to think about my mouth and teeth all the time. It’s going to be great.

Well, I’m dying for a cup of coffee. Lin’s asleep in the living room, where both of us passed out while watching the news last night, so I don’t really want to wake up him an hour early by firing up the espresso machine. It isn’t exactly quiet. Though he did say he was headed to Houston today, so maybe he needs to be up earlier than usual. I wish I would have clarified that before we both fell asleep. Yeah, I think I’ll just go make my coffee. I really, really want my morning coffee now. If it wakes him up it wakes him up. Unlike me, he seems to be able to always fall right back to sleep. Wish I were so lucky! Maybe once all the dental stuff is done I should start working on solving my sleeping problems. Getting proper sleep would probably change my life too.

Anyway, off to make coffee and pester the cats. They are all milling about begging to be pestered … and fed.

Oh … argh.

Yes, that’s all I really have to say today.

ARGH!

After moving large objects around the kitchen as though it were a giant puzzle, my plan isn’t going to work. Therefore, there is a new plan. The drafting table will eventually be moving into the living room. That’s a bit of a more long term project, but might be able to accomplish it by the weekend. First I have to get my art supplies organized and tidy and get the boxes of charity stuff away to charity. The current weather is going to slow down the box removing process.

My nap ended up being about an hour and a half, which is fine. It was a good nap, and I felt energized when I got up. Still feel a cold coming on, but at least I am not the walking dead just yet. Good thing, because I want to do some more of the kitchen floor and organize my art crap this evening. That was tomorrow morning I can focus on moving the stove, recycling, and worktable do do the rest of the floor and get the kitchen under control.

So I didn’t get as much done today as I would have liked, I’m still feeling accomplished. In the end, the only thing different in the kitchen today other than the floor smelling of lemons and being a bit cleaner is that there are now three chairs on each side of the kitchen table instead of two with one of each end, which actually seems to make a difference. If I had somewhere to put two of the chairs, I would, but I don’t. Such is life in a small house.

Time for a snack, and then back to the kitchen!

Well, hell. The clutter on the kitchen table has been cleared, furniture has been moved. Half the kitchen floor still looks like a beat up vinyl floor from the 60′s –but now with added lemon scent. Alas, upon doing some more measuring, I don’t think my bright idea to switch the tables around is going to work. Oh, I could probably get used to walkways that are only a foot wide between tables, but your average-sized human might find it to be a royal pain in the butt.

Maybe if I put the drafting table at a diagonal or something. Or just rotate it in its current location. I’m just bleeding tired –literally bleeding in some instances– of running into the corner of that drafting table almost every time I enter the kitchen from the den. There’s really nowhere else in the house for either of these two tables to go right now, so they have to be in the kitchen until further notice.

To be honest, if I had my way, the kitchen table would be gone. But it entered my life by way of Lin, and he apparently likes the ugly and broken down old thing, so I think I am stuck with it for the time being.

Hmmm. What it would be like if I finally got rid of the boxes of stuff I keep meaning to get rid of in the living room (the perpetual pile of stuff heading out my front door to donations or trash) and put the kitchen table there. Or the drafting table. It’d be a weird place for it, but it would allow me full view of the TV while working on something (may or may not be a good idea).

I’ve got the whole kitchen torn up, and now I am getting really, really sleepy. Though I know no good will come of it, and it’s highly likely half the kitchen floor being washed and waxed and the kitchen table cleared might then be the only thing I accomplish today, I think I’ll go take a little nap. I can’t drink any more coffee right now. I already have a stomach ache from it. I wonder if I’ll be able to get up in, say, 90 minutes and get back to work? Let’s see, shall we? There’s always tonight, tomorrow, and the day after that to get more work done. There’s a 100% chance of us getting snow or sleet the next two days, and even if we don’t get snow or sleet, the weather is going to be so foul, I won’t be leaving the house or be in a good mood. I might as well plan to spend three days moving furniture, being tired and cranky, and maybe (just maybe) making my living space better. Or not.

But for now, I think a little nap is in order.

Don’t mind me. Just thinking out loud in public.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and I’ve had about two and a half hours of sleep in the last twenty-four hours.

This isn’t going to stop me from pressing ahead with life. I happen to be fabulous at clearing out clutter and doing tedious household chores when utterly fatigued and feeling like a wad of old gum stuck to the bottom of a five-year-old’s sneaker. At least so long as I don’t set any clear-cut goals and allow myself to shuffle along at the pace of an undead mummy.

My eventual mission is to revert the kitchen just a bit more back to being my studio and slightly less kitchen. Over the last year, the kitchen has stopped feeling like my creative space, except for the cooking creativity, and I need my creative space back. There are a few large projects in the works. I need my large flat spaces back, and I need a great deal less clutter and more cleanliness. Today though, I am just going to work on decluttering the kitchen table and maybe waxing the floor under said table. If I somehow manage to still have the strength and desire to go on with it, I need to get my drafting table and the mess of art supplies stashed beneath it under some kind of control.

Who knows, I may be able to pump enough caffeine into my system and reach such a fervor of tornadic cleaning activity –it does happen sometimes– that I get the whole floor waxed and the rest of the kitchen also brought into some higher level of organization and cleanliness. Though I am not expecting to get quite that insane with the cleaning, decluttering, and organizing today. Stranger things have happened though when I get some task stuck in my tired and possibly-coming-down-with-a-cold head.

And the weather is going to be mucky today and tomorrow, and at least this will distract me from being grumpy about that. I don’t feel like writing or even especially sitting at the computer for any reason at all today.

Though you know I won’t be able to entirely resist the call of the computer, because I do have to spend some time online every day or I go bonkers.