I just took out the garbage (since sooooomebody forgot to do it before he abandoned me for the week!). There was a furry thing on top of the dumpster. A furry thing with a big fluffy ringed tail. "Geeet off of there! Go on!" It ran around the side of the dumpster, and I noticed two knawed corn cobs on the ground. I had to laugh, that's so classic it felt unreal. The raccoon peered down at me from the other corner of the dumpster. "Go on, get out of there!"

It's weird, as soon as I saw a raccoon, my brain went "careful it might be rabid". I think once in my life I have been in the same neighborhood as a rabid raccoon, but there was such a big to-do for awhile in my childhood about rabid raccoons being around, that it just always pops into my head.

This one was not. He ran away. And I have to say, as much as I know people dislike their pestiness... they are seriously freaking cute lil critters.

Labels: apartment, life in general, storytime

 
Our neighbors are fighting in the entryway. They're college kids, a guy and a girl. Occasionally they play music waaaayyy too loud. They've been there since the start of the school year. That is about all that I know.

So they're yelling, and I'm slightly comforted by the fact that Tom and I do not yell at each other like that. Yes we get upset and voices get raised, but, we both back off when we know we're being totally irrational. (Or, Tom just points out how ridiculous I am being and makes me laugh, and then we discuss things.)

Girl: "Well I guess I just don't know you at all, then!"
Boy: "No, you don't. Like you don't know the real, inner me."
Melissa thinks: Good God how did you two think moving in together was a good plan if you're not capable of being open with each other??
Girl: "No, I don't at all!"

Girl: "You never TOLD me that!"
Boy: "Well YOU never asked!"
...I am not joking. I wish I were. I didn't think actual real people said that. But, they did, and their tone of voice said they meant it. I'll admit, I've fallen prey to that one in the past. Fortunately for me, Tom has made me realize how toooootally ridiculous an "argument" that is to make. It's not an argument. It's an excuse for both sides failing to actually discuss things with each other - it means you are currently incapable of having honest communication.

One of them just said something about myspace. lmfao. I should not be so amused by all of this, but good lord, it's so ridiculous. Something tells me they will not be renting the apartment again for next year.

Boy is saying that girl never told him that she wished he'd pay more attention to her. An email was read - an email??? really??? YOU LIVE TOGETHER YOU IDIOTS. From what I gather, she has felt lonely and neglected and never made it clear that that's how she felt. So he's getting defensive, and she's half-hysterical. ...did she just say something about fucking a teacher? hmm.

...And yes, I AM this nosy. I do not have my ear pressed to the door or anything, and it's not like I could help but hear the louder parts. I claim it's all for the good of future novel-writing. I plead character research!!!

Ooo! Now they're having the argument about him looking at pictures of girls online! She accuses him of looking at pictures of these chicks, he says "well don't you and your friends get together and go, 'oh this guy's cute'?" Oh man. Tom and I have discussed that one a thousand times. We both have picture-stashes. I have no interest in seeing his, and he has no interest in seeing mine. I'm aware that he is a boy and thus porn is probably a part of his life. He is aware that I have, in a past life, written slash fanfic. lmao. So what. We love each other, and at the end of the day, I fall asleep in his arms. That's the important part.

I really should feel guilty, but, honestly? These two are making me SMILE. And feel all warm and fuzzy. Because Tom and my relationship is NOT, in any way shape or form, like that. (I attribute this mostly to his insanely acute interpretations of human motivations. And the fact that I am insanely patient.)

Well. My Roasted Potatoes (with green beans and broccoli, since I apparently used all my asparagus the other day) are done, and they smell freaking amazing. And I need to go hunt in the cupboard, and see if I might possibly have stuff with which to try making onigiri, as a happy surprise for Tom, who is at jury duty for the first time today. (He's so cute and 1950s when he combs his hair!)

I. am. SO HAPPY. with my life.

Labels: apartment, cooking, life in general, navelgaze

 
Polishing off the picture-post:


Birthday present from Tom. I freaking adore this necklace. Silver-colored metal wing, copper disc, and actual little watch mechanism in the middle. It matches half my wardrobe, and it was all I could manage to not *quite* wear it every single day for two weeks after my birthday. There's also a matching pin, that has a little jade stone instead of the watch parts.


How pretty is this pattern?? Scarf I made Beth for Christmas, though it was late January by the time I finished it. Alpaca-silk-wool blend, I think. Probably not sturdy enough to handle me wearing it every day, but that's because I'm a spazz.


Yes it is basically that long. My coworker Lucas requested a ridiculously bright rainbow scarf. Draped around my neck, the thing went just past my knees. It is superbright. He loved it, and I freaking loved making it. (Tom had enough issues with that much color being in one spot, I don't think he could deal with me having a(nother) rainbow article of clothing.)


Soooo guess who's incapable of taking straight photos? oh me. But it's our bookcase!!! Hooray! Unfortunately, it wound up being even MORE crammed full than that. While re-doing the smaller bookshelf, I found... two? three? more boxes of books laying around. So the *entire* second-to-bottom shelf is now books stacked vertically instead of running horizontally... and I still had to add a few things to the bin upstairs. I honestly could fill another one of these... and that's still not even touching Tom's ginormous unliftable box of Star Wars books. But we have that whole little section all re-arranged now, and the couch is where Tom wants it, and everything over there is all nice and neat.

Note that there are no pictures of my computer desk area. ^^;; It's still a little scary. But! When tax refunds arrive, I am NOT going yarn shopping. I am going organizing-shopping. I am going to get an actual little drawer-thing of some sort for all my various ribbon paint fabric beads brushes scrapbooking thread pastels etc etc etc., so it will be organized AND accessible. It's not terribly unorganized right now, but, I have to move boxes to get to other boxes and then move everything around again when I'm done, and it's just not fun. Also I keep finding more spools of ribbon, and the box they're supposed to be in is at the bottom of a pile, etc.

The yarn... I'm still unsure about. What I WANT, is something like this:

Okay maybe not eating up *quite* so much wall, but I've seen setups like that in table-sizes, where the top of the bin becomes counterspace, say, for doing art on. But I love the diagonal bins. This is not, I'm sure, practical in my current living space. For now, I have... well, three baskets of yarn that Tom is aware of. I think he's figured out that the boxes beside the desk are largely yarn and yarn supplies as well. Pretty sure he's still in the dark about the whole basket of cotton yarn in the bedroom, which is for the best.

I really don't think a drawer setup is going to work for the yarn. I really like the baskets, but Tom doesn't like seeing all that yarn, while I love looking at all the pretty colors. I'll have to keep thinking on that one.


THAT ASIDE...

I have to stop there with the pictures anyway, because the only ones I have left are belated Christmas gifts that I have not given to their recipients yet, so they're still kindofsortof secrets. The snow down here is currently UP TO MY KNEES, so I may have to wind up doing another post office run, rather than wait until I physically see people. boo.

Labels: apartment, art, crochet, life in general, photos

 
Superbowl food menu:
- Pepperoni pizza from Blasdell, because Tom was starving.
- Chicken Wings by Tom - started out with a recipe, but he decided to wing the ingredient amounts. Largely bbq sauce and honey, everything in the slow cooker. meat LITERALLY fell off the bones. absolutely delicious.
- Chicken and Peach Wontons - because I'm a sucker for wontons, and wanted something a little different. These were pretty delicious, a little heavier filling than I'm used to, but very good. Tom wasn't keen on, but that was okay. Frying in a giant pot instead of a giant pan = win.
- Sausage Jalapeno Poppers - Halved this one, and glad I did, since it ended up being just Tom and I for Superbowl-watching. These would have been better if I'd broiled or something for a few minutes, and gotten more of the grease off the bacon. Filling wasn't quite as awesome as anticipated, but these were still good. Wearing plastic gloves while hacking up pappers = win.
- Smoky Cheese Ball - It was an *insanely* close call for Tom, which food was best, the cheese or the wings. The wings won only because it was football food. This silly thing is DELICIOUS. And huge. Made it with smoked gouda, coated with pecans, and it's all so sweet and creamy, and was ridiculously simple to make. I don't know why I thought it would be difficult, but, holy cow, it's awesome. And despite the fact that Tom keeps eating chunks of it at a time, totally bypassing crackers, we'll still be eating it for a week.
- Drinks were some Smirnoff ice and Coke + vanilla rum and Coke + lemon vodka.

Unfortunately, I wound up with a migraine not far into the evening (I blame the bad light in the basement at work, where I'd spent six and a half hours that day), so I didn't get to enjoy everything a whole lot. It didn't get bad until a little ways into the game, so I still got to munch and things, and keeping a hot cornbag on my head and neck meant I got to stay around and enjoy somewhat at least.

~ ~

What else is new...

I made a giant batch of chili (based on the classic BHG cookbook's recipe, but with spices according to my own tastes - smoked paprika for the win!) a week or two ago, and Tom had to admit that good food CAN come out of a slow-cooker. (He was a little traumatized when his mom got obsessive with hers for awhile during his childhood.)

~ ~

We have been SUPER-cleaning. I had one of my totally arbitrary breakdowns a few weeks ago, and couldn't deal with the mess in the apartment. So Tom proposed the reasonable plan of tackling a different little section every day that we could. That worked wonders. We had a day off together, and went to freaking town around the couch. The result? I'll have a picture later because I'm obsessively happy - WE HAVE A BOOKSHELF!!!!! I had books sitting in crates and boxes alllll down the living room wall, and it was madness. WalMart is awesome for cheap furniture, so $45 got us a bookshelf that is taller than I am, *and* a littler one to hold movies. It's so exciting. Only trouble is...our books don't all fit lmao. Tom has ONE shelf. His mega-box of Star Wars books is a project for another time. There are like two shelves of all my antique books. One shelf has my giant U2 books and old textbooks and things. One has other random stuff. There's a smaller bookshelf (like three, four feet high.. the kind of thing that's all most people need) that holds a lot of my other random books, and a little freestanding thing that I discovered I can put things back-to-back, and hold both my manga and often-reread things like Madeline L'Engle, The Dark is Rising, etc. There is also a crate upstairs of Choose Your Own Adventure books and other things that I'm not sure count as real books.

We have a buttload of books. I cannot wait to own a house, so I can have a library. If we have this many when we're still semi-poor recently-college-kids...

Side note: Our movies didn't all fit either. One shelf for me, one shelf for Tom, one shelf for vhs. The vhs (almost all mine) are arranged two-deep. The other shelves have a bit of space, since I put the four seasons of Futurama and assorted amounts of seasons of Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Monkees, Jem, etc., on top of the bookshelf. We actually physically own a lot more movies than I think either of us realized.. we honestly don't buy all that many right now. (And yet, we own Road Warrior on Bluray. sigh.)

On another media-note: Tom was unaware that my whole little rubbermaid cabinet is filled with cassette tapes. It's probably best that he's also unaware of just how many records I have stashed back home somewhere. The three-and-a-half towers of cds terrify him enough.

~ ~

Books! I finally got around to reading Mel's story, since she sent me a .txt which I could put on the Kindle. While that may have contributed to it feeling like a real book to me...it's also pretty amazing. You will say I am biased, and I might well be, but it honestly sucked me right in. Couldn't put the silly thing down whenever I picked it up. I'm going to help her super-edit and fix some random wording issues, but, I'm so freaking proud that my little sister wrote the thing. If I'd bought the thing at a bookstore (once an editor fixed the "its" issue!), and paid money for it, I would have been happy to have it on my bookshelf. :)

~ ~

Katie and Jane came down to visit.. a week ago? ish? It was really great to see them, it had been way longer than I'd realized. They both seem to be doing really well, which makes me happy. :)

In other social news, Tom and I went to a party at DJ's, and got to feel all special... because DJ wound up spending most of his time talking to the two of us. Like Tom's ego needs any more inflation lol. But it was interesting... since Tom only knew one or two other people, and I didn't know anyone, we people-watched, and it was amazing how well Tom could analyze peoples' relationships. For as much as he claims to dislike people in general, he's insanely good at understanding them. His and DJ's readings can be a liiiittle bit off when they're looking at the other gender, but, well, that's where I came in. It all reminded me so much of those days back in junior high, high school, where we'd sit around Elizabeth's basement and "psychoanalyze" every boy we even remotely had crushes on. <3

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Still crocheting. Made my first money from it!!! woo!!! My coworker Luke requested a giant rainbow scarf, which I was more than happy to make. :) Finally nearly done with the hat I'm making for Sue Mac - she saw mine and loved it, so we picked out some colors to match her coat, and it's looking awesome. I love having the knowledge to make things work for people - like, Luke just wanted bright colors. So I picked out some yarn that was cheap but also wool, and made sure he didn't mind not being able to throw it in the washing machine. Mac, meanwhile, knew she wanted machine-washable, and when I showed her some color swatches in my trusty Knit Picks catalog, she totally picked out the exact colors I'd been thinking for her. :)

I am also semi-working-on slippers for Tom, at long last. I have a much-worn copy of "The Happy Hooker", which was my very first crochet book, a gift from Shannon. In it, there is a pattern that she actually wrote, for adult-size fuzzy bunny slippers. They're adorable. More importantly, I actually totally understand their construction, and could figure out how to make them man-sized. I pestered Shannon about the yarn (the book calls for expensive yarn, which I was not going to waste on boy-feet; turns out, Shannon originally used cheap yarn, yay!). A trip to WalMart turned up Lion Brand's Hometown USA, which is actually a super-bulky yarn. It is HUGE. And very cushy. And acrylic, so I can wash them without having to handle things that have been on boy-feet. This yarn is SO much bigger than what the pattern uses, that I ended up not having to increase the size at all - I'm just working with a way bigger yarn, way bigger hook, and actually leaving off a row or two here and there, and voila! Big enough for Tom!

Also, super-bulky yarn? Works up SO. FREAKING. FAST. In like half an hour, an hour, I had the sole of a slipper done, and that's including time spent waiting for Tom to reach a stopping-point in his game so I could compare my giant oval of yarn to his foot.

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I need to shower. And probably do laundry. I'm so not motivated to go out into the cold. I got through most of my taxes today, and finished Mel's story, that's some accomplishment for the day... If I'm really ambitious, you may start seeing all the photos I have taken since I last plugged the camera into my computer. That appears to have been April or May.

Labels: apartment, being social, books, cooking, crochet, family, friends, life in general, movies, music, writing

 
The (belated) Thanksgiving menu:

- Duck, with an orange sauce from the Good Housekeeping
- Sweet potatoes with marshmallows, from the Better Homes book
- Japanese-style Sesame Green Beans
- Pillsbury dinner rolls
- cranberry sauce (the whole-berry kind, which I added orange peel and some spices to)
- a very fruity semi-sweet white wine
- pumpkin pie (pre-made crust) for dessert


The duck? Was DELICIOUS, though inevitably messy. Tom's raving over it juuust about made up for the giblet issues.

I was planning to make Heidi's vibrant tasty green beans, buuut... Tom and I bought anise instead of leeks. Thank you Tops for not labeling your produce. (Fortunately, I have a favorite Heidi recipe involving anise, that I'd previously had to sub aniseed in. And it shouldn't be difficult to find a use for the fresh dill I picked up.)

It's VERY, very rare that I use something partially pre-made like Pillsbury, but, I had enough things to worry about (i.e., duck), that I didn't feel like messing with yeast dough, and I wanted something puffy rather than biscuity. And pie crust... is a lot of work. For something that you try to eat as little of as possible, especially with pumpkin pie. Tom and I agree pre-made was the way to go on that one.

Note to self: completely mash (possibly even puree) the sweet potatoes next time 'round. Also note that Tom haaates cloves, and can taste even 1/4 tsp. of them in cranberry sauce. xp

Also: need to find a different pumpkin pie recipe. Like fifteen minutes after it was supposed to be finished baking, the center was still a little wobbly. When we went to eat it...it was pretty soppy. Tasted yummy, but.. BHG's "Best Pumpkin Pie" recipe called for milk, while Good Housekeeping used evaporated - think the latter may be the way to go. (That, and I'm beginning to suspect my oven doesn't heat like it should.)

Despite the minor issues, everything was deliiiiiicious. Tom didn't eat the beans, but I didn't expect he would. He would have enjoyed the cranberries, if I'd remembered about cloves.

After serving the duck, and we'd both had some, he did kind of casually make the pan his plate, and pick everything he possibly could off the thing. A little caveman, yes, but also very cute and gratifying.

Labels: apartment, cooking, life in general

 
Halloween season is craziness, but it's fun anyway. Costume days are awesome. Today was supposed to be pirate day, so I walked in with a black'n'white striped tank top under my tattered-ruffled black jacket, dark chain necklace full of crosses and coins, and a pirate hat.

Behind the front registers were a whole swarm of Disney princesses.

...fortunately, one of my bosses was a pirate, and everybody else was whatever they felt like. I snagged one of the rental pirate costumes, and added some bits: a purple'n'black striped corset (striped the opposite direction that my tank top was, but it still worked somehow), purple'n'black striped head scarf, aaaand the most amazing skirt EVER, which I forgot we had. Long, black, with chunks of lace, mesh, and solid fabric all patchworked together, with a jagged-edged bottom. Awesome.

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Since everyone else at the store has been bringing in cookies like every week, I figured I'd chip in. Last night, I spotted a recipe for Spooky Witches Fingers, and decided THAT WAS IT OMFG. So I made a whole stack of them, skipping the green food coloring (used a bit of whole wheat flour in with the generic stuff, which made it a bit more fleshy-looking), and used the raspberry jam route instead of the red icing (since that meant assembly happened all at once). They looked AMAZING - and tasted surprisingly delicious! (Probably helps that I always throw in more vanilla than is called for...the real stuff isn't usually in my budget, I figure the fake stuff is probably a bit less potent.) Everyone at work was spazzing over them, Ann especially, and Mac asked for the recipe. YAY I win.

...though more of a win is the real food I made yesterday. This Apple-Sausage Rigatoni? Amaaaaaaazing. I'm on such a fall-food binge. I sifted through some soup recipes over on Better Homes & Gardens' site tonight, and I have a good dozen to try (with a few of Heidi's in there too). I should probably find out what kind of soups Tom likes... (Not that it will hinder my soup-making. Tom eats fast food half the time anyway, when left to his own devices. I will eat my soup.)

I also tried some wine biscuits, out of my King Arthur cookie bible, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the results. They'd be better more biscotti-like than mine turned out, and I think there may actually be too much wine(!?!) in them. May also be that the red wine I had was a smidge strong - drinkable for me, but not all that great, which is why I was willing to part with half a cup for cookies. Also...they are NOT pretty little cookies. They didn't puff up or round out aaaany in the baking, so they're the same ugly little scraggly lumps they began as. (One of these days, I will pay attention to how baking soda/baking powder/eggs make things puff up/not puff up, and to what degree.) Also they are a tanned purple in color, which is disconcerting.

In other cooking news: we had an AMAZING dinner...last Monday? Monday before? whenever I last worked 9-5, and Tom didn't work at all. We thought we'd take advantage of having a normal human being evening, and actually have a nice sit-down dinner. I'd been trying to think of a main course to suit the little red potatoes I'd picked up, and had been a bit stuck. Tom has been talking steak fairly often lately. He didn't see the sort of steak he'd had in mind when we went to Tops for supplies, but, we wound up with a pretty awesome menu:

- mixed baby greens salad (which Tom wrinkled his nose at, because the leaves still had stems! oh horror! ..it was insanely delicious)
- Garlic Red Potatoes
- steak, with blue cheese on top, wrapped in bacon (which I'm pretty sure has an actual name, but Tom forbids me to look into this, since he wants to be able to claim credit for inventing it)
- really, really delicious dry red wine (yay! we're grown up enough to like (the occasional) dry red wine!)

...the potatoes, despite cooking for absolutely ages, were a smidge under-done. The steak, despite Tom's constant poking, was a smidge over-done. Didn't really matter a bit. :)

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What else is new... I went to the hospital, at the family planning clinic nurse's suggestion, and got a thyroid test taken. The day I was going to call the clinic to find out the results...I got my bill in the mail. x_x Which means I need to start figuring out how to get it paid for - the clinic said they'd be covering it, but I'm not sure how to make the paperwork know that. At which point I remembered that I canNOT, not, EVER, navigate the phone directory for the clinic. The options make no sense, I can't ever figure out which extension I'm supposed to be heading toward. Last time I wound up calling into what I think was child protective services...which is obviously not what I was looking for. (Note: this is NOT just me. A coworker assured me that she has the same problem every time she calls.) So, I'm thinking Monday morning, since I am not working, I'll gather up all my paperwork and troop down to the clinic, and ask them what I'm supposed to be doing - and ask them what the heck my thyroid is up to.

...as much as I enjoy being a generally healthy person, there's a bit of me that almost hopes there *is* something off with my thyroid. It would explain a lot of the random issues I have, including the fact that I'm always so damn tired. (Eight hours of sleep last night, probably more like nine. Alarm at 11:20 yanked me from a DEEP, deep sleep, smack in the middle of a dream, and I had to battle all morning to keep moving.) Plus the spotting (so far continuing, despite the new birth control), and the migraines (which may be linked to female cycles - I'm diligently plotting every weird thing that might possibly be related to hormones on my calender now, to see what correlations there might be). wheeee.

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I'd forgotten how freaking fast I read. I've been doing audiobooks for ages, but going through L.M. Montgomery's Anne books...there are several Librivox hasn't done yet. So, thank you Project Gutenberg - both the general and Australian sites, I snagged .txt versions of the books I needed. Flung them onto Tom's Kindle, and discovered that the sucker really *is* great for reading on. The screen does not glow, so there's no eyeball issues. Battery life is insanity (I haven't plugged it back in for like two whole books, and it's still only half down). Text size is ADJUSTABLE - so it's tiny and there's lots to a page when I'm reading normally, and I can make it bigger when I'm reading while crocheting (yes this is possible - sick, but possible) or washing dishes (shhh don't tell Tom I had it near water!). The other plus? YOU DON'T HAVE TO HOLD THE BOOK OPEN!!! I'd never even thought of that, until I started flying through the Anne books. All my actual, physical L.M. Montgomery are those little travel-sized 5x7-ish paperbacks that are like two inches thick. And they are SUCH a pain to hold open, whether you're trying to pin it under something, or using your hand, it just *hurts*. Kindle? Flat. Tap the side to turn the page. (Can tap on EITHER side to turn the page forward, even.)

Anyway, commercial aside... I remember when I first read Anne of Green Gables. Pretty sure it was when I had chicken pox in third grade. I'd always put off reading it, because the print was the tiiiiniest I'd ever seen in my life, and it was a really thick book. Chicken pox gave me a lot of time on my hands. This time around? I think some of the later books are shorter, but, honestly, maybe two days, and that was with maybe half a day of solid reading, mainly just the four hours between me getting home and Tom coming home.

So I'm audiobooking the last original Anne book (looks like there's a compilation that was published after her death, which doesn't seem to be public domain yet), but I wanted to get some more things to *read*. I had a few things sitting around on my computer, and I've a few more things in mind. I'm trying to ingest anything that might possibly inspire ideas for NaNoWriMo next month - so, ghost stories, maybe some religious things, anything set in gardens, Victorian-era things, and the cozy sort of girly classics that just make me happy. I just realized I have an audiobook of Louisa May Alcott's "Flower Fables", which I'm super-excited to dig in to. Probably going to re-read L.M. Montgomery's "Magic for Marigold", or maybe one of her others - I absolutely love her dreamy-eyed young girls, full of imagination and seeing beauty in every tiny thing around them. Trying to hash into consumable form "An Adventure", which is the book of "The Moberly-Jourdain incident" - these two scholarly women seeing ghosts around Versailles, of Marie Antoinette and others... it's such an incredibly detailed account, from these two insanely credible people, it's really grabbed my fancy. The full text is in pdf online, but... the pdf is embedded into a website in some totally absurd way, and all I could do was save it one page at a time. I just tried compiling them into a multi-page pdf...but I'm not even sure if the Kindle will take pdfs. I think it will? I don't even know. But, the book is ghosts and gardens and faded royalty and kindred spirit women at the turn of the century. Totally worth a bit of work.

Wikipedia, by the way, is so awesome for linking to the Project Gutenberg copies of books that turn up in articles. I always forget to check the Australian Project Gutenberg, and they have all sorts of things the main site doesn't, though in a less-searchable manner. Via that, I tracked down "The Well of Loneliness", which I'd been dying to read - generally considered the first lesbian novel in English, and caused all sorts of legal furor and was banned and everything else...even though there's no blatant sexual content or much of anything besides vague insinuation. But I like vague insinuation and subtle undertones and things. Just started in, and so far, I actually really like it - I've gotten as far as: a little girl is born when the parents expected a boy, so they name her Stephen, and she's developing rather male characteristics and personality quirks, hates dresses, has a crush on a serving maid... but it's all handled in such a way that... I'm not even sure how to describe it. It's handled in a very believable way, just day-to-day things, like she plays dress-up, but dresses up as a soldier... but the undertones are almost mystical, like there's a weird element of predestination, you have the sense that she's developing this way not so much due to a quirk in her genes, but because she was conceived and developed in the womb while being thought a boy. It's feeling very like the "Rose of Versaille" anime, which I adore, so it's all good.

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One of our hamsters died. :\ We knew they were nearing the end of their typical lifespan, so Tom, darling that he is, has been sure he's the first to go poking into their cage lately when we go to clean it out. This time... he told me to stay outside the room awhile. I can't even say how grateful I was for this, I really don't think I could have handled it, Tom barely could. He said it looked like they'd been in a fight (they'd always fought a bit now and again)... and I'm sure it wasn't a pretty sight. I *am* a little sad, even though we've never been overly-attached to the critters - hamsters don't really have a whole lot of personality to get attached to. Still, it was sad.

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Our ceiling in the kitchen, which has had cracked plaster for ages, finally started dripping about a week ago. Poking around in the bathroom, we discovered that the seal around the tub is totally shot. Soooo, as long as the shower curtain is plastered to the wall at that end, and we keep a towel on the floor for back-up, it doesn't leak, so that works.

We have been doing, in small doses, major house-cleaning. A few weeks ago I tackled the tub hardcore, and the leak issue motivated me to clean the scary corner between the shower and the radiator. The whole town has been invaded by something like fruit flies, and they are driving me COMPLETELY FREAKING INSANE, so that motivated a hardcore cleaning of the kitchen sink. (Note: didn't help. There do seem to be a few more of the damned things when I have cookie-batter bowls in the sink, but no matter how clean things are, the flies are still there. Tom can catch the pests in mid-air, so that helps, but I can't, and they make me insane, so boo.) I bought a mop! I'd been seeing ads for the Swiffer version of a mop, and that struck me as a perfect solution for the apartment. My kitchen floor? like 3x7'. My bathroom floor? probably like 3x3'. Tiiiiiny scraps of floor. I'd been tackling them the old-school way, on my knees with a sponge, there's really no room for a full-on mop situation. But WalMart had the Swiffer things - and, for a few bucks less, a Clorox version, which is what I got. It works AWESOME. I was a little skeptical, it's basically glorified paper towel, but... one towel thing got me through 90% of my kitchen, including the scary bits under the stove and fridge. Whatever liquid is in the little sprayer (I am probably saner not knowing) is pretty amazing stuff.

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And, still crocheting. One Christmas present: DONE!, once I fix the lazy way I tried blocking it. Another Christmas present: DONE!, once I block it. Another Christmas present: ohgodSOCLOSEtodone, but I need the attention span to go back and work on the edging. Another Christmas present: started and... well, let's just say a glove that doesn't fit my hand is not going to be very useful for anyone not a lot younger than me. Nearly everything is planned, I just have to scrounge up the money for yarn, and settle on a few patterns. The main trouble is, is that since these are gifts for people important to me, I want to do the best I can. Which means, in some cases, waaay more expensive yarn than I would use for myself. I have a little throw blanket in mind for one family member, and I found the *perfect* yarn, in just the colors and texture I want, and even in an alpaca blend, which I hadn't dared hope for but wanted desperately (since it's sooo lightweight for how crazy warm it is)... but it's like $8 a skein. So I'm trying to figure out how to get as much blanket out of as little yarn as I can, but I'm soooo bored with every freaking throw blanket pattern being either V-stitches or giant granny squares. I like both well enough, but, I've done those, I want something else!

I'm a little scared, given that there's a lot of crocheting that should be done in November, when I'm going to have a novel to crank out...

Labels: apartment, books, cooking, crochet, health, work