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dragonlady7I am so cold. It is 53 degrees outside, and thus, it is also 53 degrees inside my house, as it is not yet buttoned up for winter. I was raised in a perpetually cold house, but I had forgotten how to cope. (I have coped today by mostly being in bed or under an afghan. Which pretty much describes the parts of my childhood that weren't spent wearing three pairs of pants outdoors, or, you know, summer.)
And it is gross out, and I am feeling very depressed. So I've decided that I'm going to, in an attempt to be cheerful, write out some of my absolute fantastical daydreams about things I am going to Accomplish. I'm feeling domestic, so most of them are around the house.
1) Converting my sunporch into a greenhouse, so that I could grow vegetables and flowers there even during winter.
2) Putting in skylights and insulation and making the attic into a usable (and sunny) place to fight off seasonal affective disorder, and a breezy lounge area during the summer.
3) Being the sort of person who bakes her own bread at least once a week. (I am working on it. I'm not great at it though. I have flakes of sourdough starter I'm too scared to rehydrate yet.)
4) Getting rid of all of my lawn and replacing it all with garden beds and no-mow cover plants.
5) Becoming organized enough to have a set meal plan that utilizes the veggies I grow with minimal waste, and allows me to be thrifty in buying food.
6) Finding a way to get my attention back onto writing so that I can first finish, then publish (I know I'm skipping steps here, shh it's a daydream) something, anything.
7) Get a pony.
Hm, this isn't as cheerful as I'd hoped, because most of those things seem like they should be easy but I've been trying to do some of them for over a decade with virtually no success. Hm.
But, on a good note, I did figure out the reason that the speakers my Airtunes hook up to sounded so shitty. So I unearthed the woofer (It's not even a subwoofer) and repositioned the little speakers and my full-house surround-sound system (i.e. cheap computer speakers plugged into a Apple router) actually sounds ok and not so tinny. (Bonus of having a small house! Am I grasping at straws? Shh!)
I know something I forgot to daydream.
8) Figure out a way to get some insulation, any insulation, into my house's walls.
And 9) Figure out how to upgrade my electrical system to something approaching modern standards! (The standard use-old-wire-to-pull-new-wire into place tactic failed because the old wires have been clamped to the studs, then plastered over. I'll need a whole new system-- can't upgrade the old one. So that means several dozen big holes in the plaster. It's more than I can do.)
Oh yeah, 10) owning the house I'm doing all this to would be nice too, but given that my IRA is half what it was (how did I not realize that was possible? Oh, because I'm a moron, and nobody in my family has had money for about seven generations so I think my ignorance goes pretty deep), and I have 0 other retirement plans, I think the likelihood of me ever owning my own home is becoming increasingly small.
Damn it, how did I get so depressing again? The sun came out and I have a purring cat!!
Ack. I'm going to go have a cup of tea. I can't feel my fingers.
Oh also? Here's a weird one, LJ. I used to have a usericon called "Death's Head" that was a close crop of the death's-head motif from the top of my ancestress's grave in Stonington, CT. (She died in 1712.)
I went to use it, and it had mysteriously been replaced (the name and notes were the same, just the image was different) with a comic-bookish silhouette of a man, in blue, with the text, "POSER". What the fuck, Livejournal?! What does that even mean? How would a different image get in there? Has anyone else ever had this happen? Did someone hack my account just to comment on my Gothy pretentiousness? (But really! It's my 11-greats-grandmother's fucking tombstone, and a photo I took myself, it's not like I'm stealing someone else's angst here.)
And of course I didn't notice it until I went to comment on someone's journal, who I don't normally comment on, referencing the image, because they had mentioned Stonington, and now I look like some kind of moron or something. Really! What??
Eh, not even my baffled rage has warmed me. I'm freezing, yo. (But no heat till Veteran's Day! That's the tradition! Well, OK, if it's this cold on Saturday when I have people over I'll turn the damn heat on. And feel like a wuss forever.)
And it is gross out, and I am feeling very depressed. So I've decided that I'm going to, in an attempt to be cheerful, write out some of my absolute fantastical daydreams about things I am going to Accomplish. I'm feeling domestic, so most of them are around the house.
1) Converting my sunporch into a greenhouse, so that I could grow vegetables and flowers there even during winter.
2) Putting in skylights and insulation and making the attic into a usable (and sunny) place to fight off seasonal affective disorder, and a breezy lounge area during the summer.
3) Being the sort of person who bakes her own bread at least once a week. (I am working on it. I'm not great at it though. I have flakes of sourdough starter I'm too scared to rehydrate yet.)
4) Getting rid of all of my lawn and replacing it all with garden beds and no-mow cover plants.
5) Becoming organized enough to have a set meal plan that utilizes the veggies I grow with minimal waste, and allows me to be thrifty in buying food.
6) Finding a way to get my attention back onto writing so that I can first finish, then publish (I know I'm skipping steps here, shh it's a daydream) something, anything.
7) Get a pony.
Hm, this isn't as cheerful as I'd hoped, because most of those things seem like they should be easy but I've been trying to do some of them for over a decade with virtually no success. Hm.
But, on a good note, I did figure out the reason that the speakers my Airtunes hook up to sounded so shitty. So I unearthed the woofer (It's not even a subwoofer) and repositioned the little speakers and my full-house surround-sound system (i.e. cheap computer speakers plugged into a Apple router) actually sounds ok and not so tinny. (Bonus of having a small house! Am I grasping at straws? Shh!)
I know something I forgot to daydream.
8) Figure out a way to get some insulation, any insulation, into my house's walls.
And 9) Figure out how to upgrade my electrical system to something approaching modern standards! (The standard use-old-wire-to-pull-new-wire into place tactic failed because the old wires have been clamped to the studs, then plastered over. I'll need a whole new system-- can't upgrade the old one. So that means several dozen big holes in the plaster. It's more than I can do.)
Oh yeah, 10) owning the house I'm doing all this to would be nice too, but given that my IRA is half what it was (how did I not realize that was possible? Oh, because I'm a moron, and nobody in my family has had money for about seven generations so I think my ignorance goes pretty deep), and I have 0 other retirement plans, I think the likelihood of me ever owning my own home is becoming increasingly small.
Damn it, how did I get so depressing again? The sun came out and I have a purring cat!!
Ack. I'm going to go have a cup of tea. I can't feel my fingers.
Oh also? Here's a weird one, LJ. I used to have a usericon called "Death's Head" that was a close crop of the death's-head motif from the top of my ancestress's grave in Stonington, CT. (She died in 1712.)
I went to use it, and it had mysteriously been replaced (the name and notes were the same, just the image was different) with a comic-bookish silhouette of a man, in blue, with the text, "POSER". What the fuck, Livejournal?! What does that even mean? How would a different image get in there? Has anyone else ever had this happen? Did someone hack my account just to comment on my Gothy pretentiousness? (But really! It's my 11-greats-grandmother's fucking tombstone, and a photo I took myself, it's not like I'm stealing someone else's angst here.)
And of course I didn't notice it until I went to comment on someone's journal, who I don't normally comment on, referencing the image, because they had mentioned Stonington, and now I look like some kind of moron or something. Really! What??
Eh, not even my baffled rage has warmed me. I'm freezing, yo. (But no heat till Veteran's Day! That's the tradition! Well, OK, if it's this cold on Saturday when I have people over I'll turn the damn heat on. And feel like a wuss forever.)
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 11:32 pm (UTC)Yay!
None of my business, but who owns the house you live in? I thought it was Z's mother.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 02:14 pm (UTC)Yes, I should totally get a pony. Actually it would be super-handy to get a goat and some chickens, or something. While I was fantasizing I should've gone the whole hog-- there are actually people in our city, over in the depopulated ghetto, who have bought up the vacant houses for a whole block, demolished all but the nicest one, and made a huge urban farm. I had convinced Z to join me in starting an agricultural collective on one of these deserted blocks on the East Side and we'd have a little goat herd and perhaps a pony and we'd be all, survivalists. We'd have to have basically a stockade around the place, though, because there are just so many crackheads etc. ...
Anyway, as long as I was daydreaming I should've dreamed big. :)
Yes, Z's mother owns this house. She rents it to us for precisely the amount it costs her to keep it-- which means it's cheaper for us than buying it. Her maintenance budget is pretty small, and the whole thing is currently being taken up because the insurance company insists that we replace the front stoop, which has a 50-year-old crack in it from when it was incorrectly installed when the house was built. In this neighborhood nobody ever uses the front door, so I've basically never set foot on that stoop in four years, but it's the most pressing thing. The insurance company doesn't care that the electrical system is older than I am and there isn't a single grounding wire in the whole house-- apparently they figure the likelihood of a fire is lower than the likelihood of someone tripping on this crack and suing us?
So that's the entire house repair budget for basically the decade.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 04:30 am (UTC)I always put A PONY at the top of my Christmas lists.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 05:30 am (UTC)Not that I could fit one.
They're small, right?
(Hehe, I know better-- I used to have one. They need an acre. Bollocks. Still!!!!)