Ice, ick, and furniture.

I took Amanda to work this morning at 5 am. She volunteered for overtime and while that is fantastic and I am glad she could get some, we just had a big ice storm move in on top of all the ice and snow that has yet to melt. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about cold and lovely winter weather, on the contrary, I love it. I don't even mind driving in it, what bothers me are the other people driving it in. 4 wheel drive doesn't mean 4 wheel stop. Spokane is shit at plowing their roads, especially if they are residential, and this morning, I had to pull over because a Semi-truck was far to close for me to be comfortable and it was spraying a wave of dirty slush-ice at me. Then, as I tried to get back on the road, some jack ass coming up from behind didn't want to slow down and flashed me with his high beams. Really? No, seriously, because I can't tell that it's taking me extra time to get back on the road because my car is caught on a little patch of ice and you might actually have to be inconvenienced for all of 30 seconds by having to slow down. You never should have been driving that fast on icy roads to begin with, moron!

Now that that rant is out of my system... I am sick again. This time it feels like a head cold that's trying become a sinus infection or it's just a straight up sinus infection. Not totally sure, just know I'm not sleeping very well, my face and head feel awful, coughing, snot ick and drainage, and my teeth hurt a bit... so yeah, probably sinus infection. I've been self medicating with lemon ginger tea, a ginger tincture a friend made, a homemade chicken enchilada soup, coco, and water.

Behold! I finally got a hutch!

Okay, ignore the mess on my kitchen table  and bag of bags. A hutch has been on my semi-secret wish list for many years. As someone who has grown up with a hutch in my parents house for a time, and two in my Grandmother's house, hutches have always been nostalgic and make, for me anyway, a house feel more like a home. 

This one popped up on Craig'slist last Thursday for 50 dollars. It came with a matching table and 4 chairs. We don't really need another table or 4 chairs, but we agreed to both because the seller needed money to fix their broken car and they had an infant in the house. It looked like they were selling pretty much everything to get the car fixed. We decided to give the table and chairs to a friend and her boyfriend for their soon-to-be-new- apartment. This hutch came at the best time for us. I had  reached my limit with our apartment and its lack of storage. Sure we have been sick and the holidays did us in as well, but it just seemed like we couldn't make anything fit without it being messy or me getting overwhelmed.  So, below are the bigger appliances that don't really fit in the cabinets, dish towels and tea towels are in the drawers, my tea and a couple of my tea pots are in the display cabinet along with a bag of kitty treats. On the shelves we have most of our coffee cups, my tea making supplies and some herbs, and the bottom shelf is a nice little altar because I wanted something pretty. 

Just having this has made so much of a difference in my kitchen cabinets and made my kitchen feel more like home to me. I am not sure I like having so much white and had thought to paint the cabinet a light blue or green, but my Dad thought that might make it look more Swedish or Swiss (?) can't remember. Which of course is nice, but not really what I am going for in the kitchen. I thought about redoing everything Gothic fantasy like the living to tie the two rooms together, but you know what, I really like my greens and blues and I can still have the gothic fantasy charm in the kitchen without changing too much. So for now, anyway, the hutch will remain white. I also cut out some of the mermaid coloring pictures I've done and might put them on the backs of the shelves to break up some of the white... maybe, we will see. 

Lastly, I was holding Thorin an hour or so ago and my phone rang. He reached for it as my friend Fiona, who is up for a visit, handed it to me. Amanda was on the line to tell me she is staying a couple of house late for more overtime, but before she could tell me that Thorin pressed his paw to the my phone screen and hung up on her. I had Amanda on speaker and when I tried to call her back he tried to hang up again. I had to move the phone out of his reach and thankfully, the little shit was too lazy to move to chase after my hands for once.

Things I want to say in the morning, breakfast, yesterday, and EVEOnline

This is my EVEOnline Character, Meili. She's in the Federal Navy Academy and about to go on a big mission. Well, she will go when I decide to play again. So far, I am frustrated with EVEOnline. There is so much to learn and remember and I'm not even out of the tutorials yet. Honestly, I am little worried of the day that happens. This game is very complex and you can basically do anything you want in it. No really, you can even kill people. You'll get into trouble with Concord and other people, but yeah... I am impressed, overwhelmed, and curious to see what I end up doing with this character. I'm thinking of going career military, but who knows, I might change my mind. It is also nice to play a game with my Dad, even if he has to walk me through a lot. He had to describe what I was looking for last night and it had to be obnoxious. But he said, that it wasn't just me, because he's had some of the same problems. 

Yesterday was not exactly a good day. I had two long running mild panic attacks. Basically the first one began and I managed to get myself out of it and then ten minutes later I had another one. So I put myself to bed, hoping that if I just laid down for a few minutes, I could ground a little better and kind of reset. Well, reset I did, and while I wasn't feeling the best, it was truly helpful. However, I do not want to start relying on going to bed, napping for a bit, to get back to functional. I have some thing my therapist wants me to try and I'm going to employ some of those.

This morning, it is really cold outside. I didn't have time to truly warm the car up before I took Amanda to the park and ride. Prior to that, we were lucky my body woke me to go to the bathroom, else we might have overslept. But as I got back into bed and Amanda told me that we could have ten more minutes but then we would have to get up, I didn't say "Fuck you up the Goat Ass" or "It's too fucking cold for your work bullshit" or even "If you don't shut up and go back to sleep, I'm going to strangle you". And I didn't hiss at the fact that it is a bright sun-shiny day either. Instead, I quietly rest my alarm, turned up the space heater to warm my back and hopefully help soothe the raging beast who hates morning, and rested for a ten more minutes.

After I got home, and of course that's when the car was finally starting to get warm, I wasn't sure what I wanted for breakfast. I thought perhaps a fruit smoothie. But it's cold, I am cold, and adding more cold didn't seem appealing. So I opened the fridge and saw the English Muffins. Score! I cooked up a little sausage while I melted butter on one muffin and melted swiss cheese and mushrooms on another. On the muffin with butter, when I pulled it from the oven, I added my Downton Abbey preserves that I got for Christmas/ Yule. Oh my is it ever delicious!

I turned around a little bit ago and found Thorin curled up on my dish towels. Sorry for the mess, the house is still a disaster and I have no drive to fix it. Well, I do, but lack the energy really.

Thorin also likes to walk across my computer, sit on it, and generally make mischief while I am trying to do anything on it. He just wants my attention, I know. But he also wants to be held. My solution, while he is still small, is to stick him in my hoodie. He seems to like it. He gets held, is warm, and I get to type. He and Narcisa aren't so different after all, I had to do much the same for her when she was little.

Upcycling? DIY ahh hell, I was industrious yesterday.

It began with me wanting to make curtains for that window in the background. I loathe our vertical blinds. They are cheap, they are obnoxious, and we keep losing slats because they are cheap pieces of shit. Seriously, they really are. We can't even open the ones in our bedroom because Narcisa played int the window and some how messed the up. But I digress. The point is, I wanted curtains to go with a pretty kitchen theme. 

I went to Joann's Fabric's and Crafts but nothing screamed "kitchen" to me, at least not anything that I wanted. So I decided to make my own. I bought some minty-ish colored fabric and found some die cut wood pieces at Michael's. A little acrylic paint and ta da! Stamps! Amanda was supposed to put up the curtain rod for me last night when the paint dried, but she was tired and dinner was more important for the both of us. 

Here are the wood pieces, which I will hang on the wall. Ignore my counter top, it is horrible. 

 I found a couple of things at the Dollar Tree that went along with my kitchen. No, not all the patterns or colors match up completely, but I don't mind. 

I love these pot holders

Awhile ago, I was looking at wall decals but decided against them because our walls have a really crappy texture thing going on (probably designed to hide when they have to repair or fill in nail holes and such). However, I found this sort of sticker/decal back splash and it couldn't leap into my cart fast enough. We are, of course, having a little trouble with it. The wall is very textured and it was cheap, so we have to keep smoothing it down, but hey, it's keeping water and stuff off the wall, which is great, because when I wash dishes, I tend to splash! 

On to the upcycle  thing, if you can call it that. I had an older pair of black curtains from our last home. I'd had to take them down because they were too narrow to fit our bedroom window. They made it into the fabric tub and Amanda found them the other day. Since I hated how naked our mantle looked, I decided to make a mantle cloth. So, I took apart the black curtains, put in new hems as needed, and used one panel for the mantle and the other for my entertainment center below. 

Yes, there is something on my TV, it is covering up my fuzzy reflection. I took the photo while I was in my night gown, lol. I never managed to get dressed yesterday. I got too wrapped up in what I was doing and by the time I realized that I hadn't, it was after 4 pm and I just figured there was no use getting dressed just to cook dinner and then go to bed in a few hours. 

The plan for today is...

to take those strawberries and rhubarb and make Pink Lady Pie. Technically the pie doesn't call for strawberries, rather strawberry jello, but I am putting them in anyway. I am also making a bit of comfort food for dinner: steak, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. It's sort of healthy. Not like last night's dinner of ground turkey burger, zucchini patties, and corn on cob, but it is so good! 

Back to the plan for today, I am going to watch a few episodes of Penny Dreadful, read a little and maybe finish a book, write up some story notes, and print them out for index cards for my story board. I also want to start brainstorming my new manifestation board. I think it is time for new one. 

Lastly, I am going to research some possible things for a summer/ fall bucket list. This is an idea Rachael heard about on the radio the other day and pitched it to us. We're basically making bucket lists of stuff to do this summer and fall to get us out and moving and all that. Amanda and I were kind of talking about it last night and I wrote some notes down. One of the things on my personal list is to go to the Observatory I saw listed on the Washington Parks page. I'm not one of those people who move to a place and then never go anywhere, I like to go to museums, parks, landmarks, and just generally explore. And some of the most fun can be had on road trips with music and friends.