Corner of Bourbon & Division

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.

ashforestwalker finished the kitchen and dining room today, and very nicely put a lot of my kitchen stuff back in the general vicinity of the kitchen so that I can put it away more easily. So, yay!

Today has been a whirlwind of excitement, consisting mostly of groceries. Yeah, I knew you'd find that thrilling. ;)

Tomorrow if I can I'll do some cooking for the week.

I could really use a nap, but the parental units are coming by soon to see the new paint job. I have so much tidying to do it's not even funny. Feh.

At least the new paint makes me very very happy.

I have spent the entire week thinking it was a day or even two later than it really was. This makes for a very, very slow week, let me tell you.

I am back on n00b-training duty, although the current n00b is a much quicker study than the previous one. However, she doesn't have nearly as tractable a personality, either. We get along, but she's got a heck of a lot of attitude. Not bad, just... forceful.

The painting proceeds apace. Every time I come home, I find new surfaces in my place that look wonderful. Today I came home to find that my dining room had expanded by two feet. Upon closer inspection, it turned out simply that ashforestwalker had painted over the terra-cotta wall in there. Right now it's only primer, but man does it make a difference!

Tomorrow I will come home to my long-anticipated yellow kitchen. Woohoohoo! After that I have to pick out a new paint colour for the bedroom, and with any luck the entire place will be done before I know it.

Of course, since tomorrow is kitchen-painting day, I have to clear off ALL my counters and the like to make room. Eesh. I have a LOT of stuff on my counters, so it's going to be a wee bit epic.

I am also determined to go to bed decently early. This whole week has consisted of bad bedtimes.

Wish me luck!

My flakedom today knows no bounds.

I forgot that I was not supposed to go to work this morning, but rather that I have two days' worth of St. John's Ambulance CPR & First Aid training, courtesy of my employers.

Luckily the training is actually scheduled much later than my actual work shift, so I was able to correct course with lots of time to spare. It also meant I wasn't home at 15:00 the way I'd told ashforestwalker, and while I tried to communicate this to him via my answering machine, I'm not sure the message got through. More on that later.

Let me tell you, some of those baby-shaped mannequins are scary, especially the one which had its eyes open. ADD!Supervisor and one of the newbies was also there with me, and we spent a good portion of the class giggling in a most unseemly manner. The three of us are all pretty well-versed in CPR and first aid, and so much of the course was repetition and not super interesting. It was fun: I bonded with the newbie, and overall learned some new things and refreshed my memory of the rest. The instructional videos were pretty funny, though, complete with really ominous music, very heavy on the cello, and lots of sharp notes.

I could have done without the headache that's been plaguing me since yesterday, but it's fading now, which is nice.

ashforestwalker came in today to continue painting, and I must say that the front entrance and living room are gorgeous. ashforestwalker has a real talent for doing fantastic edging, among other things, which really gives a polished, finished look to the painting job. The green I picked is particularly vibrant. So much so that it kind of makes the yellow look a bit faded, but overall it's a nice effect. It's given a lot of life to the front rooms. I may have to hang a picture or two on the left-hand wall, because it's quite large, and with no windows or doors it's like a GIANT WALL OF GREEN FOREVER. It needs something to break it up a little bit.

So, yes. Today has been a very good day. I am looking forward to having the rest of the apartment painted, especially the kitchen.

Speaking of good news and being a flake, while I was tidying up my living room and moving piles of books downstairs so that ashforestwalker could come and paint, I found the DVDs I thought I had lost the other day. The other DVD that I would eventually have realized I was missing was Donnie Darko, but it turns out they were there all the while, cunningly disguised as a pile of books. :P

There was much rejoicing, however, as I was very put out at having lost them.

Schroedinger's power supply is doing it again. The computer doesn't recognize that the power supply is plugged in, and I am once again running off battery power.

The last two times it did this (it appears to do it at random intervals), the problem fixed itself after I left the computer alone in a corner to think about what it did. So I shall be trying that for a while.

Of course, ashforestwalker came today to set up for painting tomorrow (I shall have gorgeous new colour in the front rooms as of tomorrow night! YAY!), and so all my furniture is bunched up in such a way that I can't pop in a movie or anything to pass the time. I guess I shall be forced to read in bed. Oh no!

After losing first the internet and then my cat, I have run out of emotion for this latest chapter in the saga. I am pretty sanguine about the whole mess, all things considered. It figures, though, that the minute I acquire functional wireless internet, that my computer would throw a hissy fit.

In better news, I am having supper with moonandtree, who has promised me the World's Best Salad. It was supposed to be a barbecue, but since it's pouring rain out there we've taken a raincheck on that.