Thursday, November 7, 2013

Pin-interest

Have you ever watched Extreme Couponing? I watched a season of it on Netflix and found it mesmerizing. People have so much dedication to their systems, it's kind of amazing. They plan and tally and work the system and manage to end up spending only a few bucks on carts and carts worth of stuff! And I admire it, even though the things they buy don't always make sense to me. I don't, for instance, understand why one would need sixty bottles of mustard (or, like, even TWO bottles of mustard. Mustard isn't that good and it kind of lasts forever). What I'm saying is that it looks like a satisfying thing to be good at. I don't have the desire or storage space necessary to buy hundreds of bottles of laundry detergent and chicken fingers, but I sure WOULD like to be able to march into a grocery store or Target and buy the things I actually need and only have to spend four dollars. I'd like to coupon, but without having to spend the sixty hours a week looking up internet coupons and stealing newspapers.
Um. Anyway the purpose of that whole paragraph was to explain: there are some things I just want to be good at without actually having to work at and learn it. It's why learning to sew on a sewing machine is still untouched at #13 on my Life Scavenger Hunt even though I got a sewing machine a couple years ago. I read the instruction manual and learned how to thread the thing and sewed a few crooked lines of stitches into an old pair of underpants, but now I just want to go straight to being able to whip up complicated quilts and whimsical stuffed animals. (I was also very disappointed to learn how much IRONING is involved in sewing.)


So. I would like to be good at some things (not EVERY thing) without having to work at it. DIY home improvement is something I'd like to be good at, but I hate reading instructions and also I don't have a workroom or, like, a basic understanding of tools and construction. I can daydream all I want about creating a built-in wall of shelves behind my bed but it just isn't going to happen. For the present time I tend to stick to smaller-scale projects and even they can sometimes turn out disastrous.

I saw this idea at a friend's house the first time, and I thought it was brilliant-- an extra shower curtain rod against the wall of your shower for all the miscellaneous crap that would otherwise be cluttering up the ledges of the bathtub! Apparently it was such a good idea that it had even made Pin-interest (what my mom calls Pinterest). Examples here and here.

The idea looked easy enough, so I gave it a go:
Ta da!
I bought a shower curtain rod at Bed Bath and Beyond and then picked up some cute pink and white plastic baskets at the Japanese variety store (it's like a dollar store with bento boxes). It was a bit of a challenge getting the baskets on there and then hoisting the whole thing into the shower and sproinging it out to secure to the walls, but I did it.
And it came out perfect!

Two hours later:
*crash*
Yeah... it fell down. And then I put it back up. And it fell down again the next day. And then I had someone stronger than me (anyone is stronger than me, but in this case it was boyfriend) put it up. And it fell down again. I gave up, pulled the baskets off the shower rod, and distributed them within the bathroom as freestanding stuff-holding receptacles. I won't tell you what I did with the shower rod (nothing. It's still in the bathroom, leaning against the wall).
My first pin-interest project? Nailed it.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Potpourri

I bought so much felt food today that I could almost host a felt dinner party!
That was the sentence that I wanted to start this post with in order to explain that, hey everyone, I bought a whole bunch of felt food today that I'll be giving to my nieces for Christmas. But then I realized that's... pretty much it.

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I don't know how to tell this story without making myself sound lame and incompetent, but here it is anyhow: I got a needlestick last week. We had a patient come in who was having knee pain so the doctor decided we should aspirate the fluid from the joint. I was all sterile techniquing and prepping the area and whatnot and then the doctor handed me the (sterile) needle and the (sterile and empty) syringe and said "Okay now you have to make sure that the needle is on really tight because if you have an air pocket you won't get any fluid when you pull back." So I diligently grasped the needle and the syringe, attached them together, and then gave them a good twist to make sure they were nice and tightly fitted together.
And then my hand slipped and the cap came off and the needle jabbed THROUGH MY THUMB and into my palm and all of a sudden I was standing there with a bare needle in one hand and a handful of blood in the other and it was all just a crappy week from that point on.

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I was driving yesterday and I said to my boyfriend (yep, boyfriend. I'll have to tell you more about him later!) "Hey, I think that's the pawn shop where I sold some of my jewelry." And he said "Well, that's kind of sad." And I've been thinking about it and I guess it is sort of sad. Except for it was a couple of years ago and it wasn't any, like, heirloom or something from my parents. It was actually just some jewelry from an ex. I didn't wear it and I needed the money so I sold it and I don't regret doing so.
This has gotten me thinking about a couple other things. Ex boyfriend KC painted me a picture of my cat for Christmas a couple years ago and then got it all fancy framed for me. Which, at the time was nice except that it wasn't a surprise since he painted it in my apartment and also I later found out that back when he was with his ex girlfriend he had painted a picture of her cat and presented it to her as a gift and also that her painting included a love note written on the back. I wasn't sure which one to be more upset about at the time-- the fact that that mine did not include a love note or the fact that the painting itself was a RECYCLED GIFT IDEA. But I digress.
Anyhow I still have the thing, it's sitting in my storage locker and I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm not going to give it back to KC, who I haven't seen or talked to in two years. I'm not going to give it to the Goodwill because I don't want someone to buy it and have a portrait of MY cat in their house, but I also don't want to throw it away because it's of my CAT and if I'm superstitious at all (which I am) I feel like that might invite bad karma onto him or something. It's also not the best painting of a cat you may have ever seen-- he took a photo of Bowie and then enlarged it, and then traced it on a canvas and then sharpied a grid and used the grid as a guide for where to paint the colors, which means that you can see a grid in the background of the painting.
Relatedlyish, there was a dude I dated for a little bit who brought me a painting of a bicycle and then asked me to shave his back. I actually like the painting-- it is of an old-timey bicycle with, y'know, the HUGE front wheel. So I like it because it's quirky and looks like something I might have picked out for myself and I thought I might just be able to forget about the guy and his odd body hair request, but... Okay no. I just decided that I'm not going to keep it. Okay, is anybody in the market for a portrait of my cat and a painting of a bicycle?
I feel like I should circle back around here and point out that current boyfriend is a good gift-giver. He's also nice to me. Smiley face, etc.

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I started taking my nieces and nephew to the flea market which is a win-win because I get to hang out with them and I also get to go to the flea market. At first they were shy to talk to the booth owners but now they're total pros, "How much is this? Oh fifteen dollars you say? I'll give you eight." I STILL sometimes get flustered and embarrassed when I try to haggle "Twenty dollars? Ummmmmm. Yeah okay. Here. [Runs away]", so it looks like this is yet another way that my nieces and nephews are cooler than I will ever be.

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Whenever my dad goes to Starbucks for my mom he says his name is "Pete" in the hopes that someday someone will call out "Pete's coffee!"