mousme: A text icon, dark green text on pale green, that reads There is no normal life. There's just life. (No Normal Life)
Happy post-Canada Day! I had to go to work in the midst of the craziness that is downtown Ottawa just as the fireworks were ending. Absolute madness, but I was able to get through thanks to a letter from my manager explaining that I'm an essential worker and a (mostly) understanding police officer. Now I just have to get through this night shift without falling asleep at my desk.

The building of the Murphy bed is an ongoing saga. It is a huge undertaking for people who aren't accustomed to doing such things on the regular. My friends Dylan and Sarah came over on Saturday to help me build it, and by the end of the day only the upright cupboard part of the bed was built and anchored to the wall, so I had to sleep on the cot one more night. Sarah came back on Sunday and we got the bed part built enough that I was able to sleep in it that night, but we still weren't done. She came back today, and we were able to add the "doors" that make the Murphy bed look like a wardrobe when it's folded up (they are not functional doors, for the record), and also put together the shelving portion of the built-in desk part of it. We are still not done.

I'm on nights this week, so I got about two hours of sleep before Sarah came over, and then KK let me take a nap in her room later, so I'm chugging along on about four-ish hours of sleep in total. I haven't been much help in building my own bed, mostly because Sarah kept kicking all of us out of the room, preferring to work on her own for most of the time, but also because I've been trying to get a million things done at once, which is working about as well as you'd expect. 

I'm cautiously optimistic that once the Murphy bed is completely built I'll start getting more on top of things, because I'll be able to fully unpack my bedroom and hopefully get it set up for maximum efficiency, and from there I'll be able to keep going in the rest of the house. The kitchen and living room are a bit more unpacked now, but we're nowhere near done.

I also need to take several days to go back to the old house to clear out the remaining stuff from there, clean the place from top to bottom, and then hopefully find someone relatively inexpensive to repair the basement walls. Longtime readers will remember that my cats did not react well to the stress of moving many years ago and had peed extensively in the basement, damaging the walls to the point where the bottom of the drywall had to be cut away in many places. I may try repairing it myself, since it's just a question of getting drywall cut to the correct dimensions, screwing it in place, and then screwing some shiplap over it (I think it's called shiplap, it's basically cheap white wooden slats). It doesn't have to be done well, it just needs to be done.

All right, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Clever Canadians)
Well, I didn't miss it so much as I slept through it. Night shifts will do that to you.

Happy belated Canada Day, everyone! *cough*

I have at once very little and too much to talk about these days, so much so that every time I open up a new LJ post my mind kind of goes blank. Part of me feels guilty about making a personal post when I still haven't finished my June posts, and another part of me just doesn't even know where to begin with a personal post anyway.

*throws up hands*

Neurotic? Me? Never. :P

Tonight is my last night shift for the week. I'm heading home directly after this because the fence guys are coming at 7:00, and I am quite sure that unless someone is there to guide them with a firm hand, they will find more reasons to freak out and not build a fence for me. It's been three weeks now since the last time they were supposed to build the fence, and I'll be damned if I let this get put off a single day more.

On Thursday I have a guy coming in to install the new floor in the basement, which means that tomorrow (technically today, I guess) I'll be spending the day moving all the stuff out of the basement so he can work. Well, all the stuff that can be moved, I suppose. I can't move any of the appliances (too heavy), and there's the giant wall unit that will have to be taken apart before it can be moved. Also the turtle tank, though we can at least empty that and move the turtle as needed. There is so much stuff in the basement right now that it feels a little overwhelming, but I figure once I get started it won't be as bad as I imagine. I've always had the tendency to blow things out of proportion in my mind, after all.

I'm not sure how long the floor will take to install, but I'm assuming it'll be a 2-3 day job, given that there will be furniture to move around. That means that he will hopefully be done by Saturday, or Sunday at the latest, which means that the house can then go up for sale ASAP. If he's done on Saturday then I can get stuff settled back in the basement on Sunday. On Thursday and Friday, while the work is going on in the basement I'm going to do a big push to pack non-essentials and start the process of "staging" the house, to make it look as appealing as possible to potential buyers. That means de-cluttering the bedroom in particular, packing some of the books and organising the rest, and clearing up space on shelves and counters and such. Hopefully the buyers will be able to see past the piles of boxes and throw all their money at me. ;)

If the house doesn't provoke much interest right away, I will discuss painting with my real estate agent. I already need to paint at least one wall in the basement, and will probably need to fix/paint the back wall that Smudge damaged all those years ago when he used to use the wall as a ladder to climb up into the basement ceiling to hide. There are pretty deep scratch marks in the wall that I have no idea how to fix, but I assume putty and paint will be involved.

Long before the emergency in Moncton, I committed to three days of overtime next week. Just the thought of it kind of makes me want to weep from exhaustion, but the extra money will come in useful, I suppose. I just don't know when I'm going to get anything done. Even if/when the house will be empty eventually, I kind of have to be there in order to get work done. I can't paint the walls remotely, no matter how hard I try. ;) At this point, getting the house painted by someone else is pretty much out of the question, as I have officially run out of money for renovations/prettying the place up. If I can find inexpensive white paint I can do it myself, since I can't imagine it would cost that much to buy enough paint for the walls, but I can't afford to pay someone else to do it. *sigh* Why is everything expensive?

This weekend the dog goes back to the vet, speaking of expensive things. The good news is, he doesn't have Cushings. The bad news is that he has Something Unspecified going on with his liver, which means blood tests AND taking him to the very expensive clinic in Lachine for an ultrasound. This will let the vet determine (we hope!) if his high levels of ALP are due to a tumour or to something else or who the fuck knows. He'll also be getting the stitches out of his eyelid on Saturday, which will be good news for all concerned. Here's hoping that that's the last we will ever hear about this eye surgery, because there's been quite enough veterinary trauma to last me a lifetime this year.

I'm not entirely sure how Sunday is going to shape up. I think I'm going to have to plan to leave later than I normally would, since I'm going to be gone for a week instead of the normal four days. So I have to pack as much stuff into the four days I'll be home as I humanly can, to make sure that I don't fall too far behind schedule. Then I'll be home the following Sunday evening, all of Monday, and then run back to work on the Tuesday for another five day stretch. Good times. Basically, July can be summed up as renos-work-work-renos-packing-work-work-work-try to sell the house-work-work-packing-work. Or something like that. Possibly not exactly in that order, and maybe with more work thrown in there for good measure.

So that's the summary of the last few days for me. Nothing at all, except for worrying about work, the house, and the dog, not necessarily in that order either.

\o/

Jul. 1st, 2013 08:14 am
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Canada)
Happy Canada Day, everyone!


canadian-flag-heart

Canada Day!

Jul. 1st, 2009 10:28 am
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Canada)
Happy birthday, Canada! :)


I am celebrating by working. At the RCMP. So I guess it's sort of fitting.
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Canadian Borg)
I ended up waking up half an hour before my alarm clock this morning. Weird. This is not usually my style. I guess my internal clock must still be messed up from working night shift.

Canada Day was lovely. Great weather, good friends ( and his lovely girlfriend), a nice picnic. Unfortunately, the headache I thought I'd licked came back with a vengeance on our way to [livejournal.com profile] owldaughter's Canada Day concert, and by the end I was ready to crawl into a hole and die. However, Canada Day comes up only once a year, and so I put on a brave face and toughed it out. The fireworks very nearly killed me, but luckily [livejournal.com profile] sandman7 had some Tylenol, which took the edge off.

All in all, in spite of the ice picks being driven into my head, I had a great time.

I got home to find a puddle of cat puke on my bed. I gave up the battle to keep the cats out of my bedroom earlier this summer, because it was either keep the door closed and suffocate from the heat, or let the cats in and retain some ability to breathe when I sleep. The cats thus have repaid me by puking in the middle of my bed. I was unimpressed.

So, unexpected laundry aside, I have been puttering around this morning, getting ready for my trip to Québec City tonight. I have tidied a little bit (minimally), and now I have to take a shower and pack my stuff. I also have to turn off my computer and find my 2006 NaNo novel, which I will be editing today in the company of [livejournal.com profile] tcaptain. I've already started the process, and with any luck I'll have a draft ready for submission by the end of the month, earlier if I really step on it.
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Canada)
I just spent an hour on the phone with Sympatico, because my high speed connection has been going down like a two-bit whore lately.

Turns out they need to send a technician... except that I'm not going to be home until next Monday, so I guess it'll just have to wait until then.

*sigh*

My computer problems always look ordinary from the outside, and they always turn out more complicated than I bargained for. So very annoying. At least this ought to be fixed next Monday morning.

Also, I have a latent headache. I suspect too much sleep, ironically.
mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Canada)
Today my nation is 139 years old, though its history started long before it officially became a country.

Happy Canada Day to all my fellow countrymen, and to all the rest of you out there who think Canada is a pretty neat place even if you don't live here.

I don't often engage in unadulterated patriotism (it's almost uncanadian ^_-), but I would like to state for the record that I am very proud to live here and that I would be hard-put to find another country where I'd want to live more.

O Canada )

The True North, strong and free.

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