Furniture thoughts

I keep rumbling away in my head about furniture, what we have to do still....what we will need.

Deliberately we designed the house with little storages space.  We, everyone, has too much stuff.  If it cannot fit, we shouldn't have it.  A certain amount is useful, suitcases, sleeping bags, blankets in summer, they need a place, but there is a limit.

We've made it, but we do need SOME storage space, more book cases for instance, and we also need tables.  Think I am going to be getting four!  Seems a lot.  And chairs.

The range came in, we'll get it delivered on Monday and maybe, just maybe, we'll move some stuff down tomorrow!

Hídraulics

After choosing about seven thousand different tiles, we ended up with these to fill in the gap where the drains had to go:

Above, you can see that they are only half finished putting them in place,

Below it is harder to tell.

Whaddya think?

O

I wish I could be funny about this, I really do.

I don't think I can though.

We had another appointment with the powers-that-be about the nationality papers for the kids, youngest specifically.
Shall we just say that the man behind the desk, one of those small stupid people in positions of power refused to move the papers forward, and has in fact created, all by his little old self, another level of bureaucratic hoops we have to jump through.

Essentially he is quibbling with the fact that the man's name on his Spanish documents and the name on my daughter's birth certificate are not identical.  Sounds almost legit until you put it in place, all the papers have already been approved by many many layers of gov't.  In this nation, under Franco, many many Catalans were forced to baptise their children with the Spanish rather than the Catalan spellings of their names, so there are many people who have some discrepancies, and EVERYONE knows why.

Consider also that he had several pieces of gov't issued documents, like, oh, passports, all bearing photos of the man, with both names on them.

Consider the fact that he was enjoying the situation.

I am not overly happy with Spain, this man, and bureaucrats in general today.

Not at all.

Books

Books books books books books

ain't nothing better than a really good book, no?

Best book you read recently?

My favourite recent read was The End of the Alphabet by C. S. Richardson

C'mon, best book you've read recently....or ever.

post #2

Just wrote a post about feeling kinda flat and under-enthused, mostly about work.

It was a whiney kinda thing, and I think I will leave it where it was and blame the blahs on a steady diet of enthusiasm sapping anti-histamines.

That's the idea I think.

Remember that book "Eat, Pray, Love"?  I read it a year or so ago, and it was OK.  I listened to the writer on TED, she was quite, you know, lacking in eloquence for much of the time, and then had flashes of brilliance.

She did have an interesting concept though, talking about the creative inspiration as something outside of a person, something that visits, polishes up the work. That the creative person's job, so to speak, is to show up and polish the craft so that the inspiration, or genius, or muse can arrive and have something to work with.  It was an interesting proposal, supported by descriptions by other artist, and their ways of describing how creativity hits them, passes through them, whispers at their windows.

I applied to a University for a Master's program.  Most of my documentation has not arrived in time for the deadline cut off.  Slightly dismal.  Universities do not seem to send their documents out all that fast.

Poop.

Back to the proverbial canvas, indeed, maybe, back to the actual canvas in fact.

one of the deeper circles of h*ll

The man and I were off today, all day, at a very famous home furnishing store that starts with an I and kas a k kin kit.

It was not a weekend, and thanks be to all that is merciful for That little gift.  My massive allergic reaction that I have been suffering for a week and a half now, and which was almost gone decided to kick in again this morning, so I was stoned silly on anti-histamines.  Nothing like visiting that place with a brain full of dryer lint and what feels like 12 hrs of jet lag.

Despite all that we got a bit done.

No oven/burner range thingy though and the light fixtures were a washout.

Then, when we got home, we went and hung out at the house, I have to say, I am getting to be buddies with the job foreman, wonder if I could keep him around, fixes things well, and he's pretty cheery.

I have to chose though, I guess I'll keep the man.  I speak more languages in common with him.  Ya know what I mean?

Then we had a stroke of genius and we went to the houseware store about a 3 min walk from the house. Can I mention it took us, like, OMG, 2 hours to get to Ikea, and longer to get home.

We got the stove there, plus an electric kettle I want for the third floor and a light fixture for the kid's bathroom.  How sweet is THAT!

Gonna have to stick closer to home it seems, no?

Hope you're all having a good Monday, and not an itchy dopey one.

Cheers,

O

This running thing

Hmm, it's been, what a month now?  Maybe?

'N it's going OK, in fact I love running in the mountains.  The hills are so steep going up them you don't feel dumb at all when you stop and walk, and going down you feel like you actually maybe kinda know what you're doing.  In fact, I feel...wait for it....fast!


How weird is that?


Going up though?  The other day I was running, and the man, who has run since forever, had said to me that the key to running uphill was to go slow.  Really slow.

I was going slow.
I was also dying out there.  OMG.

Chuck is so sweet at times like these.  He either tries to jump up on me in enthusiasm, or goes too slowly in front of me, or gets bored and s.p.r.i.n.t.s uphill, leaving nothing but little dust puffs where his paws hit the ground.

Showoff.

Anyway, I was plodding up hill, dying slowly, when I discovered JUST how slowly that was.

You see, I decided that I simply had to walk for a bit till everything felt better, so I dropped to a walk.  Except that I think I sped up at that point.

Srsly, I was covering ground faster walking.

Sad, but true.

The great fireplace debate.

At first, we had this: (I'll give you a bit of info, the wall above the fire is curved, but you can't tell in the photo)

But it didn't work properly, so we experimented like this:

Then they built this.

Then this happened.

Now we have this:

I like it much better.  

A definition of creativity

Making something from nothing.

Greatest creative acts of my life:

Myself
My family
My travels
My communities of friends
My future

My blog
My paintings

Love (oh, does that ever sound schmarmy, but it does fit the def'n, no?)  Though do you make it?  or do you do it.  Therein lies a conundrum.

A new one?  I think so, something less cliched and trite.

 hmmmm.....

There it is....

*My homes.

Did I sound like I had a plan?

That was foolish of me.

Youngest got sick.  Mostly cause she had white bread with jam for lunch and a coke and potato chips for dinner yesterday.  Go figure.  There is a longish back story for that involving architects, contractors, sunsets and children who chose badly at parties.

Whatever.  Let's hope a lesson is learned.

Sooooo, no new lights.  Tomorrow we'll try that trick again.

We've got two out of three toilets in place, and covers on most of the outlets.  I would like to report that there is ALMOST no sound at all of flushing upstairs when one is in the living room from that drain pipe they put in.  Sing a hallelujah chorus right there, thankyouverymuch.  Vast praise to be tossed around for that one.

More lovely white paint being spread around, and we informed the property managers we'd be out of the apartment by the end of the month, here's hoping.

Wish me luck with tomorrow, maybe a plan or two will fall into place.

O