Going Domestic

To start this off, I should mention that my housemate FATE and I have a strange kind of friendship.  He refers to me as Mom and I refer to him as my son.  Normally, this means whoever I happen to be dating is by proxy his "dad" and generally that person just kind of shrugs, accepts it, and never brings it up.  

Rob took this Dad thing to heart.

I'm not kidding. 

We quickly became a bunch of grown ass adults playing house.  

...

My therapist says it's okay so shut up.


Rob and I have already domesticated each other anyway.

He cooks for me:

I do his laundry:

Domestic!





In any case, now that I'm finally settled in, moving is happening again.  

Technically, I'm not the one moving, so there is that.  ...  Rob is moving in, Xena is moving out, FATE and I talked about moving more rooms around, and we decided to have my room be a studio/office space for whoever is in the apartment, since Rob and I might need a little more space, but we'd be sharing a bedroom.   

*Cue Rob's grandmother asking what my clergy father must think of Rob moving in with me* 

Hypothetically speaking, this seems simple enough.

...

It's been chaos. 

The problem is that Rob needed to start moving his stuff in, but there isn't space yet.  As a result, we have boxes of stuff and some of my stuff crammed into weird places and everything is just teetering on a I-don't-know-where-this-goes string. 

After a bit of this, I had started to go a little utterly-too-intense over trying and failing to find things.  I stopped really communicating when I got too frustrated and instead opted for hand gestures and strange noises.  

For example:

Meant that I had lost this thing: 

And I wanted it. 

We've already invested in more shelving in an attempt to avoid our clutter invading the clutter of the other:

This shelf did not stay in that spot very long and it will be moving again, I'm sure. 

And in the meantime, we've each started organizing the few things we actually can have some control over until we are all settled on space again.  

Rob and FATE organized the entertainment area: 

And I have started doing little projects in an effort to eventually become this super-pseudo-mom.  
Between Rob and my own fuckery, we have a lot of magnetic, wipeable, and cork boards.  
Like this one:

I decided that these would become a giant area of wall.  I wanted one slightly bigger wipeable board, so I made one out of a frame that wasn't useable for it's intended purpose and some old color swatches:

 In the meantime, I've been stressing over where everything will go and what I could possibly fit now that I couldn't before.  

Can my vanity now fit in our bedroom?  I could use it as a side table... Maybe? 

What about my drawing desk?  Surely that'll go in the office/studio for everyone to use!  ...Right?

Lastly, we had cockroaches seep in from downstairs, but now that Rob sprayed the Hell out of every corner in this apartment, they seem to be leaving us alone. FATE saw two, "half-dead" recently, but that's it.  Next, we'll have to patch the giant holes where they were getting in.

On the way, we should probably re-caulk the asshole tile:

Every time someone steps on this thing, he or she assumes he or she was the one to magically break it.  I don't know if everyone I know collectively has no idea how tiles work, or if they all just think they weigh a lot more than is possible or what, but no.  No guys.  No.  The tile was already busted long before.  

I'm sure fixing it will be another post.  

...As well as rearranging, organizing these rooms, possibly painting things...  

Stay tuned!

Pandas Make Me Feel Guilty

Pandas make me feel super guilty. 

It isn't because they desperately need to reproduce in order to keep the species going.  That would be a semi-reasonable thing.  
Nope.

Pandas make me feel guilty because I was once a child, and now I can't let that go.

I'm the kind of person who remembers the worst things, generally blown out of any reasonable proportion, and has trouble with the recall of pleasant things, or positive things I may have done.

My sister is almost eight years older than I am.  Given that this incident took place at her Bat Mitzvah, we'll assume I was maybe five.

I was five.

I was five and yet I can't seem to shrug this off.

Pandas will always make me feel like an asshole.

See, there were these stuffed animals in balloons.  It was a cool concept, and most of them were filled with these hideous monkey things.  

 
They were probably not that scary, but they freaked me out pretty hardcore as a kid.

One of the balloons contained a panda.  

This was specifically meant to be my cousin's panda, as she was moving into a black and white apartment.  None of this is particularly relevant to her life now, yet I still want to send her a panda every time I see one.

I don't…

But I want to, like some crazed stalker.

I feel guilty, to this day, because over twenty years ago, a small child version of myself wanted a panda instead of a monkey.

I think I probably cried.  People felt bad for me.  Instead of going, "That dumb brat is having a hissy fit, don't give in!"  They gave me the panda.

In the end, that turned out to be it's own punishment.

Almost immediately, I felt like an ass.  I couldn't even have that childish satisfaction of "HAH!  I got what I wanted!" because I was too busy feeling like a jackass, but being too embarrassed to take it all back.

I was FIVE.

So, we took the panda home.

We had a Jack Russell Terrier at the time.  These dogs are hunters.  They'll tear anything apart.  

 
I was not particularly fond of this dog.

He was not particularly fond of the panda, and so the panda lost it's face.

 
My thoughts of, "Well, I could send the panda to my cousin anonymously" were destroyed.  Instead, I sat staring at the mutilated toy, feeling even worse.

Guilt became disgust and then wrapped back around to feeling guilty all over again.

It took a very long time, possibly years, before we threw the damn thing away.

So, well over twenty years later, my mother gave me something for my toothbrush.

Not only do I find pandas still make me feel like an asshole, the fact that the toothbrush goes up the ass of this panda made things worse.  Here is an actual photo of the thing: 

Adorable, right?  I used him and he was cute, but beyond the guilt, I was reminded every day of Memphis.

Mom and I were visiting Memphis Tennessee back in 2003 or 2004, looking at a college there.  We barely saw the school, but I loved the area.  The zoo was particularly interesting with all of it's Egyptian themed decor and animals that looked well taken care of and happy, which is rare for a zoo.

Thing was, there was this panda.

…

Come on, you knew the poop was coming eventually.

It was adorable.

And then it turned around.

PANDAS! 

Duck Season, Rabbit Season, Allergy Season

As you may know by now, I'm allergic to everything.

This season is particularly bad and it is affecting every part of my body.

Even my hair looks particularly shitty for no reason:

And then, of course, I'm just constantly leaking:

In fact, by this point, it's less my nose and eyes and more my ears:
 

I am so very attractive!

Between that and the puffiness and the dry skin, I wind up feeling like I look like a Cro-Magnon made out of clay:

A week ago, I was at my friend's house for gaming.
I like to roll dice and hit imaginary things.

The problem was that allergies had hit me HARD and I wasn't willing to take an antihistamine.  My logic was that we game pretty late anyway and I'm always half unconscious by the end of it.  I didn't want to add to that by being half asleep from the beginning.

So, I decided to tough it out.  This meant bringing a trash bag and a roll of toilet paper for my snot:

I actually went through that whole roll in a couple days.  So much snot.

The other side effect of not being entirely prepared for my seasonal allergies is that I got loopy:

 

And then passed out anyway:

 


In fact, I was so very loopy at this game that my roll of toilet paper became my favorite toy.  This happened because I realized when it was smooched, it was smiling:

Then, I managed to somehow dissect it, taking out it's cardboard to create a stand:

This was also, at one point, a hat.  …Later on, Rob also used it as a hat almost instinctively.  Yes I <3 that man of mine.

Speaking of my Knight in Pinstripes, he considers himself to be immunize to any damage.  He proudly states this often and every time he does, I think an anvil is going to cartoonishly fall on his head and break his whole body just to prove some Karmic point.  It has not done this so far.

However, he is an ex-smoker.  This means his face used to be pretty much clogged with random chemicals and he wasn't breathing so well, but he was used to it.  Now that he can breathe and smell, suddenly places he used to tolerate and parties that were bearable are now just as utterly disgusting to him as they are to the rest of us.  On top of that, now he suffers from seasonal allergies.

He is a little like Captain Hammer in that since he doesn't generally experience physical discomfort, it's a big freaking deal when he does.

So when he started to have a few cold-like symptoms from allergies, he flipped out and kept asking if he had a fever.  He acted like he might be dying. 

Mind you, his symptoms were over in a couple days.  Me?  I've been having migraines, my body and my mind are all affected.  Of course, I'm also allergic to everything.

It seems the big culprits affecting people this year are mostly:

Dust is not such a big deal for me.  My indoor allergies are not NEARLY as bad as my seasonal outdoor allergies, and those in turn are not as bad as a couple of my food allergies.  Still, there is something to be said about the overall allergy load.

If I'm already having a set of reactions from one thing, I don't want to add to that.  My immune system is already in over drive.  It winds up like the straw that broke the camel's back.

...
 

By the end of this season, I typically have just melted into a puddle of semi-recognizable goo:

BUT!  In this crappy allergy season, at least I'm not suffering alone!


*cry*

Unsolicited Advice From Rowyn on Where to Put Your Stuff

I had noticed this a long time ago, but I had never thought to smoosh the solution to my own problem with those of ring-wearing people, or other small bits people have on their bodies most of the time.

In my head, the rings I wear are purely functional splints, but they really are decorative rings too.  They ALSO brace my fingers for me, sure.  That doesn't change the fact that they aren't actually permanently fixed to my hands. 


They aren't some cybernetic attachment, as much as I treat them as such. 

 
That being said, I still FLIP OUT when one comes flying off or gets caught on something and gets pulled off. 

This is A: because my fingers really are very uncomfortable without them,
B: because I'm so used to them, so it's just jarring to remember that they CAN be removed and
C: They were really expensive. 

So, early on when I didn't know if I was going to wear them all the time, I went looking for a container to house them so they didn't just roll away or be stolen by goblins while I slept.

Eventually I found a cheap but cute contact lens case:

 
Now, I've seen people *coughMOMcough* who have rings they'd wear all the time but sometimes need to take off, yet have no place in their purse or wallet or jacket to keep them.  I've seen plastic baggies where some rings can get bent anyway or just thrown into purses to be lost or damaged. 

I'm guilty of that last one with earrings, I'll admit.

Using a small container, be it a lens case or not, is really a nice idea.  It doesn't take up too much space and then it's there if you need it.  I've seen little inch or so tall jars for travel purposes that would do the same thing.

The lens case was just handy for me because I have two hands and each has a set of rings.  This way, I can separate them between right and left.

Because I typically wear them as much as humanly possible, this particular case gets used for my "spare."  …I put spare in quotes here because it only became so when I lost it as I slept, questioning if I had somehow gone to the bathroom and flushed it in the middle of the night.  I found it long after I had reordered one.  It was hidden under my dresser and found when I moved.  

It's the farthest joint ring which FLIES OFF more than anything else, so I don't know that other people really have this issue.  Most rings sit much closer to the hand, and most rings are not worn at night anyway. 

For these rings, this is a handy tool for by the bed or on a desk or wherever you generally keep things you don't want to lose, while not shoving them into a jewelry box with all the everything else's ever.  

That being said, I don't know that any sane person should take advice from me about organization and not losing shit.

I am not the neatest person when it comes to my work space, until I get too fed up and clean until the walls bleed.  However, I like containers. 

An animal skull Xena got for me that I think was meant to be a paperweight or just art became a thing to hold papers on my desk:

Another skull which I bought from Claire's or someplace a thousand years ago was a cell phone holder.  It does not hold a smart phone in any possible way, so now it holds wipes for glasses or sometimes business cards.  Really, it would be great for anything small, like paper clips or safety pins... whatever: 

 
A mug that I don't want to use for drinking became a holder for pens, pencils, a voodoo doll and Satan:

A "critter bath" from a pet store holds whatever I damn well please because it's freaking adorable and shut up: 

I also have a lobster on my desk:  

…


I have no excuse for the lobster.