Friday Failure: I'm a wreck edition!

     Oh hey, so I thought of another unfavorite to add to Wednesday's list: I'm sick. Again. I don't know what my immune system even does all day, because it's apparently not doing it's job. I started feeling horrible late Tuesday night, felt a little better Wednesday, then spent today (Thursday when I'm writing this) with a fever that's making me feel like somebody broke all my bones and rotisseried my skin (and you know I'm pretty freaking angry to feel like I have a full-body sunburn when I DIDN'T EVEN GO IN THE SUN WTF BIOLOGY THIS IS UNFAIR). 101.1 for much of the day, then it broke for a little while, but right now it's back up to 100.5 and I'm handling it super well. 

As a side note, I get super irritated with my phone constantly telling me my internet is unstable. YES THANK YOU I KNOW I LIVE HERE. 

     Ok so maybe not. Maybe I'm tinging a wee bit dramatic. Maybe I tried to make my bed today, got tired halfway through, then laid there watching The Proposal for like 45 minutes on just a sheet. I do what I must to carry on. 

     Ugh. I'm off to coat my achy joints in Icy Hot and try to force myself to sleeeep sleeeep sleeeep so I can hopefully wake up and feel a lot better in the morning. I mean, the hopefully is that I'll feel better. I'm most likely gonna wake up. Well this got dark fast. 

From fail to...slight less...fail-y....I dunno, these puns don't write themselves, you guys.

     So remember when I re-did that lap desk? Yeah that turned out to be a total failure. It sucked the first time around anyway because of that whole thing where I had forgotten why I freaking hate Mod Podge so much, but even after I finally thought I had it done with spray adhesive and clear lacquer, it ended up not working out. 

Booo, hissss.

     As I had feared, the paper pulled up on the edges and got torn up. Luckily I had a backup plan. See, it had occurred to me about an hour after I finished, as ideas tend to do, that if I was going to go with white and gold stripes, why didn't I just paint the damn thing in the first place? But at that point it was too late. 

     Which brings us to me tearing off that paper in big, satisfying chunks. I thought it would be miserable to scrape it all off, but it was actually alarmingly easy. But once it was all gone, there was this...

     The spray adhesive had left a sticky lumpy mess behind that I couldn't just paint over, so I took some sandpaper to it. Once that was done, I took some white spray paint to it...

     ...which was HORRIBLE AND PATCHY AND MADE ME FEEL SCREECHY AND THE SCREECHING ALARMED THE DOGS. I seriously had a rage meltdown at this stupid spray paint. It sucked so bad. I kept doing nice thin coast like good spraypainters are supposed to, and it just...never got any better. Once I'd done a truly stupid number of coats and it dried it didn't look quite as terrible, but I still glowered at it for a while before deciding if I even wanted to keep going. I was at a point where I'd put so much work into this stupid lap desk and it still looked like crap, so I kind of felt like I should just trash it and go buy a new one somewhere. But I persevered! Mostly because if I hadn't I wouldn't have had anything to post about today. Except maybe "I tried to do a project but it sucked because I suck at everything DESPAAAAIR" and I feel like I do those posts pretty often as it is, so. Anyway.

     After I gave it a good long while to dry, I taped off some stripes with Frog tape, since that's supposed to be le so much better than regular painter's tape. I just eyeballed them, because that's how I roll. 

     Then I went to town with my gold spray paint and pulled the tape off as soon as I was finished. Well, technically I waited long enough for me to fumble around for the tape packaging and read through all the "don't eat this, you'll die" warnings to get to the directions and find out if I was supposed to wait or not. Then I pulled it off. It felt like an accomplishment that I didn't have any color bleed underneath. 

     The stripes ended up covering most of the lingering patchy weirdness, and once I coated it with clear lacquer and brought it into its habitat it didn't look messed up at all (high praise). 

     So I guess I'm...satisfied with it? It works, it looks nicer than its previous incarnations, and it shouldn't peel up or chip or anything strange like that, and at this point I'll take that as a win. I know, I know, I'm almost too inspirational: "DIY! Take a drab thing and turn it into something that you don't entirely despise!" 

Never fails. Every time we have to switch clocks one way or another.

     I could never be a Time Lord. Aside from the whole "watching your loved ones grow old and die or get exiled to unvisitable alternate universes or whatever" thing, I wouldn't handle the time shifts well.

     

Quick Fixes: Alternate Ending Edition?

     One of the perils of working from home is that it's hard to designate a work space, so if you're anything like me you end up working in bed all day. Supposedly that's bad because then your brain associates climbing into bed with working instead of sleeping, so it's harder to sleep at night or whatever (the human brain is an amazing piece of machinery. And also really stupid). Plus I feel like if you sit on memory foam all day your ass'll turn to straight-up mush. I can't work at my desk because the chair is really uncomfortable and the height of it would make my head snap off my neck after a few hours of working (I hunch. I hunch bad). So I've been trying to get into the habit of using my super-comfy glider and a lap desk. That way it's comfy, I don't slouch over what I'm doing, and I can set everything aside to get up and walk around every now and again (so my butt doesn't turn to Play-Doh. The concern is real). The only problem? After staring at that lap desk for hours every day I started to resent it for its ugliness. I don't know why; it's not like it had, like, a repeating print of the poop emoji all over it. I just got really tired of looking at its fake wood-grain top. I make no claims that this is rational. It is but my truth. 

Ugh, look at it. It's like...smug. 

       My weird projections about the bad attitude of a slab of compressed sawdust aside, it also had some nail polish and ink stains on it that weren't exactly gorgeous. So a plan was hatched! First let's see how it turned out. 

Ta-daaaaa! If this picture looks hastily taken, it's because my camera kept saying "battery exhausted" and turning off before I could take an after picture and I was like "okwhateverfine camera, WE'RE ALL EXHAUSTED BUT WE STILL DO OUR JOBS." 

     So to get to this I took a roll of wrapping paper, cut a manageable approximation of the right size, then hit the lap desk with some spray glue and carefully rolled the paper across it, trying to keep it from getting any bubbles underneath. Then when it was all smooth I flipped it over and traced around it with an x-acto knife and did two coats of clear lacquer to seal it, so if I spill Diet Coke on it or something it'll wipe right off.

THAT'S HOW IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED.

     Now if I made that seem like it was all sunshine and daisies and the magical crafting gods smiled down upon me and said "let thine endeavors go smoothly on this day," that is because I am a tricksty hobbits who trickstily arranged her blog post to make her look like less of a failure. But then thought "whatever, everyone already knows I'm a failure" and decided to include the rest of the story too. 

     What actually happened was that when I bought the wrapping paper I thought "Oh I'll just mod-podge this onto the top and it'll be all glossy and decoupaged and cool!" And so I did a nice thin even layer of mod-podge, then carefully rolled my paper across, squeegeeing out any air bubbles as I went...only to have it turn wrinklier than the littlest piggy at the market after a long bath when it dried. At this point I stared at it, seething and remembering the last time I used mod-podge, which also ended with me saying "Why do people even use this? It suuuuucks!" Seriously, I am hard-pressed to remember a mod-podge project that didn't end in total unmitigated disaster. So it looked like crap, and it was too late to just pull it off and try again, so I spent twenty minutes scraping it off with a...spackler? What is this thing even called?

     So that was fun. And by fun I mean I sandpapered off my fingerprints trying to get the last bits off. 

     But all's well that ends well, and it looks nice now. And I learned an important lesson: Never to try a mod-podge project again as long as I live. Yay, learning! 

If we were gonna get rid of a planet, I'd have voted for Mercury.

     Look, Imma level with you. I sat here for an age trying to compile a favorites post for you, but first I couldn't get a good picture of the nail polish I'm obsessed with because it's glittery and I couldn't do it justice, then when I finally got one that I thought I could work with, ALL THE TECHNOLOGY BROKE. Like my photo-editing software was all "nope, not today sucka" so I figured, whatever, I'll just use picmonkey or something, then EVEN THAT WOULDN'T WORK because Chrome is doing a thing right now where none of my plug-ins work? And usually when Chrome starts acting up I just switch over to Firefox until Google sorts it out, but apparently nothing wants to work there either? Anyway the point of this rant is that MERCURY IS IN RETROGRADE AND Y2K IS HERE 14 YEARS LATE. Ok, I'll stop getting all capsy now. I just have a lot of feelings. Cranky feelings. I drew you a self-portrait to share these feelings in freaking Microsoft Paint (which still works fine, probably because Mercury Retrograde adversely affects technology, and MS Paint isn't technology anymore, it's in the same category as...I dunno, astrolabes) on my laptop using the touchpad because even my mouse has decided it doesn't want to work anymore (it just goes skittering all over the screen like it's on something reflective, but it's not. Maybe I need a mouse with a trackball in it? To the antique store!). 

     Yep, that about sums it up. 

I fail at online shopping.

I've been having a really hard time finding anything on my online shopping list lately. Most recently, I spent several hours looking for either a) new curtains or b) fabric to make new curtains, and couldn't come up with anything to my liking in either option. I looked at 3,872 different fabric prints (that's not an exaggeration, that's the actual number). And I still have no curtains. That's only the most recent in a string of failures. I just keep having moments where "I bet I could find it online" turns into someone finding me hunched over my laptop an hour later with a hollow look in my eyes. 

     Stop letting me down, internet. 

"I'm fighting a great and powerful evil right now...sadness."

     Title quote is from this comic, which is amazing and applicable to my life much of the time, so... do recommend. 

     Anyways, I'm feeling really down today and couldn't come up with anything to post about, so here is a hodgepodge of things off my phone that I thought may appeal to a variety of interests. 

IF YOU LIKE GROSS THINGS

    Then here is my gross blackened bruise from where I keep running into the pointy dangerous corner on the footboard of my bed. Amanda drew a lightning bolt on it to make it look more badass. 

IF YOU LIKE CUTE BABIES

     Then enjoy this picture of my niece lookin' fresh to death in her shopping outfit. 

IF BABIES AREN'T YOUR THING

     Then have a cute dog picture instead. 

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING SNARKY

     Then you'll appreciate this picture I took ages ago of a brilliantly honest description of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

IF YOU WANTED TO BEAR WITNESS TO A WEIRD CONVERSATION THAT MADE ME CHUCKLE

     Then you can peruse this one, but before you ask, I don't know what turning history off and on actually does, it was just me accidentally hitting buttons with my big meaty paws. So no, I'm not a time lord, unfortunately. 

That's all I got. The rest of the pictures on my phone are all various iterations of babies, cats, and food.  

Bleh.

     A horrible stomach bug has been making it's way through my family over the weekend. Jen and I were the first to fall, but everyone else eventually followed. The worst of it was over for me in about 24 hours, but between the physical recovery (lots of rest and all the water I can get my hands on -- I feel like one of those little dehydrated spongey toys you put in water to grow into a real animal) and trying to help everyone else survive this plague, this is the rare occasion on which I have nothin' for you. No crafts or recipes or funny stories, not even a cheeky drawing. I feel like coming back from the brink of puking-induced death is a reasonable excuse though, so I'm going to go with it just this one time. See you on Wednesday, hopefully fully recovered! 

     P.S. I saw a story on the news about how various kinds of stomach flu are flying around like black death right now, so everyone be vigilant about your hand-washing and stock up on fruit popsicles now, just in case. That's not me being flippant, they seriously gave me will to live. I would not lead you astray. 

Lesson Learned: I can't be trusted with a curling iron.

Friday Fail

     Because I know we all like to laugh together (you are laughing with me, right?) at our failures sometimes, I thought I'd kick off the weekend with a classic tale of "this was a way better idea in my head." 

     Whilst I was digging around in the attic for Christmas decorating supplies that weren't already earmarked for another location of the house, I came across a set of big plastic lighted snowflakes. Oooh, I thought, those would look so pretty in my closet window! See, the window in my closet is the kind that's round on top and right in the center of the house from the outside, so it would look really nice to have something lit up in there. So I dragged them downstairs and asked around about whether they had a predetermined place. Nope, they were free for my designs! So, with my mom's help, I got them hung up in the window using a combination of tape, command hooks, and yarn. From inside, they looked so pretty! Then I went outside...

Sorry for the picture quality, I can't hold my hands steady enough to take a better night shot, and I don't have my life together enough to use a tripod. 

     Light-up blobs! They were totally indistinct clusters of lights. It kind of looked like maybe I had started to hang lights in some other configuration, but they were too badly tangled so I left them that way. I had to admit defeat on that one. So I took them down, and I've been brainstorming what to put there instead. I have an idea involving a rope light, a wreath, and some string lights, but we'll see where it ends up. 

     Enjoy your weekend, everyone -- hopefully it will be failure-free for you! 

Way harsh, Facebook.

     I've noticed that the ads on my Facebook page have gotten increasingly insulting lately. Here's a few I had recently.

     I mean, Facebook has always kind of been like that one relative that's aggressively over-invested in why you're still single, and when are you going to get married because your eggs won't be good forever in case you didn't know, so tick tock. But I've only recently noticed it becoming a direct command -- GO ON A DATE! -- which is annoying first because DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO FACEBOOK, YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, and second because it's kind of like when you tell someone you haven't been sleeping well, and then when you're saying goodbye they say "Bye, get some sleep!" like you're going to turn around all wide-eyed and astonished, and say, "My God, you're right! The answer's been right in front of me all along! Go to sleep! Brilliant!" Oh, you noticed that I'm gearing up for a life of spinsterhood, eh Facebook? You're right, I should just go on a date! Nevermind that there's no men within fifteen years of my age in the surrounding wasteland of cows and moonshine stills, I'll just go on a date. Maybe one of the cows will go with me. That solves that problem. I'll just burn this stack of cat adoption papers. The pairing of that ad with the one for bridal photography is both baffling and kind of pushy. Baffling because clearly it knows that I'm single (you know, because I post my status every weekend as "Baying at the moon. #foreveralone") and obviously I have no need for a wedding photographer. Pushy because hey, let's take things one step at a time, Facebook. It's a pretty big leap from "Go on a date!" to "Plan your nuptials!"

     The menstrual pain study ad is...unsettling, to say the least. Mostly because I'm pretty sure I've never actually said anything about my lady sicknesses on Facebook. Granted, anyone with a lack of more rewarding and less creepy hobbies could easily learn way more than they needed to about the state of my uterus based on the alarming regularity at which I suddenly spend a week tweeting things like "Million dollar idea: someone start a business where I can pay an hourly fee to sit and brush a miniature pony when I'm sad," but that's not even the same social network. 

     I guess, though, based on the last ad there for experimental treatment for bipolar disorder, maybe something about my profile just gives off an "unstable" vibe, and they figure I must either be hormonal as all hell or straight-up mentally ill. And that's probably why I'm still single, I guess? I dunno. But until Facebook gets it together and finds an advertising algorithm that's slightly less openly acrimonious, maybe I'll just start posting a bunch of statuses about puppies and world travel until it picks up on the keywords and brings me some ads that don't imply I'm a crampy bipolar recluse with no concept of appropriate relationship pacing. 

Night night, sleep tight.

     I'd been wanting to make myself a sleep mask for a while now, for a totally First World Problems-esque reason: I like to fall asleep with the tv on, because listening to it keeps my mind just occupied enough to stave off my nighttime anxiety/racing thoughts, but not so occupied that I can't fall asleep. That's not the first world problem, though. It's that my tv is kind of too big and bright. Yeah, I'm sorry that I even made you read me saying that, because I realize what a jerk it makes me sound like. But it's true! It's a great tv for daytime, but when I'm trying to fall asleep, those bright white commercials can be a little jarring (somebody call the Waaaah-mbulance). So I decided I'd whip up a quick little eye mask to wear at night. Well, it would have been a quick project, were I not completely and utterly incompetent. But we'll get to that. First, let me get to the point and show you what I made. 

     As you can see, it's pretty simple. It's assembled from these pieces...

     I would have taken pictures of the assembly process, but as I mentioned, it was kind of a shit-show for me, so the documentation part slipped my mind. Basically I just cut out two pieces of a soft stretchy-ish fabric based on a template I made of paper, then cut out two layers of batting in the same shape, but smaller so they'd fit inside. For the straps, I made my life way more difficult than it had to be by making them out of fabric, sewing a long rectangle into a tube and turning it (the unfinished edge ended up inside the seam of the mask, so I didn't have to worry about that). In hindsight, I wish I'd just used ribbon. To assemble, I put the two pieces of the mask right sides together and sewed around everywhere except the sides, where I wanted the straps to attach inside. Then I turned it right side out, shoved the batting inside, lined up the straps, and sewed them in, closing the open spaces on the mask at the same time. To make the mask stay on and actually, you know, function, I sewed a bit of elastic at the back (you can see it in the top photo if you look closely; it's right underneath where the two straps overlap at the back). Finally, for the cheeky eyelashes and winged liner, I used some scrap lace and ribbon, attached with hot glue. 

     Did I make that sound simple? It really should have been. But nooo, I had to make it involve literal tears and blood. See, originally I was going to make the whole mask out of that blue fabric the straps are made from, but it turns out that fabric is a complete and utter bitch to sew on. It kept shredding and turning into this fine blue fuzzy dust in my hands. Absolute misery. Eventually my frustration got the better of me, and I decided to switch gears. The animal print fabric I chose instead was somewhat easier to work with, but since it's stretchy, it still gave me a few issues. I also somehow managed to gravely wound myself with a pin when placing the straps, which necessitated a ten minute break to hold a paper towel on my finger (I considered adding a picture of the bloodied paper towel for drama, but decided that was probably too gross and vaguely serial-killer-y). How do you hurt yourself so badly with a straight-pin that it bleeds for ten minutes? Hell if I know. Blind luck, I guess. So that's where the blood came in.  

     After that I figured I was in for a massively traumatic hot glue gun burn or something, but surprisingly I managed to traverse that minefield safely. Where it really all went to hell was when I was about two minutes from being done, as I was sewing in the elastic piece at the back. Remember those nice straps that I went to all the trouble of making out of that God-forsaken blue fabric composed of a heretofore unknown form of matter that is apparently only a solid mass until I touch it? Just after I finished sewing the first side of the elastic, I went to cut the thread using the little blade tucked away on the back side of my sewing machine. But somehow I managed to get the strap caught in the (seriously, freaking microscopic) blade instead, and in that one quick motion I'm used to doing to cut the thread, I SLICED RIGHT INTO MY BEAUTIFUL OVERLY COMPLICATED STRAPS LIKE GODDAMN SWEENEY TODD. It was at this point that I completely lost it. 

     I couldn't decide if I wanted to laugh or cry, so I kind of did both? It was that fifty-fifty split of sobbing and hysterical laughter that's generally reserved for disturbed lighthouse keepers. I'm sure it was frightening to behold. Especially because I did it while sitting in the middle of this mess:

     Not exactly the kind of beautiful, clean, organized, naturally-lit workspace all the other DIY bloggers have, but I'm pretty sure they're just photoshopping out all the candy wrappers and fabric schnibbles and bloodied tissue scraps. At least that's what I'm going to tell myself. 

     Anyway, after taking a tiny project and somehow turning it into a massive ordeal, I'm gonna go take that sleep mask for a spin and hope my next project goes more smoothly! 

All they need are good friends, good fun...and a little time in the Harmony Hut!

     Today's illustrated tweet is brought to you courtesy of the Addams Family Values and Congressional incompetence. 

Ch-ch-changes!

     Ok, now that the obligatory Bowie reference is out of the way, let's get on with the post. Fall is the season of change, and thus, appropriately, I've been making a few little changes here and there lately. Let's take a look-see. 

1. I did this to my laptop.

Should maybe have added a warning to grab a bowl for when your eyeballs pop out.

      I dunno why. Cause I'm a grown-up now and I can put stickers on WHATEVER I WANT, I guess. I was just randomly struck with the urge to make my laptop look like it belonged to a third grader, so I covered it in ponies and Batman and sharks and Hello Kitty and cupcakes. Such is my life. I'll be mature in the ways I have to be (like being punctual and honest and responsible and shit) but you can pry my stickers and cartoons and sugary cereals from my cold, dead, sticky-from-recently-eating-candy hands. But this explosion of chid-like glee isn't the only thing I did to my laptop...

     (On a side note, if you're wondering why my reading lamp is turned upside down like that, it's because when I turned it on the other day the light bulb went out, and when I tried to change the light bulb, it turned to shards and dust-clouds in my hand, resulting in a big debacle in which I was pretty sure I was gonna die from accidentally breathing the powdery stuff they put inside light bulbs, and the coroner would be sure I was some delinquent trying to huff light bulb guts, and my family would live in shame forever. After that massive freak-out I kind of didn't feel like dealing with getting the remnants of the bulb out of the lamp, so for now it's just a decorative vase of glass shards hanging above my bed. Stylish.)

2. I replaced the keyboard. 

     This isn't exactly an exciting accomplishment, but I was pretty pleased with myself for getting it done without somehow mutilating the computer beyond repair and having to blow my savings on a whole new computer. Why did i have to replace the keyboard, you ask? WELL. That's because my mom threw a pattern envelope to me for my perusal, but I wasn't paying attention, so I didn't catch it. Instead it went skittering across my keyboard, popping off and breaking (as in, it was not a matter of just popping them back on) a few of the keys in the process. If that sounds implausible, that's because you must not know that apparently my mother has been a secret ninja, practiced in the art of the throwing star, all this time. Yeah, I was surprised too. You can order replacement keys, as well as the little plastic mechanisms that hold them on and make them function, but with the cost of the keys themselves plus the shipping cost (not to mention the wait-time that comes with standard shipping -- I can only go for so long without parentheses keys, you know? Yeah, you know), it ended up making more sense to just buy a replacement keyboard from Amazon with two-day Prime shipping so it'd be cheap and get here quickly. After watching a Youtube video showing how to change the keyboard on a laptop similar to my own, it was a pretty simple operation. Aaah, nothing like a new keyboard, keys all present and functional, all clicky and new, with no food crumbs stuck in the crevices (I'm the worst).

     I also have a pink keyboard skin coming to a) prevent any more freak accidents like that from happening again, b) help keep the new keyboard clean and dust/crumb free, and c) to really take the pink-cuteness factor from the stickers on the front and just amp it up to 11. Whose laptop is this, Katy Perry's? Nope, it's mine. 

3. I dyed my hair again. 

Oh look, it's super blown-out on a white background; it's like Terry Richardson takes my blog photos. Just kidding, I just get overzealous with the flash sometimes. Also ew, Terry Richardson.

      It's basically the same color I had before, but it had faded quite a bit and my roots were growing in blonde, which had a weird effect where it looked like my hair was thinning or I did a crap job brushing out my dry shampoo. It's super dark now, but it'll lighten up after a few washes. Not that I mind. I quite like having my hair very dark; I think it enhances my eyes (which is why I'm making the crazy-eyes face above. I think. Maybe that's just my face). Plus it's kind of fun to be really really pale with really really dark hair, like maybe I'm just in black and white, on my way to go hang with Steamboat Willie and Lucy Ricardo. 

4. I reconfigured my bookcase. Again. 

      You may recall that the last configuration I had going on there was a curtain-type cover held up by tension rods. Well, full disclosure: it didn't work out. Turns out I had underestimated my cat's innate instinct to annoy the absolute shit outta me. She got into the habit of pawing at the curtain at ungodly hours of the night and morning until she pushed the tension rods back, making a loud metallic shuffly sound that drove me absolutely batty. So I had to rethink the situation. I sat in the floor staring at the bookcase for a good half hour, plotting and scheming, while my mom's face floated around my head, cartoon style, saying "Why don't you just clear out the bottom shelf and let her have it?" I hadn't wanted to empty the shelf because there were approximately a million cords hanging back there that I didn't want her to chew on and die or start a house fire. And because it would look stupid to have the entire bottom shelf completely empty. So after some frenetic late night crafting, this is the solution I settled on. All the cords got organized (half of them weren't even connected to anything, so I rolled them up into a box in case I ever need them) and put into one of the shoeboxes on the middle shelf. There's only four cords going in there into a power strip (it looks like more, but some of what you see is cords connecting the dvd player and cable box to the tv, and the cable wire loops around like eight times back there, so it looks like more of a mess. Whatever, I'll deal). I'd read that you don't need to worry about cords getting too hot and posing a fire hazard unless they have that block adapter halfway through the cord, but just in case, I cut the back off the box so it stays ventilated and un-explode-y. 

     Once I had the cord situation under control, it was time to tackle that bottom shelf. I wanted to put Bessie's water and food dishes on it so that I wouldn't kick them as I walked by and make huge messes anymore, but I didn't want to risk a spill ruining the wood. So I grabbed an old Ikea shopping bag, which is essentially a tarp, and pulled it apart, cutting the resulting material to cover the shelf. But that's ugly! So then I raided my scrap fabric stash and found some navy and white polka dot fabric to put over that. To keep it in place I just wrapped it around the back, then pushed the bookcase against the wall to hold it, then wrapped it under the front and slid empty videogame and dvd cases under to hold the fabric taut. If this is all sounding very jury-rigged and mad-scientisty, it's because it was. I couldn't stand another night of waking up to that God-forsaken tension rod slipping. But it's worked so far, and it could look a lot worse. 

5. I don't really have a number five, but I like having five items in a list. 

     I did change some diapers yesterday, this time without having any catastrophic flooding events, so I was quite proud of that. But I don't think you'd appreciate a picture of that very much, so instead here's a picture of cute little baby feet in the grass. 

Project fail -- with compensatory kittens!

     I had a major project failure yesterday. The plan was to cut out a styrofoam letter and cover it in faux flowers as a decorative sit-around-and-look-nice type deal. Only I realized as I was sticking the last flowers in that somewhere along the way it had veered tragically in the direction of gravestone decoration. My realization was confirmed when Amanda walked in and said "That looks like you're gonna put it on a grave." An appropriate observation, because that project was dead. I wasn't too terribly upset about it because the flowers were on a massive 80% sale, so they only cost me about five dollars, and I was going to use them for SOMETHING anyway, I just didn't know what yet. 

     I tried to brainstorm other project ideas whilst I sat on my floor petting Bessie and eating a zebra cake (a purring cat + Little Debbie = ultimate stress reducer), but I couldn't think of anything I really wanted to do with those flowers. So I decided to go the obvious route. I shoved them into a big glass head. 

Any time you read something on this blog and think "Ok, that's just super weird, I'm gonna assume she's kidding," don't. Don't assume that.

     
     Why do I have a big glass head just sitting around? Because I'm strange, and I saw it in the store and thought "yes, this represents who I am as a person," and brought it home. I DUNNO OK. I just like it. The heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wanted a big glass head to sit around freaking people out. And now it's full of flowers. Does that make it more or less creepy? I dunno. On the one hand, it adds another level of "why" to equation, but on the other, maybe I can pass it off as an artistic statement about how my head is full of flowers because I'm so damn whimsical. 

You gotta admit, it adds something to the layout. Whether that something is style or screaming nightmares is up for debate.

     
     Anyway, after that catastrophe of a project, here is some gratuitous kitten action to make this post worth your while. These little kitty orphans were brought to the veterinary hospital Amanda works at, and they need to be bottle fed for a little while until they're bigger and stronger. So she brought them home for the night to snuggle them up in a heated blanket and feed them kitty-Gatorade every few hours. 

     Alright, now I have to run screaming from my laptop because they're so cute I'm gonna die.