Overwhelm; Or, RDB bitches and moans about the blessings in her life.

I want to put in "wood" flooring (that Pergo stuff or whatever) in my dining room/living room area.

I want to paint that area, as well as a wall or two in each of the two bedrooms.

I want to buy a hammock to put on my porch.

I want to buy a bedroom set (but one that matches my wardrobe units that I love).

I want to buy a couch (but it has to work with the as-yet-non-existent wood floor and the as-yet-non-existent color of the walls).

I want to buy a TV bench.
And a TV.
(And a Wii and Rock Band, let's be honest, but I can probably handle that part alone.)

I want to buy a dining room table.

What order to do these things in, and how and where and when to do them all, and how much money to spend on them, and what color/fabric/shape/size/texture/model/style to do it all in... these things are beyond me.

I am so overwhelmed. And it turns out, I'm not really a project girl. I have some friends who are uneasy without a big project in progress; as soon as they finish one big thing they are on to another. They'd love this. Me, I want it done instantly. The second I figure out what I want to do I wish it were already done. I want to enjoy the finished project, not the process, at least not in this case. I have other things to *do*.

I do have the money to do these things on a simple scale. I mean, I can do them, but some of the furniture is coming from Ikea and some of it from Urban Home, none of it from Moda Italia or H. D. Buttercup. And that's fine; when I really wish I had oodles of money is when I think about the getting-all-of-this-done part. I am going to be out of my house for the next two months - go now! do it! I want the money to pay someone to take care of all of it while I am away so I can come home and see it finished. I do not want to oversee it myself, I want someone else in charge.

That's the key, isn't it? I want someone else in charge.

PS This post is from slightly over two weeks ago but it was somehow sitting in drafts and didn't get published, I don't know why. I'm at camp; definitely not thinking about all the things that aren't getting done at my condo right now... but I have visited this one dining room table twice now... without ordering it... arrrgh.

Per. Fect.

I have thought Lore Sjöberg was brilliant from way back in the day, so why should I be at all surprised to find this in my Google Reader?



Love it.

Indeed, I M.

For unrelated and somewhat random reasons, I looked at the "Get Info" tab of my own AIM profile today. It says:

Status: Available
Online Since: 6/15/2009 1:13:18 PM
Member Since: 6/25/1999 11:36:28 AM
Capabilities: Buddy Icon, AIM Direct IM, Chat, Send File, ICQ UTF8

Which is to say, I've been IMing (at this name, which is equal to the whole time) for almost exactly ten years. Fascinating.

Ok, not really fascinating, since my 10-year college reunion was last weekend, and the 10-year birthday of my nose piercing is coming up (July 4!). It's not like I haven't already realized the momentousness of this season of my life, ten years ago, when I graduated, and moved into an amazing house in Cambridge with friends and boyfriend, and began my first full-time job. It was just one more funny little reminder. Happy Anniversary, momentousness.

More about the condo, of course: a positive, a negative, and a neutral.

0. My apartment had a laundry room, downstairs, that consisted of two washers and two dryers. A total wash cost $2.00 in quarters. My condo has a laundry room, on the same floor as my unit, with SIX of each washers and dryers. It is bigger, brighter, and much cleaner… and a total wash costs $1.50. Sure, it would be nice to have the washer and dryer be free and in my own unit, and perhaps I will at some point, but this is already daaaamn nice. Yeah fifty cents cheaper! What a win.

1. Once, just once, I have driven all the way to the old apartment (cue BNL – honestly, I love that song) and halfway into the driveway before realizing I didn’t live there anymore.

2. Annoyance: my new place came with a very nice refrigerator, one that was much newer than the one I had in my apartment and which I bought on craigslist over four years ago (and which the Salvation Army kindly carted away for me last week). In the old freezer, I used the top shelf to keep a couple of trays of ice and a bowl for ice cubes, since I could never handle that whole take-a-few-cubes-out-of-the-tray-but-manage-to-keep-the-rest-of-the-ice-from-falling-out-all-over-the-place skill. The new one has a built-in ice maker/water dispenser thingy, so there is no top shelf; that space is taken up by the ice maker… which doesn’t appear to work. The water in the door works, so clearly some part of it is correctly connected to the plumbing and turned on, but the ice doesn’t work, and I don’t know why. I don’t even really know how to know if it’s the ice maker that’s broken or the hookup or a switch that’s not on or what, but I know eventually I’ll get someone who understands these things to tell me the answer and hopefully even to fix it. In the meantime, where you normally trade the space for automatic ice, I have no space AND no automatic ice. And that is very annoying, since I use my ice, like, every day. Oh, the extreme horrors of my insanely difficult life :)

Whatchou talkin about, Willis?

Ohmigod do I love my condo. It terrifies me, and overwhelms me, and causes the occasionally nearly-crippling self-doubt (but what doesn’t, in my life?), but I LOVE MY CONDO. You know, I was looking at places on and off for about a year, and I had started with a much wider range of possibilities than I ended up with, in the sense that when I began, I didn’t really know what I was looking for. Sure, maybe a one-bedroom would work, I thought. Sure, maybe it made financial sense to look in Tarzana/Encino/Reseda/VanNuys/StudioCity/NorthHollywood and not just Sherman Oaks. Sure, maybe blahblahblah. I definitely knew I’d would *like* a two-bedroom in Sherman Oaks, but in April of 2008, that seemed pretty out of reach for me because the prices were just too high. But I continued looking in fits and bursts, prices continued to drop, and I narrowed down a few of the parameters: had to have at least two bedrooms and two bathrooms and space for two cars to park. Van Nuys addresses no longer acceptable. Farther west of the 405 than a couple of miles no longer acceptable, and farther north of Ventura Boulevard than a few blocks also no longer acceptable. I stopped looking for a while; I started looking again. Prices continued to drop. I stopped again and started again. I considered my friend’s proposal that I should be looking at small houses, not condominiums. I let my realtor know how much I really, really liked my current neighborhood, even though it was kind of expensive. And a year later, I ended up getting a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom nearly 1400 sq ft condo with a huge patio exactly one block from where my apartment was!! And at a price that was $60,000-$100,000 less than similar condos had been selling for only one year earlier. AND it’s 2009 so I’ll get the first-time home buyer’s tax credit thing (actually, I’m claiming it in 2008 so I get the money sooner – even better, and now you understand part of the reason for the belowandaforementioned accountant). Yay Me!

Arrrgh.

Today was not a good day.

FIRST: I got a letter from the IRS saying I owed $600 more for 2008 taxes. I took this letter to my accountant, because what is the point of having an accountant if he can't look at letters like that and say, "They're wrong, they actually owe *you* $600 more," right?

He said: "They're right, you owe them $600 more."

Arrgh. (For the record, he didn't incorrectly prepare my 2008 taxes resulting in this error. TurboTax and I did, apparently. He became my accountant *after* April 15.)

SECOND: See, I need this thing from a doctor, only I don't even know my doctor because my company changed health care plans and the doctor I used to have and liked isn't on the new plan and so I don't even know this new doctor and it turns out this new doctor doesn't do the thing I need anyway so the office gave me three numbers of other doctors who do, only I don't want to see any of those doctors for other reasons and yet I called them anyway because I need this thing and all of their goddamn phones were busy YES REALLY ALL THREE OF THEM and the whole thing just totally sucked and so I spent a LOT of time and money today getting someone else to take care of this thing that I needed anyway and ARRRGH. None of it is at all a big deal but it just SUCKS when healthcare stuff doesn't go the way you want it to because then you feel all icky, no?

I'm fine, don't worry about it. It's nothing, just too girly to blog the details.

THIRD: SOME ASSHOLE HIT AND RUNNED MY CAR TODAY WHILE I WAS IN BED BATH AND BEYOND. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrr.

So I've had a shitty, shitty day. But hey, it's 11:30pm, I got nothing done all evening except to be grumpy, get my period, eat too much, and watch a couple episodes of "House" on my computer, because if I watch them on my TV I can't pause or fast forward or back or anything, and I have to be up at 6am. I love my life.

No, really, I do. Just not these particular 24 hours of it.

Happy, upbeat posts to come about the wonders of MY NEW CONDO WHICH IS WONDERFUL soon.

okloveyoubye. and don't you dare start with me about zeroeth, not today. Grrr. :)