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!

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.