Sorry for the email everyone got that was all spammy.
Don't know how that happened . . . .
You know those mornings where you wake up sore but you have no idea why? I feel like that this morning. Some of the soreness I can account for - others, not so much. Ah well, I think I'm getting sick.
I took two cold pills last night because my nose is getting raw from blowing it constantly. I don't know what happened with those pills and whatever I ate (or something), but they made me feel really weird. Like totally drunk. Except without the sloshing stomach or slurred speech. But balance was a problem, as was seeing things without them moving on me (not spinning, just undulating). Not to mention sleepiness.
But of course, I couldn't sleep, because I kept thinking about all the things I plan to do in the house. I ended up having to take one of my sleeping pills, which, combined with the cold pills, has left me feeling a little peculiar today.
So to get it off my mind, I'm going to tell YOU, my lucky readers, everything I plan to do with the apartment in the coming months.
Bedroom
Last night I finally finished hemming the curtains I made for the bedroom, so they're all done. The next step is to paint the walls - we're going to go for a nice chocolate brown, a little on the cool side, to match the brown in the curtains a bit.
I'm also going to re-paint the mouldings in there because the bottom piece is still original wood unlike the rest of it and it looks funny - looks like the floor is creeping up the side of the wall - it should be white.
You can see the weird mouldings here, but this is a picture from the summer, so it doesn't have the new curtains that I'm so proud of.
Overall
The rest of the woodwork in the house needs to be repainted, as well - there are gouges and scratches in it from several years of neglect (and a large fat hyperactive dog). I think this will be one of the first things I do. Alas, we won't be able to paint the hallway to get rid of the icky brown, because the ceiling is just too high on the stairwell. We are contemplating maybe painting most of the place and leaving the impossible walls brown, but we shall have to see.
Kitchen
First I'm going after all the cabinets and other woodwork. Originally, it seems, everything was painted a robin's egg blue, and then they covered it over with the white - it's a crappy quality of paint, however, and it's just chipping off, so it needs to be redone.
There's a wooden cabinet that sits between our stove and our fridge and holds our spices. It's white, and the top is very stained, cracked, and peeling due to people putting hot things on it and whatnot. I'm going to repaint the top of it black, to hide the stains and so it matches our black counter tops, and then have a piece of glass cut to fit that will protect the surface from further damage.
The fridge, which likes to march to the beat of its own drum (hard to explain unless you've seen - and heard the fridge), is a lost cause, but I'm hoping to persuade my landlady to buy us a new oven in the new year. The current one only has one rack, which makes it hard to cook more than one thing at once. The knobs on the controls are not the original knobs that came with the oven, so the calibrations are off. The front left element only works every second time you turn it on. And the oven itself likes to cook things about 50 degrees hotter than you set it to - so you scorch EVERYTHING. We've learned to compensate by setting the temperature lower and cooking it for 20 minutes less, but it means we can't cook anything even a little bit gourmet, that requires more exact cooking temperatures and timing.
We've also decided to paint the kitchen red, to match the red in the tiles (which you can see here). We think it will be a lot more cheerful than the current icky tan that pervades the whole house, top and bottom apartments. It'll pop nicely next to the white and black counter and cabinets.
Dining Room
This is the room we don't really have much going on in. It's where we've hung most of our colourful art, so we're thinking of painting it a nice happy orange, to go with the blue that seems to be prevalent in most of the pictures. Think fiesta-like orange, with flecks of yellow and red. Mexican food.
Office
This is the one room in the house where the room isn't painted an icky tan. It's sort of an icky-tan-meets-icky-greenish-goo motif. The floor is ridiculously ugly mottled blue lino, a part of which has faded in a perfect rectangle to an icky greenish brownish blue.
I need a rug in here to ward off the fact that Taras downstairs doesn't heat his version of that room, and the floor is absolutely frigid, no matter how high I crank the radiator. I hope it will also hide most of the hideous floor.
The walls, I'm thinking, will be some sort of blue, so they don't clash too much with the hideous floor. Cheerful curtains for the windows, maybe some form of yellow gingham, would be a nice touch and combat the coolness of the room.
Bathroom
This room needs the most work, I think. In the summer when we moved in, I noticed that the lino in the bathroom (less icky than in my office) was peeling away from the bathtub. I took it upon myself to staple it down and then caulk the shit out of it. I'm rather pleased with the results.
The fan system in the bathroom is rather inefficient, and so moisture collects on the walls. This has caused the paint to crack in several spots, and on the glossy ceiling (also cracked) there is mould that I have to keep scrubbing off. I'd like to paint the whole room a cheerful pale yellow to complement the green fixtures and blue floor, and repaint the woodwork as well - I plan to use a moisture-resistant bathroom-specific paint in here. Bright blue curtains left over from our old guestroom in Ottawa will be modified to fit in here, and I'll put a sheer mini-curtain next to the window so that one can have privacy during the day without drawing both sets of curtains.
The biggest project in here will actually be the bathroom door. As you can see here, it opens outwards into our hallway. When it is wide open, it effectively blocks access to the kitchen through that doorway. When it is closed, it cuts off the light source to the hallway. I've measured it, and there's enough clearance for me to reverse the door so that it opens inward, and will rest against the bathtub side of the room. It doesn't even look like that much work - I don't have to even take the hinges off the door itself, just turn it around and change the side that the mouldings holding it in place are facing. I even had my dad look at it and he said it was totally possible. I suspect I will break the original mouldings when I pry them off, so I'll have to look into getting some new ones cut, but other than that, all I need is a crowbar and a chisel . . .
Living Room
This room we haven't really thought about too much. The curtains are horrid, and we will replace them as soon as we can, but we're looking at four panels in here for four windows and drapery fabric ain't cheap. The problem is that we have no idea what colour we'd like to paint it, save that we know we'd like to paint it. I dunno. Maybe white? Then we can get any curtains we want - more or less.
Things I Will Need to Be the Handywoman I Always Wanted to Be:
Wall paint (VOC-free if possible - Home Depot has it)
Bathroom paint
White high gloss enamel for woodwork
Black high gloss enamel for counter top
Primer (just enough to cover the putty marks)
Low-fume paint thinner
Tempered glass, ground on sides, cut to fit counter top
Putty to fill holes
Putty knives - small, med, large
Wood filler
Finishing nails
Moulding to fit in doorframe
Wood glue
Chisel
Some form of small crow bar
Curtain rods and rings
That's all I got for now. Thanks for listening - this will help me sleep at night.
The problem with my library is I'm here all by myself for seven hours a day, most of the time performing tasks that don't fully occupy all of my brain. So I have lots of time to think.
For those of you who know the extent of my anxiety disorder, you know that this is a bad thing.
One little thing could bug me, and, given the opportunity, I will ruminate on it the whole day, and finish by being so worked up that I can't sleep, and therefore need a sedative to get some rest.
What's bothering me today?
My anthropology class, of course.
So the commentary that I worked really hard on in order to compensate for my mark of 6 on the previous one . . . I got a 7.5. And it's too late to do anything about the next one that went in, because I handed it in as I got my other one back. So now it's two weeks until I can do any reparations to my mark by working extra hard.
And of course, it means that what I feared would happen has happened - he's marking me on the basis of what marks he THINKS I've been getting. So much for my string of nines. I haven't really changed my approach all that much, save that I think I'm more conscious now of what I say, but I still say it.
And it's not like I can really talk to him about it. Firstly, he's away on conference for the next two weeks. Secondly, how do you really go up to someone and say, "excuse me, but I believe you are marking me based on an ill-perceived notion of my intelligence?"
It doesn't really work.
So my only hope is to kick ass on the essay that I handed in yesterday (although I'm terrified what he's going to think of it now), and to scrupulously go over my readings and commentaries and pull the best parts and copy the style and try to get back to my nines. There's only one or two more commentaries left in the year, though, and while he will drop my 6, that 7.5 is going to affect my average, as are the marks on the next ones I do.
BLECH.
my old boss at mbe used to say "procrasticating." he was 80% deaf so you had to give him credit for figuring out most of the word.
I'm doing a bit of procrasticating today. mostly putting off doing housework and showering, which is odd for me - usually I'll jump at the chance to do that kind of stuff before doing anything to do with school.
I guess I'm just feeling lazy today. I've been working really hard lately at real work, and it makes me tired.
things are going really well there, though. I moved basically every book in the place, and now I'm making repairs to the ancient ones while finishing off my new catalogue for everything we have.
I'm also now part of the office intranet committee, so I have to work on creating a web page for the library at some point, and I've also managed to give myself various other projects to keep me busy into the new year.
after that, I dunno. I have a feeling that I'm going to end up working myself out of a job . . .
Just (and I mean JUST) finished reading the entirety of the Ender series by Orson Scott Card. All seven (eight?) of them. That was pretty intense. I really liked them, though. They were so different from what I normally read that it helped to get my mind off stuff.
I'm having a sort of crisis of belief these days.
I find myself wondering if I'm actually cut out to do what I want to with this world of mine.
I totally bombed this little assignment due to a certain amount of carelessness on my part (and a certain amount of cold medication, it's true), but it was more the discussion that arose out of that failure that got me to thinking. My teacher had the impression that this bombing of the assignment (where I was given 6 out of 10, and, for someone at my level of study, I should be getting 8.5 out of 10 or higher) was simply a continuation of the path I was following. From his impression I'd been getting 7s on previous assignments, when in reality, the lowest mark I'd previously received had been an 8, then an 8.5, and the rest, until now, have been all 9s. He even went so far as to say that in class I had made certain statements that were borderline value judgments and were also, he was clear to point out, wrong.
Several things irk me about this whole situation. The first is that, if he believes I'm the 7 kind of person, is he going to let that colour everything I do from now on? I also wonder if maybe I'm misreading the 9s on my papers and the comments for "good work," and "this is how you make the readings your own," and they're actually 7s and what an idiot I am for my misreading of the material. I wonder if perhaps he has mis-written my marks in his own records and some typographical error on his part will result in the slide of my grades into mediocrity. I wonder at the fact that, if I was so wrong in my statements in class, no body thought to point this out to me.
It's made me understandably shy now about writing this next little assignment. I've done all the readings and I went over them very carefully. These particular ones deal with an author, Bourdieu, with whom I have always had a particular difficulty, so now I have to work extra hard at this commentary to make sure that I can overcome my fears of failure, my own difficulties with the intricacies of Bourdieu's philosophy, and my teacher's misconception of my ability. It really sucks.
But then I also wonder if it's a misconception after all. Am I really good enough to go through with my future plans? Or am I simply an arrogant fool, and that's what people are picking up on?
My discussions with my supervisor have not been encouraging in that respect. He's not exactly the kind of person you really warm to, and he's not the person to fall over himself encouraging you to go on. He's very smart and very helpful, but I come out of meetings with him feeling like my whole life has been held up to scrutiny and found wanting. Or sometimes like I've been punched in the face in order to give me a better perspective. It works, but it's harsh, and isn't helpful to these new-found feelings of self-doubt.
I don't want to pretend here that I plan to save the world, but, if I succeed at what I'm doing, I can change things for the better and maybe save a kid's childhood here and there along the way. I believe it's a noble enough cause but I'm afraid that my belief in this has become overconfidence. It's going to be one of the hardest things I will ever do, and, as even my supervisor has said, one of the harder things an anthropologist, especially a fledgling such as my self, could do for a doctoral dissertation.
Am I setting myself up for a nasty fall? I know that I'm a stubborn girl when need be, but will it be enough to get me through the next four years?
I could really use a pat on the head right about now.
The nice thing about this little blog of mine is it gives me the impression of a public venue, so I can rant like this, air my grievances, and get the impression that my voice was heard, but no one really reads it anyway, so it can't do any harm in the long run.