The Negotiation Limerick File

The penny floor is grouted and ready for urethane coating (about to start that), the wallpaper is up - can't find a picture of it online, it's black and white vintage advertising, with ads for dog bread and corsets and instantaneous chocolate. The light is up too - here it is. I want to see if we can change the shades to clear glass and use vintage light bulbs.

We found out only last week that there was a steampunk con only about 3 hours away, so we made plans to day trip it on Saturday. However, after I woke up at 5:30 to start getting ready I realized I didn't really want to drive that far, have to figure out where to change clothes, that sort of thing. Turns out Jeff felt the same way, so we went back to sleep. The rest of the day was pretty productive; we went to a local park to shoot footage for his next music video, he made some spotlights, I graded and did some office reorganization.

In a good news / bad news event, they are remodeling the English department this summer, but that means we have to pack up all our books and papers. This is a little traumatic for me, I have trust issues to begin with (especially where my books are concerned), and I found out that when they remodeled the history department last summer some of their possessions went astray! So I only trusted the uni with things that could easily be replaced, and photographed the interiors of each box, and numbered each box - told you, trust issues. I had to figure out what I would need for summer writing and first thing in the fall, so I've got those labeled, and that's where the office organization came in. I liberated a bookshelf that has just been stashed in a corner for my home office. Most of my stuff is here, I have a couple of floor lamps (I hate fluorescent lighting) and a couple of boxes to bring home, but since I have to sit in on senior capstone presentations this week, I'll have ample opportunity to bring them home.

Sunday we went to a vintage base ball game for a picnic lunch. I'm not up on regular baseball, much less the vintage variety, but it was still fun. Jeff (who never does anything halfway) packed sandwiches in wax paper and decanted root beer into blue glass bottles. At the end of the game, the captain of the home team thanked us for dressing up for their event, so that was cool.

Seriously. What sane human who understands how indoor plumbing works says, "forget about that easy to clean tile floor, no, I want to install motherfucking wall-to-wall carpet in the bathroom!" Joys of paying a mortgage. The toilet in the master bath broke even before we were living here full-time. Sigh. So we pulled out the old toilet and the regrettable carpeting tonight. Ick. The subfloor needs to air out, I hope it isn't ruined. The original plan was to put down some decent but cheap linoleum, though now I'm wondering how bad it would be to just go ahead and put in some tiles like this for the floor. And get a new vanity while we are at it, like this.  I think I will try to slap on a coat of paint, maybe a dusty purple, while there is no toilet in the way. Take out the dumb shower door, and ta-da, the bathroom is decent.

I admit it. I'm a clutter person, I'm not good at keeping stuff organized and definitely not good with managing paperwork. I have to be in a certain mood to part with things, and I hate throwing things that might be useful away, I'd much rather find a good home for those. Add my predilection for having more than one project going and you've got a huge mess in my office / sewing room. So this morning after watching an episode of Mission: Organization, I decided to take on the disaster area. One of their techniques is to move stuff out of the room that's being worked on, so since the in-laws' visit is over, I've done that. I moved my cute but poorly-placed end table (it's decoupaged with postage stamps!) , it was too close to the door and I've injured myself on it more than once. I need more storage space so Big Lots provided a plastic chest of three drawers - one contains yarn
(because I just had to try to learn crochet, didn't I?), another contains regular clothes in progress and the third contains costuming projects. I hope I can maintain this, I have a bad habit of cutting out, say, a skirt and then abandoning it for several months, during which time it becomes separated with patterns and instructions. The drawers aren't quite big enough to contain a large quantity of velvet, so I'm going to have to find a place to keep larger pieces of projects. Looks like under Grandma's sewing machine cabinet may be a good place.

The floor clutter is mostly cleared up, I hope to finish this task before bedtime today.  That leaves the desk and sewing table {shudder}. Dealing with paperwork is my weakest point. I can do things like organize (and even maintain the organization) of sewing supplies like trim and laces and ribbons. But paper? I just shove it all in the file cabinet, or worse, pile it up under my desk. It's an L-shaped desk, so there actually is a decent amount of space there, I'm thinking another set of drawers perhaps.

I need to make curtains for the kitchen and bedroom, so if I can finish that project, that will get a couple of fabric piles off the floor. And then, once this room gets taken care of, it's on to the library - sigh.

One of the up sides to my efforts today is I found my vintage green bead necklace from the 50s! Yay! Lately I've been drooling over vintage dress patterns from that era, and have picked up a couple already. Of course, they will require a bit of redrafting - but they are so wonderful! I love those big skirts...