Did it Myself

Before

After

Almost all my sweaters have a real home in a real piece of real furniture - no more rubber bins!

Sell me something.

I did not get all I was going to get accomplished his evening. I did not give the upstairs the very stern talking to I was planning on, I didn't blanch the tomatoes and peppers that are standing by, waiting not very patiently, I did not vacuum anything. I did not get the screw out of my tire, I tried! I went to two different very nice chain tire repair places that only hire first time non-violent offenders and have TVs in the waiting rooms and clean bathrooms, and they wanted me to wait for two hours! I  don't have two hours!

Tomorrow I'm going to one of the low end tire repair dumps near me that employ career violent felons. No two hour wait bull shit in those places! In and out, no waiting room no TVs, no bathrooms.

I did go to the store and get my lunches for the rest of the week sorted, I got the dog more dry food and now I know what I'm having for dinner Thursday and I got the dishwasher emptied and my recycling recycled and the cat box cleaned out.

My second round of Christmas cards arrived and I am pleased.

I was very disappointed to find out that I am not the only Lil Bub fan in Raleigh! Who knew? I didn't call immediately because  I didn't think she was that famous.  She sold out a 400 seat venue! I mean! I knew she was not not well known, but come on! She isn't Grumpy Cat but she did have a TV Movie with Amy Sedaris and she does move merch because I have a tee shirt and a coffee mug... But dayum! I emailed the people and they told me to show up anyway, there are always no-shows. There better be! I'm going to see Lil Bub!

Its the whole zeitgeist thing. Years ago I went to an X-Files convention, I still own Mulder and Scully action figures. I'm a pop culture slave! Bring me your merch, I'll buy it, start a web site, I'll give you hits, I am your audience. Go Me. Sell me something.

Wet Paint

I was going to paint the drawers over days but then I decided that I didn't love dealing with the clean up and didn't want  to have to deal with day after day if I really didn't need to. It's not fun, it's messy and there is no reason to do it over and over again when I could just do the job and get it finished sooner rather than later and save myself the repeated clean ups.

So I finished the painting! Its donzo! I do not see myself doing any additional painting unless I find something that needs an emergency touch up.

I didn't do the same job on the interiors of these drawers that I did on the drawers from the other piece.  This set was painted inside in less than ideal lighting and there is a clock ticking this time. The other drawers got painted  outside in lovely natural light and I was able to take my time doing it. I think the interiors even got two coats! and there was probably sanding involved and I bet it took me longer to do too.  But not this time. Wham, bam, thank you ma'm! Tip your waitress on the way out the door!

The dresser drawers got no such love. They got painted period. Its not the worlds best job but they didn't used to have paint on them and now they do, so job done. I'm the only one who is ever going to see it and while that is reason to do a very complete job, because I'm  Worth It,  I'm cool with it. If it becomes a real problem for whatever reason, I have pint left over and I can use that. I'm not foreseeing any problems though.

Monday

I tried to find my replacement Wally but I couldn't find it. How do you not find a Wally?!  Its there! I spoke with a thrid party who suggested it over my Wally, so I know I'm not dreaming it up, it exsisits, it was just not availble when I went looking for it today.

I did go back to my Wally and demand my scripts back. I can't have them back. I have to go to another pharmacy and have them request them. Whatever. I already called Target and told them why I was calling them and where I was coming from and they seemed very nice.

I will pay more at Target and it is not as convenient or close to my house, but I will not be getting my chronically ill pets meds at Wally or Sam's any more. Their loss. I filled Daisys' meds at Sam's for years, I filled Texs' meds there even before there was a Daisy. I don't understand how out of nowhere suddenly they aren't going to work with pets anymore. Assholes.

Happier thoughts. Tomorrow I'm calling the Board of Pharmacy on that dill hole pharmasist  at Wally.

Even Happier.

Three down, six to go. I'm going to do one row of drawers a night. I still need to find pulls for them, but every day I am getting closer and closer to getting the job done.

Best

Yay for more tomaotes! I have to bring them in to ripen or they get eaten on the plant. The plants look wretched and when a few more fruits get ripe, I'm going to dispose of the plants and start thinking about next year. The peppers are still pepping along.

Making Progress

We have curtains!

Yay! Didn't my Mom do a great job? I think they look great and I can' wait to have the whole ensemble together. That means I really need to get moving on cleaning out the upstairs closet and stocking it with some of my winter clothes, finishing the dresser, getting it placed and re-stocked, getting the sweater closet placed and stocked and whipping the rest of the space into shape before I move up there for the winter.

It's going to be work!

I also need to pick out the pictures I want to get enlarged and then get moving on frames for them and getting them hung up. It won't be nearly as hard as downstairs so it should get done faster. It will be exciting to see my work up and framed and its really going to add to the Knotty Pine/Pine Cone theme I have up there. It's going to be very satisfying to have it all done, whenever it gets all done.

I watched Renovation Realities over the weekend and I feel much better about my  skills. I don't really have any but I'm not delusional enough to go around knocking down load bearing walls or  doing any large scale DIY electrical or plumbing either. I know my very limited limits. Yay me.

Friday Cat Blogging

Good Morning Starshine!

Friday

Today was a good day. I found .28 in change, three pennies and a quarter.

I was standing on acorner, waiting for the signal to change and saw something that could have very well been a  quarter in a cross walk ,  and I had to study it because the light was in an odd place and it could have just been a trickster piece of random quarter shaped plastic - because that  has gotten me before and how embarrassing to pick up that costumed trickster and have it not be a real quarter! It makes you look a little desperate.

And so to not look too desperate or get tricked, I studied it until the the light changed and it wasn't until I was almost across the street that it became clear that it was an actual, real, quarter and I wanted it and I was going to have it. Damn the bus.

I had to cross the street to not get run over by the bus. It did run over the quarter. I tried to be as cool as possible as I re-crossed the street to claim the quarter, which was hard! It was clear I was going back to pick up change off the street and who does that?. I couldn't immediately see it for a moment and I feared the bus had somehow eaten it - because if anything  would somehow be able to eat spare change, or be built to suck change off the street, it would be a city bus - But it was still there and needed rescue.

And Yes, I did this in front of an audience because why not? . If I can see to pick up pennies - Three by the end of the day! I am certainly not too proud to cross a street twice for a quarter.

Dark and Light

Rocket was feeling particularly handsome this evening.

Drugs

Today did not go like it was supposed to. I got up early and went and voted, like I was supposed to. I spoke with my precinct chair who told me he is now the fourth district chair and has to step down from his position as precinct chair. Okay.

I had a meeting with my junior supervisor scheduled for 7:30 and a staff meeting at 4pm so I  took the dog with me on my way out so I could drop him off at daycare.

The daycare was closed and the sign was gone. There was no notice on the building as to what happened. I checked the Facebook page and discovered they closed their doors  9/28 so they could re-open TBA at a new location too far away. They didn't notify their clientele in any way except if one of the teenagers who work there thought to mention it or if you are lucky enough to have Face Book think you need to see what they post. FB did not see clear for that for me.

I had to hurry the now broken-hearted dog back home and rush back to the office for my meeting with my junior supervisor - Who forgot to tell me that the meeting was postponed.

I did not have a great day.

I got home late after he staff meeting and had o then go to Wally to get the dog's meds. They still tried to over charge me and not honor the med card, siting a Corporate Policy that corporate has no idea about. The script was not ready and I had to go back later.

I gave them three scripts, one I needed, one I did  not need yet and did not ask for them to fill and a thrid that the doctor only wanted filled if the dog wasn't responding to Plan A.  When they finally came across with my meds they gave me three months of the meds I didn't want and didn't ask for and do not need and six pills of the med I asked for.

I called the pharmacy and the moran who answered said they didn't have the one med I asked for, but they hoped to get it soon. I paid a butt load of cash for three months worth of pills I didn't want and hopefully will not need. Rocket will never run out of  prozac. I however, will need more own prescription.

Wet Paint

I went upstairs to get clothes for work tomorrow and put another couple of coats of paint on the drawer fronts! I couldn't help myself.

I wasn't going to but I took a look at them and they looked like another coat wouldn't hurt and I was already up there and well... I didn't even have on my official painting outfit! It is oddly unsatisfying to have to be very careful while putting paint down, it's not that I am a sloppy painter, because I'm not, it's just that having to keep track of where the paint is really messes with my enjoyment. I want to concentrate on getting the paint on the surface and not where else it's getting. I would have enjoyed it much more in my little painting outfit. I did have my rubber loves so I wasn't completely without defences. Paint is tricky and sneaky and gets places its not supposed to be like floors and walls and the bottoms of your shoes and it plays hide and seek. It cheats too, does not play by the rules. Mean.

The drawer fronts are going to look dynamite though, maybe a little not perfect but you know, they aren't for sale and I am my customer and I am very, very sympathetic to the painter and her plight and the really, really tough circumstances she did the job under. So the "not perfect" is actually patina. The house is old, most of what I have now comes from craigslist or the side of the street - nothing is perfect. PATINA!

I'll get the insides of the drawers painted this week after the  by-God-final coat of paint is dry, finally, whenever that happens. I'll get the interiors painted,  and  probably put a second coat on the sides I already painted blue and they will look so nice! The paint will dry on the fronts and then I'll get the tape off and in a few days, put my clothes back in. When that job is done, I can move the other piece moved to where ever its going to go now that its pretty and I'll put my sweaters in there to live and then I'll clean the room up and I'll move back up there for the winter and bit by bit it will be
a new room.

Well. It wasn't as bad as they said it was going to be, but they may have spoken too soon. My basement is still dry, but flooding after the fact is par for the course so there is still things to worry about.

The drawers got mostly painted but now aren't drying. I brought them inside to get them out of the damp and they brought the damp in with them. They managed to dry outside in the rain but now they are still dripping hours after I put on the second coat. I hadn't thought that drawer fronts would be such a pain in the arse, I had known that the dresser body was going to be a bitch, and it it was but for some reason I though that the sheer lack of acreage would make the job easier. I was wrong.

When you add all those nice drawer fronst togther, it makes for a very large peice of furniture. Its the same as a big table. A big uneven table.

And then I added to he fun by  getting very happy with a hand sander. Its a wonder tool, so much better than trying to sand by hand. A magic wand really. However, even a magic wand can be a dangerous weapon in the hands of a novice. Lesson learned : If you aren't going to take all  the paint off, don't take ANY of the paint off. It makes for an uneven surface and even if you some how manage to make it the same surface, its now a different color and a different material and it will take the paint differently. Because OF COURSE IT WILL.

So much joy in learning new things!

I wans' able to get to painting the interiours of the drawers because they were always wet and I didn't want them to be completly covered in wet paint, so now because of the weather, not a single part will be dry before Friday, I won't be able to get the job done and that makes me crazy. The longer it goes  not done the better the chance it will never getting done and it would be much better for everyone involved if I could get the job done sooner rather than later.

But then I would have had to wait to start it after it stopped raining and not started the same weekend a hurricane came through how much fun would that have been?

Friday Cat Blogging

El Gato in El HatoReally insulted on other peoples behalf about the gross cultural appropriation displayed Will kill me in my sleep.

Friday

My work email kept bringing me cheery power point presentations about how much water we're going to be under - a lot, when we're going to be under it we don't really know, but hope you're all SCUBA certified and how bad its going to be, Let us join hands in prayer .

The East Coast is a very large place, it includes places that are not Manhatten or places Manhattanites own vacation homes . You wouldn't know from the news. "OH MY GOD it could be Sandy II" really means, OMG! New Yorkers might have to deal with what the rest of the country deals with routinely, again! OH NOES!" Weather comes as a shock to people in New York. I did not know that they never experienced weather, but then I watching NYPD Blue  reruns all summer and apparently it is either Hot or Cold, I assume it rains there as well but not much and not for long.

If it rains too hard for too long, my basement is going to flood and my water heater is going to get wet and the pilot is going to get snuffed. I will have no hot water until I can find a plumber to come out and relight it, its not easy to do at all, when the Gas Company guy came out to service the line,  he had to call in reinforcements to figure out how to get it relit.  I want Santa to move my water heater to higher ground for Christmas.

I also want an electric hand sander and novelty eye lashes for my car. Its early but its never to early to get requests in and I need something else to think about other than the imminent flooding of my basement and wide spread damage and flooding of everyone's everything. Yay.

After dinner I curled up on the couch with the dog and used him as a pillow and we watched TV. I would imagine the dog shrink doesn't want me to encourage that kind of physical closeness with him right now... but when he's in dog ball mode he is the perfect pillow, and its damp and its going to be for the foreseeable future and blechy and he's warm and  dry  and solid and so perfect. He's like an electric blanket with the capacity for wuve.

Wednesday

After work my plan was to go by a UPS store and return some very, very bad Christmas cards I ordered - they looked much better when I was designing them, in reality, they were hideous . They had to go back and back they go. I designed some new cards with another vender and I am much happier with these, I hope. I can't really order them until I get the refund from the first ones\, I should have sent them back sooner. My bad.

Anyway, I returned the bad cards and went back to my car and headed home. I was tooling down Hargett and I saw a lose dog and I said "Awwww, a lose dog! I hope it gets home!" and then I saw a little girl runing after the dog and I said "Oh shit that's her dog!" and I drove a little down the street and I said "I have to help that girl get her dog. Have to." I parked the car and watched the dog head into the cemetery. The little girl was standing on the sidewalk sobbing and I said to myself , The dog is in the cemetery, its fenced, this will e-asy I was wrong. Yes, it is fenced, but  the dog can go through the gates, at will. And did.

And ran across the street into a park between apartment complexes. She would not be caught. She would bot be herded and she would not be bribed. After  more than a couple of near misses, I went back to the car and grabbed an old leash of Rockets from training. I thought I would use it as a lasso. I thought wrong, the dog would also not be corralled .

We chased that damn dog all over. The poor little girl was beside herself and I was feeling winded but unhelpful. A couple from one of the complexes donated a dog treat to the cause and helped out trying to direct the dog somewhere, anywhere. Big fail.

A guy walked out of the complex and walked into the park and sat on a bench. Did not even once try to help. That couple came out of their house and ran around and this dick just sat there. Loser.

Finally after much running around the dog followed the little girl back to her apartment complex and she was able to get a hand on the dog and got him safe. I gave her the leash and went home.

My dog peed the floor in protest of my late arrival home.

Later, I decided the dresser was finished. I don't have unlimited paint and I knew that putting more paint on it wasn't going to make it less not right. FYI, I am in the market for an electric palm sander. If I had one, the dresser would kick ass now, live and learn and get an electric sander, I took off the tape and its going to need some touch up but not as dramatically as I thought it was going to be.

I started hand sanding - hate it, I want a real sander! and taping and got three of the nine done.

 Six more to go...