just be.

the league of extraordinary discipline.

looks like i need to hitch my wagon to the league of extraordinary discipline and quit worshiping the league of extraordinary hedonism. my headaches seem to be getting better (i wish that i could shout and sing that with choirs of angels opening the heavens with beams of light streaming down on you straight from god, but just the word "hallelujah!" is going to have to do for now), which means that i can finally start exercising, i hope, without fear of migraine knocking me out for a couple of days. my body was so sick of junk food when i got back from maryland sheep and wool on sunday that i was craving brown rice and vegetables monday for lunch, even in the face of plenty of available naughtiness in the house. and my wallet has been reduced to a smoking pile of ashes after a tear through the world of yarn and getting ready for summer vacations. oh, and that yarn and an equally large tear through the world of patterns means that i have a universe of projects surrounding me in virtually every room of my house (which is a lot—it's a big old house).

when i want to be self-disciplined, i can really kick it. it's that whole deciding to be my best self that holds me back. today, i'm hoping that that best self shows itself with a ferocity that scares away the self-indulgence for a while.

weekends rule.

this is how i know every year that our anniversary is coming.
on our wedding day, my husband figured out some way to get six beautiful white daisy plants into our hotel room--the room where i'd dressed before the wedding. so some time between my leaving for the edgewood club and my returning between the reception and after-party, someone filled the room with them. i was dumbstruck. he'd already sent me a beautiful bunch of flowers there while i was dressing, so i totally wasn't expecting anything else.

anyway, we were SO EXHAUSTED after the wedding, even the next day, which we planned to have for cleanup, packing, and recuperation before the honeymoon, we were still wiped out. so the daisies sat in their pots on our side porch for a week while we were gone to ireland. and i think for the following week, but i could be remembering that wrong. anyway, i was sure that we'd killed them like i do every other plant in my life.

but the week before our first anniversary, like little clocks, the daisies bloomed beautifully. hugely. and the second year even more. the plants are huge now and really need a serious pruning this winter, but they have begun to bud and yesterday i found the first bloom. (wednesday is our three-year anniversary.) they make me so happy.

it's our leather anniversary. he always buys me something, so i'm guessing that he'll think of something, but i have no idea what. i told him he could get me yarn and put it in a leather bag or briefcase we already have. as for him, he wants shoes. no idea what kind, but i usually get to voice an opinion; i suspect that we'll go looking for some next weekend.

it's been three great years, each better than the last. hard to believe, because i thought that we were really happy our *first* year. pretty cool. this year, of course, was mostly about the house; all the big work is finished, and we're just trying to make time to finish the projects on *our* to-do list (priming and painting, putting things away that have been stored in boxes and bags and piles for the past year) and waiting for the contractors to finish the few things left on their punch list.

our current mission is finding a nice-looking, sturdy, energy star-compliant ceiling fan for the living room. i really don't like ceiling fans visually, so i'd determined that we'd put only one in, in the master bedroom, because it's on the third floor so would get hottest. but after feeling what a huge difference it makes, i decided that we need one in the living room, too. problem is, all the sort of ye olde-looking ones coem without lights--you have to buy a separate light kit. and they're expensive. i don't want modern in this room, particularly, though all the furniture is midcentury modern. (hm. maybe i should reconsider my decision.) i've been thinking that with the sky-blue ceiling and pale-green walls (well, they *will* be those colors), i wanted something a bit darker to balance it out. all the wood in the room is walnut or a facsimile thereof, so maybe that's what i'm picturing. i don't know. anyway, the point is that i have spent inordinate amounts of time looking at ceiling fans online, trying to find something that meets those requirements and has a light or is compatible with a light kit that i like.

included in this process was looking at the fans at lowe's yesterday, and of course i got distracted on the way. i found this chandelier that i wished i'd seen before i bought the one we have in our dining room-to-be.

i absolutely love it. totally captivated by it. i have no idea whether it's energy star compliant, but it's gorgeous. i also saw a flush-mount fixture that i hope is energy star compliant, because i really want to use it somewhere.
we have fixtures up in the craft room (HOORAY!) and the front entry (YAY!) that i like, but this would be great somewhere. maybe the new bathroom; i don't think we have a fixture for that yet, and it's slated for modern.

after hours of errands of that ilk yesterday, i did get a few minutes to knit at the store and more time at home. really bad migraines lately that are ridiculously persistent mean that i've done my share of sleeping, unfortunately; i decided to pay cash for the prescription that my insurance won't cover. seems that it's just a dosage of sumatriptan (imitrex) that's a little larger than standard (though smaller than my current dose) plus naproxen sodium (aleve) to keep the pain from returning later (a lot of aleve, but still). so after i pay $150 for this round of nine treximet ($200 normally, but i get a $50 coupon from glaxo to try it), i'm likely to try using four aleve + an imitrex instead of buying it again. just hope it works.

the only other excitement in my life, as usual, is knitting. i'm making a good basic pullover out of this amazing cashmere+silk yarn that i bought on vacation this year.

chloe and jack-jack, one week in

i managed to get one reasonably decent photograph of chloe. i thought i was doing well--took five in a row--but the rest are all embarrassingly blurry :(
this is her sitting beside me while i worked. she was a purring machine. zuzu napped on my left side and luxo on the floor. jack-jack zoom-zoomed around and then snuggled and zoomed some more.

i did manage to get a few okay ones of jack-jack when he decided it was his snuggle time. his eye has cleared up from that nasty ointment that foster mum put in, though he sneezes occasionally (not as often as poor chloe--i'm glad the vet is thursday).

i'd say it's a pretty good work environment :)

oh--edited to add that chloe is now officially queen chloe nom-nom of the quadripeds. and jack-jack is the incredible jack-jack zoom bernard. (i use "officially" loosely, of course. officially in my head.)

what's up, pussycat?

well. y'all know that i am a famously craptastic photographer, so i'm not even going to try to tell you how bad these are. but i have the shaky hands, an iphone camera (god knows where my olympus is these days), and, well, kittehs who don't get the whole "posing" thing.

in case you're wondering, we adopted two kitties from the animal rescue league last weekend. i have been wanting a pair badly since about a year after kuan yin died (so, april 2006). after lots of not wanting to talk about it, on friday, smartboy finally agreed to talk to me about it. i had to promise no long-haired cats and that i would take care of them, since he does virtually everything else around here. saturday, i was on petfinder and found what lisa and i like to call a big girl for her age--15 pounds of big-boned tuxedo cat. i emailed the foster mum, as the page instructed, and we swapped a bunch of emails and finally talked by phone sunday morning. turns out that she not only has big dogs (one of our requirements was, of course, that the cat be at least accustomed to dogs if not a fan of them) and lots of cats (both foster and her own), she also lives TWO BLOCKS from me. so we set an appointment to go over to meet the five cats she'd selected as possibilities for us based on what i'd told her, and we took the dogs. they were really great--very excited and curious, of course, but very well-behaved. we took out one or two cats at a time, and the tuxedo cat instantly ingratiated herself to me. vocal, totally unafraid of the dogs, and snuggly. we declined the gorgeous but skittish blue-siamese mixes (twin boys), narrowing the second slot down to a little golden tabby girl (four months old) named daisy and a petite but full-grown all-black beauty named justin. justin was also totally unafraid of either the tuxedo (being called kate at the time) or the dogs.

we asked bev (the foster) whether we could take care of the adoption sunday afternoon but have her keep them until tuesday to give us a chance to set up some dogproof spots for litter boxes and food (and just a safe place to which to escape when the dogs became too much). so sunday afternoon, after completing the paperwork and paying the (ridiculously small) adoption fee (so small that i was glad i'd sponsored two other cats' adoption fees the night before), we went to petco and got all kinds of supplies, and spent our (meager) free time the next two days getting ready for them. on our unused back stairs, smartboy built a little platform on which to put one litterbox, safe behind a baby gate, and helped me set up other things.

bev brought them over tuesday afternoon, and they have been awesome. chloe, as we renamed kate, instantly became queen of the quadripeds; if she wants water and jack-jack (previously known as justin) is presently drinking from the big bowl (their favorite; they share it with the dogs, though they have two kitty-sized water dishes in their room, a.k.a. my craft room), she just gives him A Look and he moves out of the way for her. and the dogs are pretty much afraid of her. she hides a bit more than i thought she would, mainly (i think) to stay away from the dogs, but any time i'm on the first floor, where she hides, she follows me around like a little dog. so here is the best of the awful pictures i've been able to get of her.
she has really lovely coloring. her eyes are yellower than green, and she's coming off a little upper-respiratory infection and an ear infection, but those seem to be clearing up nicely. the three of us (she, jack-jack, and i) go to see the vet later this week.

jack-jack, named for the littlest child in the incredibles, is adorable and very, very busy. he is sweet as he can be, completely unafraid of the dogs--even playing with them sometimes, though they quickly get too excited and we have to settle things down again--and very talkative. he chirps and trills all.day.long. and he wants to be into EVERYthing. naturally, i have no *good* photos of him, but i do have photos, because he comes into the well-lit spaces much more often to hang out.


he is just a little love bug and loves to look around from your shoulder if you pick him up, purring like a little motor the whole time. and he has the cutest little paws. not a hair of any color other than black. i just adore him. they are the friendliest, calmest cats i've ever known (which, if you knew the cats i've known, you'd know is not saying much, but srsly: they really are friendly and calm).

so that, plus 16-hour (billable hours) work days, are what have been keeping me busy this week. chaotic but rewarding on both counts.

the bad news is that we were so wrapped up in all of this that we *completely* neglected to notice that preseason football started! we totally missed the stillers playing the eagles friday night! how did that happen? we are really bummed. but i'm happy to report that we are squarely installed in the new living room, so the contractors met their deadline :) they're not totally finished with everything yet, but they've done so much and have very little left to do. i haven't looked at an updated punch list in weeks, but i'm pretty sure that there are just small projects left to do. yay! (then, of course, we get to start begging friends to help us paint. i'm pretty sure that the cats won't be particularly useful on that count.)

(edited to add: these are very privileged cats, too. they eat off original (1950s) russel wright residential melamine dishes just like these (only in lots of different colors, i imagine because my late stepgrandmother collected them over time rather than having bought them as a set).

cover me in black and call me hildi.

read over on the house blog about our plans and progress there. i cannot wait to start painting!

finally!

well, let me tell you what: this is the first day in *weeks* that i haven't needed to medicate a migraine. woke up with a small one and have managed to work a long day without making it worse. i tried to nap briefly this afternoon, but there was just too much to do :( but the happy news is that i'm within an hour of sleepytime and i don't think i'll have to take anything. this makes me very, very happy. i'm supposed to medicate no more than three times in any seven-day period, and i've been doing WAY more than that; this is bad, because your body learns to depend on the medication to regulate and supply serotonin instead of doing those jobs itself. this is a big problem for chronic migraineurs like myself, so when i get into those cycles, i really panic. i did a round of cycle-breaking steroids last week and though i might need more this week, but i have at least temporarily broken the cycle. yay!

some of this may be because there isn't a contractor running power tools all day every day any more. the only work going on at the moment is plastering, and the plasterers basically stopped showing up. the contractor is bringing in someone else finally, being as sick of these plasterers' unreliability as we are, so hopefully that'll wrap up soon. i've got colors picked out and am going to pick up samples of a few colors each in benjamin moore aura, mythic, and freshaire paints (three good low- and no-voc paints) to be ready when the plastering is finished. prime, paint, and move some stuff from the first floor to upstairs finally. i cannot wait.

i also need to plant some plants this weekend. one of the ones i bought a few weeks ago is on its last legs--er, roots--i think, but maybe if i can plant it well saturday or sunday it'll survive. the other two seem to be holding on; the hostas are downright thriving. it was ridiculously exciting to me to watch this tiny little pair of plants that started as just little shoots with roots grow visibly every day. who knew they'd grow so fast? i love the matte blue hostas, but these are the variegated yellow-green ones. anyway, they are everywhere in our neighborhood, so i'm guessing that they'll thrive in our yard. i have some places picked out for them and may buy more this weekend. another one that seems to be hanging in there but not exactly booming is a little peony, and then i have some bulbs to plant, assuming that i can figure out how. inside, i have a pretty little succulent that seems to be doing okay. this is all exciting, because i have a terrible record with plants. big brown thumb for me.

the only other news is that last weekend, anna and i had a fantastic time at the maryland sheep and wool festival. i spent WAYYYYY more money than i should have, but i got some beautiful yarns. my first project with any of it is a pair of socks using blue moon fiber arts' socks that rock mediumweight (my all-time favorite sock yarn, maybe my favorite anything yarn) in monsoon, a beautiful blend of blacks, greens, and browns. love it. love it! i also bought another colorway of the same yarn, another colorway of the heavyweight, three skeins of laceweight silk (surprise: in steely blues), and from another maker (tess' designer yarns), some dk-weight wool+silk (surprise: in steely blues). so beautiful. oh, and a (surprise: steely blue) hoodie that is now my all-time favorite sweatshirt. well, except for my steeler hoodie. but this one has a great shape to it with no elastic or ribbing in the cuffs or hem, which i love and have a hard time finding.

my husband has the apnea. he also flunked a test for narcolepsy, but the doctor eliminated that possibility with some other factors. but the apnea it is. i am so proud of him and grateful to him for dealing with this, and i can't wait until he doesn't snore any more and feels rested during the day :)

time to pick the fixtures!

well, the fun part has begun. check out the bathroom fixtures we chose last night and this morning!

a sideways toilet is nobody's friend.

head on over here to see the latest progress photos on the house.

house beautiful?

i finally got around to taking some photos of the progress being made on the house. it's quite chaotic at home, but very exciting to see evolving. take a look!

we have stairs!

they're not finished yet, but they're in. w00t!