Good Times

Good karma today.

A little something that was bugging me was resolved.

I chose beer and box sorting and drank the beer slowly while managing to get through every single box in my spare room. That meant more than six boxes and these were boxes that were hodgepodges of things from other boxes that needed a little extra time and didn't contain items that could just be taken out and put away.

All my new furniture is working out perfectly which helped make my hodgepodge box sorting much simpler.

I threw away bunches of old love notes and random memorabilia from my ex-fiance (some from trips with him that I don't remember taking!) which is always healing.

In my sorting, I found my two favorite cards from my daughter and her family. Always sweet.

I talked to my beau who I've barely seen (new job) this week and we're looking forward to a long-overdue, low-stress, fun-filled evening together tomorrow.

A random coworker asked how my party plans were going. She's just the type of woman to get all sentimental about the big day and it was so nice that she asked and so nice to be getting excited about it.

My stepmom arrives here tomorrow (though I won't see her til the party) and my mom arrives in one week!

Last night, I uploaded the last four months of pictures and got a sweet email from my uncle's wife (yeah, I know that means she's my aunt but they married when I was older).

I got to have a game day with one of my favorite people this weekend and it was the best time we've had in awhile.

Today I inspired another teacher to smile more. Always a good thing.

I had scrambled eggs for breakfast and cookies for dinner- two favorites (no snide remarks about my dinner choice!)

So my decent week is quickly turning into a great one. Plus, I hear the professor of my next class is one of the best so even my busy weekend will probably be just fine.

Now if I could just find that missing curtain....

Sweater?

If you're sitting at the computer getting chillier and chillier and can't figure out why, it might be because you turn the heat down to 55 every morning and never turned it back up when you got home tonight.

Quiz Time

You paid attention during 97% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
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Phew! I'm so glad I did well!

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
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Of course posting to a blog negates all grammar skills. I'm constantly using homophones (am I thinking of the right word?) in my posts.

Daily Thoughts. Now With New Categories!

Tonight's dinner (and the real reason I'm posting): chicken pot pie- YUM! I did my party shopping and grabbed one for dinner.

Continual Oddity: When I cook, the smell is strongest in the bedroom....on the opposite end of my apartment from the kitchen.

Nice Thing: Having a grocery shopping partner.

Bug Story: I'm so used to finding random bugs in my apartment that when I reached into my cabinet today I freaked out because I mistook my dark nail polish for a bug.

Daily Frustration: The school database was down so I couldn't post my grades this weekend. That meant that I had to do it all day today...when I should have been teaching.

Occupying My Thoughts: My party. And more of my party. And even more of my party. It's less than two weeks away and I'm so excited!

Most Recent Purchase: Groceries....for my party. Did I tell you about my party yet?

Website: Look-Alikes

Weekend Plans: School all weekend this weekend. The break was nice though.

Sounds

Um, when you hear the teenage neighbor and friends running up the stairs with what are obviously spray-paint cans and then hear them run back down again still with the cans, it's probably not a good thing, huh?

Box Play

This is what happens when the trash guys don't take all your trash:

The neighborhood kids will drag all those boxes into your backyard and try to make a building.

Sadly, he gave up pretty quickly and of course left all the boxes in the yard. I was hoping for a cool fort.

I have nice neighbors though. One of them dragged all the boxes back out to the trash.

Things to Do

Just finished writing summaries about all of my students. Still need to input them into the database.

After this, my work for both schools will be complete enough to refocus on my house.

I miss my free time.

Cool Photos

Go look at these.

Thanks to Seth Jones for the link.

Ten Things I Love About My City

1. Parks. Lots of them. And people of all varieties use them.
2. Most of it is on the ocean so there are lots of pretty views.
3. Beautiful historic buildings.
4. Tons of pedestrian action. The people here walk and bike and are out and about all day, every day.
5. Most of the stores and restaurants are local establishments, not chains.
6. The kids here play outside and arrange to meet friends for basketball and skating and other kid activities.
7. We're conveniently located near lots of major highways and it is a short drive to the airport, or a capitol city, or any other nice place you might be looking for.
8. The city is festive during the summer and during the holidays. There is lots of spirit here.
9. Even though this city has faced many of the same problems as another local city (layoffs, drugs, gangs) it has managed to stay a good city with plenty of hope.
10. The people are nice. It feels like a community. I feel like part of the city, not just another face in the mix.

More Work

My apartment is finally clean enough for me to relax. The last few stray boxes have been relocated to the spare room with space left to sort through those boxes in that room.

I made room in the closet for a few closet things. I put together the rest of my furniture purchases and rearranged to put them in a nice place.


Friday night I had my first real guests. My friend, Liz, came by with her beau. She hadn't been over in awhile and though the entrance room was officially a mess that night, she couldn't get over how different (and nice) the rest of the place looked. The bedroom won the most beautiful room prize. I like having a beautiful bedroom. We congregated in there a few times. Just walking in there makes me feel so peaceful.


While she was here, she hung curtains in the rest of my rooms (except my living room because I can't find the curtain). They've grown on me and added a homey feel to the place.

I continued to work on Saturday. Putting together furniture, loving the fact that I'm starting to have a place for everything, emptying some drawers and deciding what to put where.

It was still too messy for me, especially this room with my computer. It had become the catch-all for everything so I spent this afternoon emptying this room and vacuuming. It is peaceful now.

I need to take a break from my apartment to do the homework for my last class and catch up on my grading. I haven't been able to focus on anything with my home in such a state of flux and so close to being done.

It feels good. Like another indicator of the balance in my life. I've turned a pretty blah apartment into an attractive home. I'm looking forward to getting back to living life for awhile. The next three weeks are going to be high stress. Still, I'm handling the stress better these days and focusing on what really matters so it's good. Life is good.

I Like This One

You are the World

Completion, Good Reward.

The World is the final card of the Major Arcana, and as such represents saturnian energies, time, and completion.

The World card pictures a dancer in a Yoni (sometimes made of laurel leaves). The Yoni symbolizes the great Mother, the cervix through which everything is born, and also the doorway to the next life after death. It is indicative of a complete circle. Everything is finally coming together, successfully and at last. You will get that Ph.D. you've been working for years to complete, graduate at long last, marry after a long engagement, or finish that huge project. This card is not for little ends, but for big ones, important ones, ones that come with well earned cheers and acknowledgements. Your hard work, knowledge, wisdom, patience, etc, will absolutely pay-off; you've done everything right.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

1970s Baby Clothes, Anyone

In my reorganizing, I went through three large boxes of baby (and some older child) clothes that my mom packed up for me when she moved far, far away ten years ago. These are clothes that my sisters and I wore as children or that my mom picked up along the way (she had a home daycare). They are in excellent condition, but they are clearly from another era.

I don't want them (I kept the few things that had special memories attached). I know some crafty person could find a use for these clothes and I'm giving the internet first dibs. I'm not interested in selling them. I'm only interested in getting them out of my home. Anyone interested?

Poor_Statue's Christmas Wish List

Baggage wants to know. I've been thinking about is as I make my holiday preparations. I only exchange gifts with two people (and my sweetie and I have stressed that we're doing a stockings-only Christmas) so no one actually needs this list, but it's still fun.

In no special order:

1. A new stove.
2. A professional massage.
3. Those hair things with the sticks.
4. Tights.
5. Another coffee mug: a big one, but not one of those bowl ones because the coffee cools too quickly. My favorite angel one got broken in my last home.
6. A printer.
7. Tickets to the theater.
8. A keyboard (piano).
9. Guitar Hero 2.
10. Great hair conditioner.
11. Ziggy Once-A-Day calendar.
12. A car kit.
13. The Muppet Movie.
14. One blue throw pillow.
15. A chocolate brown throw blanket.
16. Wintergreen mini-Altoids.
17. Movie: The Iron Giant
18. Pretty folders.
19. Wet pens in black, blue, red, green, and purple.
20. A good massager.

What are you wishing for?

The Reading Room

My spare room, formerly piled high with boxes, is slowly morphing into my reading room:


For the first time since childhood, out came my collection of Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins, and the Hardy Boys books:

And although they are not quite shelved yet, part of my Encyclopedia Brown collection came out as well:

Sadly, I ran out of room for my Berenstain Bears books, but I did put them all in one box:


And the most prized book of all:

This is the first book I ever read by myself. One of my sisters used to read to me every morning before the rest of the family got up. One day, I picked up this book and realized I could read it. I read through the whole thing and then ran into my parents' room where I read the whole thing again. I remember that the hardest word was "surprise" and it was in the last story. I wonder what my parents thought.

It has been impossible to find me without a book since.

I love my new reading room.

All The Stuff We Did

I'm officially tired.

After last weekend, my home was pretty messy. Although I accomplished a lot, much got displaced as I did.

I spent Friday doing more unpacking and rearranging. I also thoroughly cleaned the main rooms in my home so my beau and I wouldn't have to trip over boxes all weekend.

I had asked him to bring his drill so that he could hang some shelves for me on Saturday.


We started our day at 7:30 with German pancakes (I cooked something new- and it was good!) and then my sweetie got right to work while I took pictures of my artwork and did damage control.

First, floor to ceiling CD racks in a little nook of my living room.

Next up, shelves in the bedroom. We went to the store in between to get some tools that I was lacking along with a bunch of screws.


Ran out of supplies, so I ran to the hardware store. While I was there I picked up a new ceiling light for my spare room.

Got shelves in the spare room while I was out.
Then came the tricky part- the light. It was nasty and the wiring was bad. After many trips into the basement to turn the circuit breakers on and off (I made him go) and lots of work, it was replaced with a much nicer (and safer) light.





We had a pizza break in between the light work and made another trip to the hardware store to finish the wiring and get electrical tape. That was all we had planned. I decided that I wanted to check a local clearance store to get some furniture for the spare room.

I got a lovely chair, but no sofa.


We headed a few towns over and I ended up with the furniture I needed which my beau then assembled while I cleaned up.


We didn't stop until around 7:30 last night. Then first thing this morning, my beau hung a mirror for me, helped me hang blinds and curtains in the bedroom,...



helped me take out all the trash and cardboard boxes from all the building and unpacking....

and added more screws to my dining room table.

At 11 AM, he left and I headed out for an Ikea trip with an old friend. Now that my home is getting more organized, I needed a few things to finish up.

I got home around 5 and decided to build some of the stuff tonight.



I made a few mistakes and had to take some stuff back apart to fix them, but I think I did okay. I usually won't do any of these projects because they generally overwhelm me, but I was up for it tonight and now I can start the cleaning all over again.
The bad news is that my house is a mess again.

The good news is that I had lots of help this weekend (with no guilty feelings) and got a lot done.

My house will be ready soon and this may be the first time I've lived somewhere without a room to keep random boxes in that I don't want to unpack.

I hope I don't have to move out anytime soon.

A Working Weekend

I'm stopping to smell the strawberries. I had the most productive three-day weekend. And a special thanks to my beau for being the project man this weekend.

Project list and photo update will follw. For now, just enjoy my old artwork. I finally threw most of it away, but I did take lots of pictures.

Yay, Compliments!

I was at a little meeting after school yesterday with one of our second grade teachers. Our K-8 school is in two separate buildings so I don't often see the elementary teachers.

We were giving some constructive criticism to one of the administrators. The second grade teacher is in her second year at our school. She's older, teaching was a second career, and she taught at another school prior to ours.

We have a week-long orientation prior to the start of our school year. I presented to the entire staff at last year's orientation. This was before the second grade teacher started teaching there.

She commented on how perky and energetic and enthusiastic and positive I was and said how she got all excited at that orientation, thinking everyone was like me. She then said how disappointed she was when she actually started teaching and no one was like me at her site.

Sad for the school, but what a nice compliment!

Sunday Toy Day

I'm hosting a family Christmas party next month so I've been working on getting my apartment ready for lots of guests. I have a spare room that was filled with boxes so I spent today moving furniture and emptying boxes that I packed 17 years ago, the first time I moved. It was interesting and I'm proud to say that my spare room is ready for use. I still have a few random totes and boxes scattered throughout my apartment and its current state is testing my neatness gene, but I'm quite proud of how much I accomplished today.

Barbie accessories dug out during cleaning today.

In related news, I posted on my other blog about being nervous about having my critical family members in my home. I just got off the phone with my mother and it seems the criticism is starting already.

My sister is flying my grandparents in for the party. They were here this summer and visted my apartment right after I moved in. I could tell they didn't like it even though they said nothing to me. My sister confirmed that they said it wasn't as nice as my old apartment (pre-fiance, I had a really great place). Still, I've done a lot since they came.

Despite the fact that they are being flown in as a gift, they are already complaining to my mother about the possible weather, the packing, the not knowing what to bring. They said it better not snow while they're here. They also told my mom that my apartment is too small for a party and asked how I'm going to fit everyone.

While I realize that I'm hearing it all second hand, I could hear the agreement in my mom's voice. She is excited about coming, but I already know that my home won't be good enough. I wish they could all focus on the opportunity to see each other instead. It's funny because if I had a really beautiful home, I'd hear complaints about that, too. Not, "Oh, I'm so glad that Poor_Statue and her sister are getting the family together for the holidays." And just an FYI, it has probably been ten years since all of these family members have been together at the same time. This is a big deal. You would think that the location wouldn't be an issue.