Wanna House so Hard

Freelancing/being on work hiatus has been great. I've caught up on 6 months of housework, done laundry regularly - I even made ravioli from scratch the other night. It's weird. I'm starting to get this thing called a...life? 

One of the projects I've been working on has been to de-clutter the apartment. There were still some leftover moving boxes, sadly, that I hadn't gotten to before starting full-time work. I vanquished those suckers, and more, in the past couple of weeks. Here are some pictures of the improvements I've made - the kind that make me feel like a non-broke adult with a Martha Stewart Patronus.

Tim has always been stressed that there are books on our bookshelves. I love books, and I have many of them. Crafting, art, animation, clip art libraries - I love flipping through them for inspiration and reference. Throughout the years I've chipped away at my collection, selling or donating books that I haven't touched, could get on my Kindle instead, or just don't have interest in anymore. 

Finally, I looked up some bookshelf organization ideas online and realized that there's an entire art to it. Unlike most magazine/staged bookshelves, which are all cutesy and white and matched, we have books of different colors, heights, and styles. I don't think shelves are for housing bowls of lemons, for example. They're for damn books. 

Here's what I came up with:

This Amazon box is filled with books and movies I'm going to donate to the Montclair Public Library

I moved the DVDs off this shelf and put sit-down-to-read books here in the living room, like comics and Ray Bradbury short story collections.

I bought a couple of inexpensive media shelves and put my thinned-down (sob) movie collection on it. The shelves are shallow, so they don't jut out and clutter the wall. Even Tim is happy with them!

I like cherry trees. If I owned a house, I would have at least a thousand in the front yard so I wouldn't have to travel to DC or Brooklyn for the cherry blossom festivals. I like flowers in general - they're cheerful and pretty and make a place seem fresh and alive. However, our local supermarket can't even keep its produce alive, let alone a cut flower section. Trader Joe's has nice cheap bouquets, but there are none in walking distance unfortunately. 

So begins my foray into the world of silk flowers. Tacky? Yep. Depressingly outdated? Very. But, the spring cleaning kick's got me by the twisted female nutsack, so I have to see what I can do. 

I dubiously browsed different silk flower sites and read reviews and looked over pictures. We don't have an accessible Michaels or other craft store, or I could just go there and see how crappy they look for myself. I really wanted these cherry branches, and I let it sit in my head for a week, and finally just decided to splurge and try them out. 

Green plant is real, cherry blossoms are fake

When I first opened the box, I was immediately disappointed in the quality of the blooms themselves. The fabric edges were fraying and the stems were bright green plastic. The giant "MADE IN CHINA" tags attached to each branch wasn't helping either. Disheartened, I stuck them in their vase, a cool-shaped empty spirits bottle I'd bought for a dollar at Goodwill. Then I tried bending the branches from their stiff upright positions and found that this helped a lot. Finally, I took my coping saw to three of the four branches and sawed off the bottoms of the stems at varying heights. After bending out the branches so that it looks more organic and placing it on our living room mirror shelf, where it's viewed from far away, I'm pleased with how it looks. It really brightens up the room and it's one of the first things you see when you walk in - a welcome change from poopy gray concrete. Tim loves them and our neighbor, who works for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and was an event planner for their cherry blossom festival, asked if they were real. Yesssss.

Re-arranged the consoles to make room for Tim's Nintendo Sixty-Foooouuuurrrr

Hung up Tim's present under my (currently) figure shelf

Found this side table by the trash. It didn't smell like fish juice so I took it.

Sanded, painted, and sealed it

New porch plant table

Didn't have room for our 2nd hanging baskets so I lined it with sphagnum moss and planted lettuce in it

Found these nice folding shelves by the trash as well and it serves perfectly as a porch plant stand. Gave the twin to our upstairs neighbors, who are also gardening.

Fred & the Vet

Fred is nearly a year old, so it's time to take him to the vet for a routine check-up, because I was tired of having money anyway.

I have spent the last 8 months conditioning him to his carrier: leaving it out in the open, making a comfy little foam bed inside for him to lay on, rewarding him with treats any time I had to put him in it. We even took him for a spin around the block in the car in it, and he's always settled right down and not made a peep.

This was the day we'd been training for. The vet visit.

He has taken to snoozing in the carrier in the evenings, as part of his pre-bedtime schedule.

After cleaning out under the bed, I discovered his nighttime sleeping spot, before he transitions to our heads. He bit through this bag and cozied up all over my nice tan fleece fabric.

He also enjoys burrowing in Tim's jacket.

So I loaded him up in his little carrier, and walked carefully with him the 10 minutes to the local vet. He didn't make a sound, and seemed alert but not stressed. So far so good.

We entered the vet's office, which was about the length and width of a bowling lane. There were two women already there with cats in their carriers. Made Fred's carrier look like a gigantic hovercraft in comparison. My arm was cramping from the effort of carrying him and I wondered how much he weighed.

After signing in and filling out paperwork as a first-time patient, I sat in a chair with the carrier to the floor to my side, and I rested my fingers in the cage. I felt his little whiskers touching and he rubbed against my fingers. Still so far so good.

A woman and her dog, a quiet, doleful-looking seal-potato, were sitting near us. No hissing or barking or growling. Just sad red eyes. A man came in with his hyper little crap dog, who was shaking and whimpering and scared the potato-dog even though it was the size of my hand. We were waiting a long time, and there was a lot of door-slamming going on, and creaky doors. I remembered how WD-40 is $7.

Finally, it was our turn to be seen. I put his carrier on the metal examination table, and the vet tech asked me to carry him to the scale. I did so, and he weighed 10 1/2 lbs, which was less than her estimate. No one believes me when I say it's just fluff.

Fred was being good. His pupils were dilated but he wasn't making a run for it or scratching. I had my hands on him and was comforting him too. The vet saw him, checked his teeth and ears and butt, complimented his soft coat, and said that because he may not have been old enough when the shelter did his routine shots, we should give him a rabies and something else vaccine to be sure, plus an FIV blood test, plus a parasite test. Just to be sure.

I pet his face and tried to distract him while they took his blood and gave him two vaccines. He was stressed out but he wasn't drooling or hissing or anything, and it would be over soon.

The vet tech gave me a vial with a teeny trowel and told me to bring in his poop so they can test for worms and parasites. Again, I smiled and said okay even though inside I was thinking noooooooo.

We walked back home, Fred was stressed because he had needles in him and I was stressed because of how much that just cost me. It took less than 10 minutes. I set him down inside and opened the cage, and gave him a pet when he walked out. His tail was wet. I smelled my hand. Pee. It was only on one side of his tail, so I wet a washcloth with cat shampoo and gave him a quick wash in the area so he wouldn't be further traumatized by a full-on bath. I took out his foam bed and saw that he peed in a corner. I stripped the fleece cover and took everything into the tub, where I washed and diluted with vinegar. I cleaned everything thoroughly, annoyed that I'd have to go the laundromat today, and put the carrier and foam outside to air-dry.

I sat down at the computer to get to work, now that it was 2 hours after my appointment was supposed to start, and I heard Fred start gurgling in his throat. He puked on the rug, just on the edge before the hardwood floor.

Fast forward an hour later. Fred had thrown up around 10 times, to the point where his stomach was empty and it was just brown water. Poor cat. I'd ushered him into the bathroom to calm down and focus his puke in one spot.

The trick to getting Fred to drink water when you need him to is to put it in a human glass and offer it to him. When I checked on him later, and it was long enough that he wasn't going to puke anymore, I gave him some water in this fashion. He then spent the rest of the day really out of it, not eating, affectionate and sleeping. I've had cats who were out of it after shots, so I wasn't worried, but it was still really sad to watch. I got him to drink water, covered him in blankets, and was sad that he didn't get up in annoyance as he normally would.

We woke up to find him sleeping in Tim's broken pants drawer.

The next morning he ate a bit of food, but didn't even stand up to eat, so I brought his little dish to him to eat from. He continued to eat a bit through the rest of the day, and get more strength. He didn't have enough food in him to generate poop, which I still needed to collect a sample of (joy), and all the while I was strategizing how I could.

Then, finally, I was working at the computer when I heard the telltale scratching at the toilet lid that meant he'd just used it. I saw that he'd pooped and looked at the clock. 5:50. I called the vet and asked when the closed. 6. I told them I was coming there as fast as I could. Without thinking too hard about it, I put on a disposable glove, grabbed the little vial, and dug into the watery poop, fishing out a solid chunk. I almost barfed but staved it off by telling myself "shut up shut up shut up."

I got a little chunk and sealed the vial. I flushed, tossed the glove in the trash, and put the vial in a ziplock snack baggie, then put it in my purse and dashed out the door, remembering to put on shoes on the way out. I power-walked to the vet and got there just in time to be locked out. I stood there with a hopeless look on my face, container of poop in my bag. I put my face to the door and saw movement beyond. I knocked on the door. A young guy came out eventually, leaving for the day, and I asked him if he worked there. He let me in and let me drop off the sample. He seemed weirded out that I had the poop vial in my purse. I wanted to yell You have a fridge full of poop and pee you weirdo but I just chuckled and handed it to him. I was kind of babble-y at this point, because I was relieved to have made it in time and also probably suffering heatstroke. He informed me that I could store a stool sample in the fridge, as though telling me to refrigerate salsa after opening. He then charged me $50 to analyze the piece of poop I'd troweled out of the toilet.

Fred is now back to his impish, too-busy-to-be-cuddled self. Normally when we eat dinner at the table, he sits nearby on the perch, like some kind of attendant, furry butler. You can see his nostrils flaring furiously as he takes in all the dinner smells, but he's always restrained, sometimes giving the table an inquisitive touch with his paw. Chicken, though, is the line that he will cross every time. I took a small gristly piece of chicken out of my mouth to throw away and he leapt into my lap and ate it from my fingers in a few seconds flat.

Easter & the Flu

This year we celebrated Easter by coming down with the flu, this time in sync for once. We were originally going to visit my grandparents on Long Island for the weekend, but we thought it'd be more fun to sit shivering under 80 blankets instead.

Despite this change of plan, we still had a fun weekend together, watching James and the Giant Peach under the aforementioned blankets, playing Earthbound, and drinking lots of honeyed tee.

On Easter, I was determined not to lose the spirit, so I busted out the $2 CVS egg dye tablets and said "It's 10pm but we're dyeing eggs god dammit."

Fred was in charge of dyeing supervision, naturally.

I was giving marbleized eggs a shot, so first start with a deep base coat.

Pretty cool results!

Visiting the Zoo in NC

Yay animals!

Cats have perfected that "cut the shit" look

Chimps are really creepy to me, but this was a family frolicking together. It was a hump-free visit.

Flamingos are the celery-in-colored-water of the animal kingdom

Poison dart frogs are so cool!!!!

"Raise the roooooof"

Visiting DC for the Cherry Blossom Festival

Mid-April, we went on a little trip to visit my family in North Carolina. On the way there, we stayed a night with our friend who lives outside of DC, because I really wanted to check out the Cherry Blossom Festival for the first time. And DC for the first time. 

Now, I should establish something for people who don't already know. I am a crabby, irritable person, with a very limited amount of tolerance for crap. I don't like being touched and jostled, I don't like the heat, I don't like being in a crowd of slow-moving people, and I get hangry. That being said, none of that stuff bothered me because it was so cool!! 

I don't pretend to know what this is, I just like cool architecture.

This building is like a block or two long, and our friend worked in it.

The south face (original front) of the White House. It was too crowded on the walk back to see the other side.

Yay art.

WWII nurse memorial?

It started snowing petals and I delightedly thought I'm a geishaaaa

Lincoln's got that reserved anger look of a grandpa trying to watch TV but keeping an eye on the misbehaving kids

The pagoda statue, that basically states "sorry Japan. We cool?"

Tim desperately wanted to go on paddle boats, but we only had the afternoon to spend in DC and there was a 45 minute wait. Next year!

This is where Project Purity is housed, in the Jefferson memorial.

Housing: The Desk Rejuvenation Project

When you have a laptop and Cintiq, it's a constant struggle to find the best ergonomic solution for desk arrangements. I still don't think I've figured it out, but apparently when you try and Google ideas, you still just get pet pictures and "find Cintiq desk arrangements at Lowes!" as results.

Because my brain can't focus on important things and instead is obsessed with list-making and plans, I started to make a little list of Ikea desk parts that I could buy, on a budget. Something that would be easy to dismantle, move around, and move out with. This is where Ikea excels: cheap, interchangeable, and easy to take apart and put back together.

Because we'd need to rent a car to get to the Ikea, this list had to be really efficient. This was my one chance to get everything I'd need for my new optimized office space. I wrote a list of my supplies, the stuff I'd need to store, my crafts, and measured out the wall space. I carefully wrote down bin numbers and item codes for all the components, then threw that list away after downloading the Ikea shopping app that just tells you all that. This undertaking made the Ocean's 11 heist look like a stroll in the grocery store to buy milk.

We rented a car for the day, and were outfitted with this little number:

Out-of-state plates, bright red, statistically the most pulled-over type of car. And if you look closely in the picture, you can see my 6-foot desk top wedged sideways through the interior of the car. I squashed in the back passenger seat while Tim drove straight and prayed we wouldn't have to merge too many times.

I didn't take any official "before" photos of my office space, in my eagerness to dismantle my crappy old desk, but here are the "afters":

It looks a lot cleaner, and is working out well so far. In fact, in between now and the time I took these pictures, I've emptied out one of the 3 drawers under the main desk, and taken the little stuff off the walls, just leaving just the diploma and Morrowind map. Way less cluttered.

For anyone interested in the individual components:

The table tops are the Linnmon design, and come in a variety of sizes. You can sometimes find tabletops in the "as is" section too, for cheaper (Tim's dark brown Linnmon corner desk was $5 instead of $45 because of a scratch). I got a 6' long one that was $25 because I picked the cheapest color, white. The craft/sewing machine table's top was only $6, and is 4' long I think.

I splurged and bought 4 Lalle table legs for the craft table, at $12.50 each. Ironically, they were harder to install than the $3.50 black metal Adils table legs for the computer desk. They only had gray for colors at my store, but they come in others.

On my craft table, I indulged and got this fish tray to hold my pencil holder and xacto blades.

I think it looks cool on its own - all together gives it a tacky beach house feel. Plus, being from Maine, I'm over the lobster association thing, even though it does look good on the tray.

I saw the lampshade on a blog and immediately needed it, because blue. It wasn't in stock at the local Target so I ordered it online and it thankfully looked good in person and wasn't broken. It's not available online anymore, even though it's still listed at the time of this writing, but the model is called "Room Essentials Hardback Faceted lamp shade", in "Avalon Sea." Very eloquent. For the base, I bought an $8 Januari base from Ikea and the 2 pieces miraculously were compatible. I looked at thrift stores for bases too, but you never know if the wiring is still okay in those. This combination worked out well and looks really simple and clean.

I have my small cutting mat on the table, and a cool chevron-y placemat that was on clearance at Target for 49 cents. In the red Helmer drawers set, I house all my craft tools and supplies, each drawer labeled and surprisingly deep. 

Fred helping me empty out the old craft drawers

So, in summary, I spent less than $200 on my new office set-up, everything is more hidden and streamlined, and there are some really nice colors going on. I'm happy to work at it now!

And Fred can really enjoy it too.