One step forward, six hundred steps back

House? Check.
Fenced yard? Check.
Animals? Check.
Gorgeous cleaned car thanks to my awesome dad? Check.
Hardwood floors in house? Check.

Job that will provide a salary to pay for my new life in Greenville? Not-So-Check, at least not yet. We're now looking at 1st August or possibly even 16th August due to the RID conference this year.

I'm freelancing my tookus off, my boxes remain unpacked in the rec room, and I don't have the house anywhere near ready to have Leah and Russell visiting on Friday.

I need about 10 more hours in my day, at least.

Oh, and on Monday, I stood up into my cabinets and learned that you really do see stars if you hit your head hard enough. Haven't really been right since then.

I'm trying really hard not get too down on the whole thing. But here I am, 12:20 in the morning and I'm still awake and blogging. All I can do is write off today and hope tomorrow will be better.

Can you hear me now? CRASH

My sewing machine is sitting on my dining room table currently because I don't have a special sewing table. At the dining room table last night were two chairs, only one of which is safe enough to sit in. The other one was either not put together correctly or has just worked a screw loose in the 7 years of its chair-life, rendering it wobbly at best and darned near dangerous at worse.

I'll let you take a guess at which chair I ended up sitting in to sew last night.

All started out well as I sewed the twill tape on the edges of Kalyne's bodice, the fabric for Dave's costume churning away in the washing machine in the background. I even got up to answer the phone when it rang and sat back down without incident. But then I made my fatal mistake: I leaned back in the chair to stretch my back, because as I sew I tend to hunch over and get closer and closer to the needle, leaving me looking like Gollum from LOTR by the time the garment is done. "My pressssssshus seams..."

CRAAAACK.

The next thing I remember clearly is being on the floor in terrible pain with the phone pressed to my ear and Scott yelling into it, "Nan? Can you hear me?" I told him to hold on, disentangled myself from the chair, and tried to stand up. It seems that when the leg came out of the chair I pitched backwards, striking my head and then neck on the wall and landing on my tailbone on my hardwood floor. There is also some apparent damage to EVERY STINKING MUSCLE between my hair and my toenails on my left side, as evidenced by the shooting pains in that general area if I move too quickly or try to turn my head to the left.

Dangerprone Daphne does it again! I am reminded of other incidents of equal grace: The time I sat willingly in a hammock at camp hung on one side with rope and on the other with BANDANAS AND DUCT TAPE. The time at Maryville when I walked off the edge of a platform in a play (having missed the stairs completely), causing the stage manager to line the edge of the platform and the stairs with reflective tape so that from above it looked like an airplane tarmack. The summer we lived in England I couldn't stop falling down the stairs in our house. If there is a way to get hurt doing it, I will find that way.

I'm just wishing I hadn't left my advil at home. I wonder if my chiropractor takes walk-ins?

Zen, Insomnia, and the Art of Dishwashing

I had a great post in my head while I was washing my dishes earlier but of course by the time I put the last dish away it was gone. I am still amazed that I'm washing dishes by hand...so many things have changed since I moved to Greenville.

I wash dishes almost every day. Six months ago putting my hands anywhere near a sink full of water and food and soap would have made me gag, and when I first moved here I thought I'd die with no dishwasher. Well, I have a dishwasher...me.

Every time the dogs need to go out I either let them out or I clean up the carpet. There is no one else for me to poke and say "Your dog needs to go out." In the mornings when the dogs wake up at FIVE AM on a weekend wanting their breakfast, I either have to ignore them and try to go back to sleep or just bite the bullet and get up and take care of them.

Today I had a slight rug malfunction that is probably related to my current insomnia. Franny was under the coffee table trying to avoid the antibiotic I was trying to squirt in her mouth and I was on my hands and knees trying to get her out. She bolted, suddenly, so I decided to be smart and spring forward and grab her rather than standing all the way up and letting her get away.

Did I mention that I have hardwood floors and nothing holding my rug to the floor?

When I tried to go forward the rug went backward. I slammed into the floor on my elbows. Currently it feels like there is something in my forearms trying to dig its way out. Hard to get comfy with all that ruckus going on!

So anyway, hopefully tomorrow morning I will remember the post that I came up with while washing the dishes...but only if I sleep first...

All Out with the Old and Halfway In with the New

Scott came by last night and hauled the old sofa and loveseat out to the curb for me. Now, I have always been one to anthropomorphize (?) objects...I used to apologize to each of my dolls in turn every night that he or she didn't get to sleep in the bed with me and had to, instead, sit up on the hard shelf or be shut up in the toy box. I name my cars, and have even been known to have conversations with them. I refer to objects in my life as "Chair" and "Bed" and have a hard time ever throwing anything away. I am also rather bad with change.

To walk out to the car this morning on my way to work and see those sofas...well loved, well used to the point of abused...upside down and sideways in the ditch by the curb waiting on the city workers to come haul them off to certain landfill-doom...almost reduced me to tears. I nearly abandoned my responsibilities just to drag at least the loveseat back in the house. But I didn't...I left them there, and God help me if the city doesn't pick them up today while I'm at work.

Hunky's pretty mad at me too I think. He doesn't approve of the new loveseat because the seat part is a lot more narrow than the old loveseat was. He tried to stretch out on it last night like he used to and slid off the edge. And as for the sofa being gone...he just stood in the spot where it used to be and cried. Again, I almost ran to the curb and retrieved it just so he would stop crying.

Anyway, through a strange series of events I ended up at my house last night alone with a loveseat and chair in the back of my car. The chair was easy. Light as a feather, easy to turn on its side and swing through my freakishly small front door.

The loveseat proved to be a bit more of a challenge. I walked it through the yard to the door and then turned it just as I had the chair to force it through the door. It can't be any wider than the chair was, I thought.

I thought wrong.

I'm not really sure what I did, but somehow I ended up with the loveseat up on one end wedged in the doorway. I had visions of never being able to either leave the house again nor let the cats out of the bathroom because surely they would scale the blue plaid mountain of doom and make their escape. I tried every way but Sunday to ease that small loveseat through the door and nothing worked.

Then I got mad.

I gave the loveseat a good yank, coupled with some very colorful language directed at the door, the paint job on the porch and front door, as well as anything else that had irritated me in the last 24 hours, and the loveseat and I came tumbling into the house.

I won't say that I hurt myself in the process, but if I lift my right arm and turn to the right simultaneously the shade of red that suddenly obscures my vision is quite possibly the embodiment of the flames that shoot up the right side of my back. I think it's just a coincidence.

Scott is coming to help me with the sofa on Thursday. Geezominey I hope the old sofas are gone when I get home or I'll have to blindfold the puppers for our afternoon walk to get them down the driveway...