Like an 18th Century Invalid

About 3 months ago, I decided to hang an IKEA shelving system in one of our Guest Room closets.

No problem, I thought, I've done this many times before. How could anything possibly go wrong?

After climbing up and down a stepladder all day, I went to bed, and awoke the next morning with a terrible pain in my left foot.

I considered going to the ER - you don't mess around with feet! - but was dissuaded from going by my husband. "Maybe it's just a sprain, or something, or a cramped muscle. Just keep off it for a couple of days, and it will get better, I bet," he said.

I didn't go to the ER. I waited a week, and then went to a doc-in-a-box clinic, where they took some X-rays.

Nothing showed up on the X-rays, so the doctor told me it was probably a sprain, and - like my husband suggested - told me to ice it and not walk around too much.

I like to be busy. If I feel well enough to be up and about, then I will be up and about, damn it, because days where I feel great are not ones to be wasted.

I went to IKEA the next day.

My foot hurt horribly that night. And for the next week.

I waited another week, and made an appointment with a podiatrist, because "walking it off" was obviously not working.

I chose a podiatrist whose website stressed conservative care, versus the ones I saw whose home pages discussed their cutting edge surgical skills. Surgery should be a last resort, in my not-so-humble opinion.

The podiatrist took X-rays, and nothing was visible. After quizzing me about my activities, and hearing that I'd been climbing a stepladder, he said that he thought it was a stress fracture.

He, being a foot expert, told me that if it was a stress fracture, it might not show up on an X-ray film for a few weeks, if ever, which explains why the doc-in-a-box didn't see a break. He gave me a choice: he could either give me a boot/cast to wear for 3-4 weeks, and we could see what happened, or he could have me get an MRI of my foot to determine 100% if it was a stress fracture.

I went for the boot. Sure, 70% of the MRI would be covered by insurance, but that's still possibly a few hundred dollars, and the boot cost $30 (after insurance).

After three weeks, I walked around without my boot/cast and felt great. No foot pain!

At least, while I was walking around sans boot, there wasn't any pain. That night, however, I was in a lot of pain.

I hadn't worn shoes while walking around. The doctor had neglected to mention that I have to always wear padded shoes while walking on hard surfaces, like our wood and tile floors.

Oh.

I re-fractured my foot.

Ow.

Another 6 weeks passed, and I felt secure enough to go sans-boot, again. I wore some comfortable, sensible-heeled boots for a day, and felt fine.

Then, I wore my adorable leopard-print ballet flats, and all (foot) hell broke loose.

I immediately put the boot back on, and called the podiatrist again.

A second round of X-rays showed that there was definite healing where I'd fractured my metatarsal - the bone there is thicker, now - but there were no visible breaks.

"Maybe there's just a spot that hasn't healed yet," he said. "It's been 10 weeks since I first saw you; insurance won't cover a bone growth stimulator until 3 months, give or take a few days. Let's give you a new boot" (mine was worn out, and the cushioning air bladder no longer held air) "and see you back in two weeks. Also, you might want to try to completely stay off of it, if possible. If you have to be up and around a lot, try using crutches or a knee walker."

Determined to be careful, I rented a knee walker, and I've been using it if I have to walk a long distance. Mostly, though, I've been camped out on the living room sofa, with my foot elevated and an ice pack strapped to my foot, trying to keep it from swelling too much.

Meanwhile, my poor, wonderful husband is doing what he always does: stripping old latex paint off the woodwork throughout the house, patching cracks in walls, and generally slaving away to make our house a home.

While I lie on the sofa. Drinking La Croix and playing games on my phone.

Yes, I feel guilty.

But, you know.

Doctor's orders.

It's One of THOSE Days

Today has turned out to be one of "those" days.

One of "those" days when nothing quite seems to go right, yet it isn't so horrible that I can justify sitting down in the middle of the living room in a huff and crying.

It's tempting, but not justifiable.

Yet.

I had an appointment this morning at 10:30 with one of my legions of doctors, and since I typically show up in gym clothes (intending to proceed there immediately after my appointment), I decided I would dress nicely today: J. Crew blue-&-white striped shirt, skinny jeans, sandals, jewelry.

Casual, but nice.

My hair disagreed with my planned outfit, however.

I didn't wash it last night, and I didn't plan to wash it this morning, because if I wash it more frequently than every other day, my scalp mutinies, and I have to appease it with lots of Benadryl.

I hoped I'd be able to spray it with a little dry shampoo and get it to obey my will.

Nope.

By the time I realized my hair was a lost cause, it was too late to wash it and blow dry it and style it if I wanted to be able to eat breakfast before my appointment. I tried on a baseball cap with my planned outfit, but it just didn't work.


So the cute J. Crew shirt was jettisoned in favor of a chambray maxi dress, hoping I could pull it off with the baseball cap.

Chambray maxi dress had stains all down the front, that I apparently missed during the last laundry blitz, despite the fact that I specifically checked the dress for stains.

Finally, I tossed on one of my husband's cast-off T-shirts (which I've claimed, and wear more frequently than formerly due to my, um, well, my little belly. And love handles. Yay).

So now my doctor probably thinks I just run around in super-casual clothes all the time, rather than wearing more civilized, ladylike garb.

Sigh.

I ran a few errands, post-appointment, and came home. I took off my baseball cap.

My hair looked perfect.

Sigh.

Time to do laundry, bake, monitor the crock-pot, pay off the rest of the taxes the IRS claims we owe them, but that Turbo Tax said we didn't, and work on my Mystery Blog (with perfect hair).

Several items in the laundry needed stain treatment, so I applied Shout spray like a mad woman, and made sure to add OxyClean to the load, as well.

The load of lights finished washing, and I pulled out the clothes to toss them in the dryer, being sure to check each and every garment that was spot-treated before tossing it into the dryer.

All of the garments looked great, except - of course! - my favorite shirt, a white J. Crew button-down identical to today's intended blue-&-white shirt, which is the inspiration for my house-wife "uniform".

Of course, the spot on my favorite shirt - iced tea, a little tiny amount - was darker. And bigger.

What. THE. HELL?!?!?!?!?!?!

Lots of angry fuming, cursing, and stomping around the laundry room ensued (it's a huge laundry room, relative to the size of our house). I tried spraying more Shout on it and rubbing it with a white cloth.

No dice.

I rinsed out the Shout, and poured liquid OxyClean on it, waited 15 minutes, and then rubbed it with a white cloth.

Nada.

I poured a leeeeeeeeeeeeettle bit of full-strength bleach onto it and let it sit a few minutes, then rubbed it gently with a white cloth.

Nil.

So it's now sitting in a bucket filled with water and bleach, while I pray that my fairly expensive shirt isn't ruined forever.

I started working on my Mystery Blog, and was experimenting with different layouts/visual themes for the site. Unlike this personal blog, I want my Mystery Blog to be immaculately laid out and designed, because I intend to try to make money off of it, damn it.

I had one scheme I kind of liked, but wanted to look at another, so I wrote down what I thought was all the pertinent info, design-wise, and began monkeying with the font, text size, background color, etc.

At which point I realized I hadn't exactly written down all the pertinent info. Fortunately, I had taken a screen shot of the first design, so I was able to MacGuyver the information I needed, using PhotoShop and Apple Preview, but it was a tense few minutes, there, before I found the HTML color code converter I needed.

Sigh.

I also used a bit of Barkeeper's Friend to clean some rust of the washing machine interior (it's now going through its Clean Tub cycle to remove any residue), and I happened to get a tiny bit of the liquid cleanser on my thumb. No big deal. I rinsed it within 30 seconds.

But my skin doesn't care. My skin is angry. It is livid. Specifically, it is a livid shade of red, and it itches, because it's a primadonna.

And I haven't eaten lunch, yet.

So I'm going to go throw myself onto my sofa, now, with a slice of coconut-flour pound cake and a handful of cashews - which I'm calling "lunch" - and I'm going to watch Parks and Rec on Hulu while I finish my niece's Christmas stocking.

Because I'm obviously not meant to succeed at being a housewife today.

Unless that housewifeliness involves sabotaging my diet, because the pound cake turned out perfectly.

Mawwiage is what bwings us togevah today.

I mentioned in my last post - just yesterday! - that I'm engaged to be married.

For a while, it seemed like it would never happen. I contemplated buying the China I wanted bit by bit, because I started to see myself as hip, single Aunt StrainedConsciousness for the rest of my life.

I'd been dating a fellow for a few months, and had informed him, on our third or fourth date, that I had some health problems, and that they weren't fun to deal with (I went whole hog and told him about the intestinal fungal infection, because that's attractive). His response was, "No problem."

At least, it wasn't a problem until it was a problem, until I didn't want to go to a concert because my infection was back, and I felt awful and exhausted and nauseous. And then, he just... stopped calling. Because five months of dating didn't warrant more than that, apparently.

When I realized that he had no interest in continuing to date me, I was pissed. Pissed that he didn't have the cojones to tell me himself, and pissed that I'd wasted my time on him, particularly since I'd straight up told him, in detail, how the infections affected me, when they happened.

I got on eHarmony that night, and responded to several messages that had been dropped into my InBox in the past two weeks.

One of those messages was from the man I will marry on May 30, 2015.

He was cute, judging by the picture, and wrote exceptionally well, and seemed to have a well-developed sense of humor. We met for coffee a few weeks later - we began corresponding over the Christmas holidays of 2013 - and I liked him immediately.

Except he needed a haircut. But hey, that's easily fixed, right?

He had a good sense of humor, a wide range of interests, and he was exactly like his picture on the eHarmony website. Except more handsome, so hooray!

Our second date was at the Museum of Natural History in Houston. I'd been wanting to see their Egyptian Hall, so we went. We also went through the butterfly exhibit, which was fun, but the best part was definitely the Egyptian Hall.

Why? Because of all of the amazingly hilarious jokes that can be made at the expense of mummies.

Yes, I know, I'm going to hell for mocking dead people. Or, at least their canopic jars.

As we wandered through the gift shop on the way out, a Triceratops mug caught my eye. Not just any triceratops mug, though: an over-sized triceraCHOPS mug, showing the different cuts of meat on a triceratops. My Future Husband bought it for me, and I still use it every day at the office.

By our fifth date - when he made me dinner at 9:30 at night because I was exhausted, on my anti-candida diet, and had just left work - I was hooked. I had to drive to my parents' house, the next day, and when I got there, I cancelled my eHarmony account. I'd found the one.

By our fifth date. Because I didn't feel like breaking my dad's record (He told my mom on their third date that he was going to marry her. She laughed at him.)

Jump ahead fifteen months, and I'm two months away from our wedding.

It's going to be pink. If you'd told me two years ago that I'd be having a pink wedding, I would have laughed in your face.

However, My Future Husband and I attend the Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, and its interior is painted in two different tones of pink, with soft green accents and beautiful mid-tone wood paneling. It's a very Frank Lloyd Wright-ian building (as are many Unitarian Churches), and I'm thrilled to be having our ceremony there.

My niece was initially excited about it, because that means that her flower girl dress will be pink. Except she just told my sister/Matron of Honor that she wanted a gold dress.

TOO BAD, KIDDO. YOU WILL WEAR YOUR FAVORITE COLOR AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.

Anyways, we're having a morning ceremony - 11:00 a.m. - with a luncheon to follow at Ouisie's Table, a Houston institution, and also site of the one and only instance in which I've had a waiter pour a drink on me (it was a Bloody Mary, for the record, on my birthday. I think I was 22).

And then, the next day, My Future Husband and I will leave for almost a week in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of my absolute favorite places to visit.

We've been living together since shortly after our engagement - I was very ill, unable to work, and could no longer afford the rent on my apartment - and My Future Husband has been doing an excellent job of dealing with Wedding Decisions.

For instance, he chose the wedding invitations. I stood in the living room, with six different invitation samples in hand, hemming and hawing about which ones I liked, and he took them, sorted through them, and held up the one we are about to mail out to our guests. "I like this one," he said.

It's pearlescent pink with black lettering. I would never in a million years have thought he'd pick it, but he did! And I like it.

When we went to pre-shop for our registry, I couldn't decide on the Formal Flatware I wanted, and he opened a drawer of flatware, said, "I like this one," and voila! It looked better with our China than any of the others I'd seen.

And then we bought chocolate at the fancy candy counter in the store where we registered (if you're ever in Houston, check out Bering's Hardware: you can buy chocolate, Herend porcelain, William Yeoward crystal, and lawn mowers).

It's nice to have someone who can defuse some of my OCDesign. And he hasn't built a bonfire out of my design magazines, either.

Yet...

Taking Care of Business

I read a book about the diamond trade (called Precious Objects), and one of the men featured wore a necklace with the letters TCB on it, an acronym for Taking Care of Business.

I want one.

I've been taking care of A LOT of business, since my return to Houston. I've been organizing like a ninja (ninjas are very organized, in case you didn't know), unpacking bags from my 3-week sojourn in Dallas, and restocking the old pantry with everything I could possibly need for the upcoming semester.

I also notified the office of my apartment complex about a sizable rat inhabiting a hidey-hole in the breeze way.

But I digress.

By the end of the week, I plan to have made gluten-free bison meatloaf to freeze, spaghetti sauce, and spaghetti squash (also to freeze). My unusable/broken scanner will be taken to a recycling facility, and the faded clothes I no longer wear will find their way to a Goodwill drop-off station. My apartment will be sparkling clean, from top to bottom, and my allergies will probably be raging as a result.

I will start this semester off properly. I will be ready for anything the professors throw at me.

No, really. I will.

Off to Dallas!

I am excited.

I am beyond excited.

Ecstatic might be the appropriate word.

I am going to Dallas for the weekend.

Not only will I get to see my family - both biological and the family we've chosen - but I will get to help my mom celebrate her birthday, albeit a little bit early. And I will get to see Major Tom Shadowmaker, who is taking it easy, these days. I miss the old fellow.

Unfortunately, I will have to work some over the weekend.

I am now entering the first stages of design for my 6-8 week studio project, after managing to pull an A on the Run Lola Run film center I designed in two weeks. My long-term project is a research center in Death Valley (again. My choice, though, this time). I'm thrilled, because I will get to expand on some of the ideas I explored in the previous 2 week project, and get to take them further.

For my last project, I buried the majority of my program underground, with parts of it popping out in the form of concrete cubes. This time, however, I'm going all the way. Yup, my program will be entirely buried with the exception of a few canyons/light wells dug out of the earth for entrances and, duh, light.



In other words, I am about to design some high-falutin' Hobbit holes. I couldn't be more excited.

I've always loved "nesting", both in the sense of decorating interior spaces, but also in terms of physically burrowing. My mother used to tease me because I did not sleep beneath my duvet, but wrapped it around myself, like a swaddled baby. I still wrap blankets around myself, although the duvet is now used more conventionally, rather than as a beautifully designed albeit zipper-less sleeping bag.

And my project idea - burrowing into the hills of Death Valley - has precedent in this area: it's how the kangaroo rats of Death Valley keep themselves cool during the day.

P.S. The migraines are better. Much better. I've had one in the past week. Everything's coming up roses!

Getting Settled Into the New Digs

On Thursday, July 28, 2011, I became a Houstonian.

I left my cozy little parquet-floored apartment in fancy-schmancy Highland Park, Texas, and moved a few hundred miles south to the Upper Kirby/Greenway neighborhood of Houston, also in Texas.

There are a lot more mosquitos in Upper Kirby/Greenway than in HP. And they're all in my apartment, I think. Hopefully, if I stay inside (and the weather stripping around the front door is repaired) I won't be providing free room & board to the skeeters much longer.

It's mostly the mosquitos' "board" that concerns me, at present. I slap exposed parts of my body at random just to make 'em nervous, keep 'em guessing.

In honor of the move, I did something I haven't done since high school: I wore shorts. And I believe I will do it again, because it gets seriously humid down here. Really. It's like swimming through medium-warm water when you step outside.

I only brought two bookshelves from Dallas (the other is currently residing in my parents' home), so it's been - interesting - trying to shoehorn all of the books onto the two shelves. There's a lot more double-stacking, this time around (books in front of books, that is). At present, there is still a large quantity of architectural reading material strewn about the Persian rug in the living area, but that will be attended to tomorrow. Maybe.

Oh, and the Persian rug is being a real creep. In other words, it is slowly creeping across the pile carpet beneath it towards the patio doors. I think it's trying to make a break for freedom, but I could be wrong. A coffee table might be in order to slow its westward progress.

I went to IKEA, today, with my sainted older sister. We were lucky enough to encounter a delightful yellow-shirted fellow at IKEA who helped us load a couple of storage units into the boot of my car. Despite what you might assume from the yellow shirt, he was not an employee, but simply a gentleman. And an attractive one, at that.

Back at my apartment - sans attractive blond yellow-shirted men (sigh) - my sister and I ripped open the boxes containing the laminate covered particle board. We opened them right up while they were still in the trunk of the car, then made four trips from the car, down the length of the building (about 200 feet) and into my little apartment, carrying heavy boards and oddly shaped boxes full of screws and bolts and wooden pegs.

My sister went home, and I proceeded to clear some space in which to assemble the monsters. Then, I got down to business. The first storage unit went together beautifully, without a hitch. Obviously, after building one, I no longer needed the directions to construct the other (which will be screwed onto the first in an unapproved-by-IKEA product hack).

I got so far into the process, then hit a snag. The screws that held the bottom to the sides would go in 2/3 of the way, but then the screw head started getting stripped, and my Phillips-head screwdriver wouldn't drive them in any farther.

I was furious! What kind of company makes a product with screws so soft that the heads strip midway through the screwing? Utter crap! I was so seethingly furious that I mentally began composing letters to the president of IKEA about how they should include a warning in regards to the foul language employed during assembly, etc. My main focus was going to be the tendency of their screw heads to strip.

And then, I saw it, and I felt like an idiot.

Somewhere around step #4,659, I was supposed to start using an Allen wrench.

I looked closely at the screw heads, partially embedded in the laminate-clad particle board.

Ahem.

They had indentations in them where tools were meant to be inserted.

The indentations were hexagonal in shape.

Ahem.

Thank goodness I'm an architect and not, you know, an actual construction worker, otherwise I'd be (wait for it...) screwed.

Movin' and Groovin'

I'm a nester.

I like to feather my little nest, to make it as comfortable and as attractive as possible (within my modest means, of course). For this reason, I tend to spend a trifle more on things that will last and things that I will cherish instead of less money on silverware the handles of which will fall off in two years, or sheets that will be holey and frayed in three years. So my silverware is the same silverware I bought when I was in my first apartment at the age of 19, and the sheets I just bought (to replace the ones that don't fit over my ginormous mattress) are real linen and amazingly soft and comforting.

My upcoming move to Houston has me thinking about my nest, once again. I'm thinking about what I love and what I don't love; how I would change a few things if I could, and how my future apartment will be arranged.

A few weeks back, I visited an apartment website to try to gauge how expensive my rent will be in H-Town, and the floorplans on the computer screen set me to thinking about how I would arrange my furniture. A quick glance at a couple of them told me that there would be no place for the three custom bookshelves that hold my hundreds of volumes, along with a few precious objets d'arts and family photos. Some of them were amazingly well laid out, though, and set my little mind racing, full of thoughts of curtains and sofa placement and where my Persian rug would look its best.

So tonight, even though I had a ripping migraine earlier and I'm in desperate need of sleep, I can't sleep, because my brain is on overdrive, excited about the future, optimistic about what lies before me.

And absolutely ecstatic at the thought of a new apartment to decorate.

About to Whine About Things Not Worth Whining About

It's getting a bit slow in the office. We were given the go-ahead today on a project (hooray!), but there's nothing for me to do on it, yet, and it's a little project, and I don't know how much we'll have to do in the way of construction drawings and millwork details, which happen to be my specialty.

I finished my assignment for Radio. He had no more tasks for me.

Pacman? Nada.

Scooter? "Uhhhhh... Yeah, but I need about thirty minutes to mark up the drawings. Do you have something to do for thirty minutes?"

Chortle. "Surf the interwebs."

"Sounds good. Go to town."

Hmmm...

I already spend about 30 minutes each day brushing up on design blogs, making sure I know what's going on in the world of millwork details, interior finishes, and the newest soft-furnishings offerings from companies I cannot afford (are you listening, Century, Henredon, and Hickory Chair? Okay, I know Hickory Chair is listening, but Century and Henredon?)

My daily blog perusal is why the guys were astonished when they said wistfully that they wished we could do interiors and I squealed and cried, "Oooh! Pick me! Pick me! Mrs. Robinson and I can do it!"

So I went back to my desk, with Scooter's blessing, and proceeded to venture into digital worlds hitherto unexplored.

I tell you, most design blogs - that is, blogs devoted exclusively to interior design - are depressing. They're cutesy and try to be hipsterish, riding the wave of zombie mania currently sweeping the pop culture beaches... or something

or they look like Z Galerie threw up all over them

or they have terrible grammar and sentence structure.

I know that my proofreading skills occasionally fall short of the mark or that I end a sentence with a preposition. I know I am definitely guilty of the rampant and irresponsible overuse of parentheses. But I also know that my sentences do not sound like a fifteen year old wrote them, and that I don't egregiously capitalize words in questions submitted to my inexplicably wide readership, the answers to which I will never respond or even read.

And I know that, although my dream house looks like the result of an Andy-Warhol/Billy-Baldwin/Dorothy-Draper orgy fueled by Dr. Pepper and lightly salted roasted almonds, I would never feature an apartment on my blog, billing it as something that is wonderful when in fact it is straight-out-of-the-Ikea-box boring. Unless it is as an example of an apartment that is boring, like so:

The above apartment was featured recently on one of the most widely read design blogs in a post entitled "Why does Barcelona have the best apartments?"

The only thing I see that this apartment has that apartments in Dallas don't have is a radiator.

That's it.

There's the cheapo flat-screen. The Panton chairs. The boring Ikea-ish white chairs. Boring rug. Minimal wall art on a boring beige wall. Light-tone wood floors (boring? Check). Why is this one of "the best apartments?" Why was it even in the running?

I save pictures I find striking to folders on my desktop at work, then email them to myself at home (compressed into zip files) where I print them off and paste them into my little OCDesign collection.

It seems like lately, there are fewer images for me to save, to collect.

Am I just becoming more discriminating (my word) or picky (in the words of an ex-boyfriend)? Or am I jaded after wading through all the cutesy, un-chic garbage (see Little Augury for a lovely tirade against overuse of that particular term)

The Interior Mania Continues

My mother and I went to see Antony Gormley speak at the Nasher Sculpture Center on Saturday (he was fascinating. If not for the fact that I was felled by a migraine, I could have listened to him all day. As it was, I still stuck it out through the whole damned lecture. THAT AMAZING.)

Prior to the lecture (little artist crush, now), my mom came into my apartment to survey the new lampshades in situ, seeing as she gave them to me for my birthday and all.

We have decided that my current picture frames have got to go.

Sigh.

It's a vicious circle, Dear Readers. You think you're getting things just right, and yet there's something nagging at the back of your brain...

We've decided that the frames should be gold/gilded.

Oh, Ms. Strainedconsciousness! you cry. You don't have the money to buy loads of new picture frames!

No, Dear Reader, but I do already have in my possession plenty of gilding supplies, for I went on an art supply binge a few months ago (prior to surgery, pain management treatments, and daily migraine attacks) and bought gilding fixative and foil. It's not real gold, of course, because I can't afford that, but it looks quite like the real thing, and it's doing a smashing job of transforming the taxidermy mount for a set of deer antlers I have.

Ahem.

Gilding is actually, I've found, a wonderful way to relax. Brush on the fixative, do something more productive for 20 minutes while the fixative dries a bit, and then return to the object to be gilded and start applying the foil, using waxed paper and a dry paintbrush. It's very minute work, very tedious, and really quite brainless. I don't have to worry too much about it, whether I'm doing it wrong. If the fixative gets too dry, I just put on some more, wait a bit, and start again.

It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be solid on the first go round. It eventually begins to look even, although the surface is made up of a mottled agglomeration of foil bits.

It's a craft I can get behind.

Although really, I tend to stand over the objects when I work.

Friday Funday

I should, by rights, be at Happy Hour, right now. But I am not allowed to drink alcohol for several days prior to the medical procedure Dr. Pain will perform on Monday. Anyways, I'm broke.

Two strikes, and I'm already out. What the hell kind of baseball is this?

Instead of imbibing, I'm at my apartment, having picked up an enormous armload of dry cleaning from the love of my life (a.k.a. my Korean dry cleaner... who has a leggy blonde girlfriend... who probably has phenomenally clean clothes in addition to her BMW). I began unshelling my clothes, removing their plastic wrappers and mentally counting the dolphins the dry cleaning industry strangles every year, and I saw the first one: a dead sweater.

It's not the dry cleaner's fault. The sweater is - or rather, was - five years old, purchased as part of my inaugural professional wardrobe. It's been a good run. But now, alas, the elastic threads in the knit are separating from the soft merino, and they create shiny little loops as they swirl out from the black fabric. It's not attractive.

I put the sweater on, comforting myself somewhat with the fact that my anatomy has changed shape, so the sweater no longer fits properly anyways.

It's cold comfort. Especially once the sweater is off, because my apartment is freezing.

Another sweater has fallen prey to the same malady. And then, I find that the oatmeal sweater I bought last year, faithfully de-pilling as my purse rubbed its woolly threads into nubbies, has nubbed itself up again. Perhaps beyond redemption. I worked on de-pilling for a good ten minutes, giving my grandmother's old embroidery scissors and my electric pill-remover a good workout, and then called it quits for a time.

The electric pill-remover was getting a wee bit warm for comfort. Nothing like trying to salvage your clothes and setting them afire by mistake, eh?

A tan wool sweaterdress - which once garnered me a date request from a client, which was entirely inappropriate but still flattering - is also incredibly pilled. And snagged. The snag is in the bum region, and it pulled the threads of one row taut across the tush. I worked at that for a time until the one particular thread that seemed to be the worst offender snapped. Whether or not the dress is a lost cause has yet to be seen.

It might take an exploratory wearing for a few hours to find out. Anyways, the turtleneck I had to wear under it to keep from breaking out in a not-so-attrractive rash bit the dust last year, so I have to find a replacement before I can wear it again.

Millionaire clients do not (inappropriately) ask you on dates if you have a rash on your neck, or so I assume.

It appears that I'm now down to a four black turtlenecks, two cream-colored ones, a soft pink one that doesn't stay where it's supposed to because clothing designers don't account for the fact that women have hips (this shirt will sit above the waist, but we will only design pants that ride below the hips! I imagine them cackling fiendishly) and a couple of thin-ish cardigans that I bought because I could wear them during the spring and summer over a shell/camisole without burning up (outside) or freezing (in the office). I have one grey sweater/blazer and an olive green cardigan (that's pilling where my purse brushes against my hip - it will also encounter the electric de-piller tonight) and a multitude of shells and camisoles to wear under the cardigan and blazer.

I used to be a total clotheshorse, but that was in the days before my spate of unemployment, before I began economizing, before 1/4 of my gross income went to medical bills (yeesh). Now I get excited at the prospect of buying a couple of T-shirts at the Gap, whereas before I wouldn't have deigned to do so. It would have been silk blouses from Neimans or nothing.

Well, almost nothing. I've always been something of a champion of high/low dressing.

It just seems like there's considerably more low, of late.

All Operators are Busy

At least, I'm busy.

I woke up at 8:00 a.m., startling Major Tom, who stared at me groggily and grumbled at me for waking him up (he's a grumpy old man). I dressed, and drove to Dallas, swinging by Starbucks for a cup of coffee and an apple fritter en route. And I filled up my car with gas. And got it washed.

All before 9:30 a.m., baby. That's right: I'm productive!

I got to my apartment and began straightening up, putting things away. I ironed some pants (I loathe this chore, above all others), reupholstered an ottoman, the usual.

Yup, I now have an ottoman - okay, it's a repurposed vanity stool - that was once upholstered in goldenrod cotton damask, and is now covered in lovely saffron silk. It is currently in my living room, where it holds a metal tray, upon which I can rest a drink when I'm lying on the sofa, watching a movie.

I picked up my lampshades - the ones my mother bought me for my birthday - and squealed with delight when I removed their cellophane wrappers.

The carpet cleaning guys returned my rug, unrolled it, and put my furniture back where it belongs. I then put my lamps on their beautiful chinoiserie tables, with their pretty new lampshades, and oohed and aahed at the results. And decided I need to rehang some pictures, but that can wait until my mother returns from her vacation.

I washed clothes. I washed miniscule loads of clothes. As in, two pairs of jeans, or the equivalent of two pairs of jeans in underwear and T-shirts.

Guess what? There's something wrong with my washing machine. It is still jumping and rotating like a teeny-bopper at a sock-hop, so I emailed my apartment complex about it. And asked them to please tack my carpet back down in my bedroom and replace the porch lightbulb, while they're at it.

I updated my apartment inventory (the spreadsheet of everything I own) and documented the contents of my humble abode with a camera, then printed out the pictures and put them in my firesafe.

And then, I went shopping.

It's been a rough couple of weeks for Ms. Strainedconsciousness, and my oh-so-generous mother left me a little cash gift tucked inside a Halloween card before she hightailed it to Santa Fe for her birthday. The card read "Do something fun!"

There hasn't been enough fun for me, lately.

So I went to Northpark and bought a couple of shirts - within the defined color spectrum - and some new jewelry. The shirts set me back $20 each, and the jewelry was $45 for both a necklace and a cocktail ring.

The cocktail ring has an enormous cognac-colored gemstone, and it will look ravishing with my steel-toed boots.

Ha. Haha.

I've discovered that, in addition to not being able to carry heavy purses, wearing heavy necklaces gives me a headache. So I bought a lightweight necklace in matte gold (I don't look all that great in super shiny gold).

I filed some more paperwork. I paid my rent. I put stuff away.

I calculated the taxes I will either owe or be refunded, depending on how the IRS calculator works. I'll either owe $415, or get back $2,000. I'm hoping it's the latter. I can't tell if their calculator defines "federal income tax" as including the social security and medicare taxes, or if it's just the federal income tax. I guess I'll find out in January.

I was productive. It felt good to be productive.

Perusing the Interwebz

I just finished stalking Craigslist for a good 45 minutes.

I think physicists need to study Craigslist, just for the record, because it warps the space-time continuum. I could swear I was only on Craigslist for 10 minutes tops, but nope, it's been 45 minutes. Okay, an hour, but who's counting?

Not the physicists, who seriously need to get on this mystery pronto.

I'm in the habit of looking for treasures in the form of armchairs that might need to live in my apartment (now that it's dried out), and so I decided to kill some time browsing the offerings, when I should have been paying attention to Major Tom.

Major Tom is not a fan of Craigslist, in case you were wondering. He wants the physicists to study it so they can declare it a hazard to humanity's survival so I'll pay more attention to him, and less to the offerings on - er - offer.

What is there on Craigslist on a typical Friday evening?

Crap. Lots and lots of crap.

That "wingback chair" is no wingback, honey - it's a La-Z-Boy recliner. And that Queen Anne chair? Good grief! Don't you know an Eastlake style chair when you see one?

Jeez...

Beautiful typically means run screaming as fast as you can and gorgeous usually translates to don't bother opening this posting.

In fact, the postings I tend to look at aren't the ones that include designer in their headline - because La-Z-Boy is not "designer" - but are the ones that give a brief description and the brand and the color.

So Red Hickory Chair Wingbacks definitely gets a look, even though they're more than I can afford right now, and the wrong color, because this lady 1) buys nice furniture and 2) I'm a sucker for Hickory Chair. It's described perfectly. I really wish I could use them in my house, somehow (especially since the price has dropped from $1200 to $800 to now $500 for the pair... want the info? Leave me a comment).

I've learned that certain terms - Queen Anne, for example - are horribly abused. Antique is by far the most overused. Armchairs from 1974 are not antique. Armchairs from 1910 are. In case you didn't know, the strict definition of an antique is that it's at least 100 years old. Anything less than 100 years is just vintage.

None of the posters on Craigslist appear to know what Queen Anne style actually is (cabriole legs, shell motifs, figural-profile back splats on sidechairs, etc...), and they bandy the term about with abandon.

Bandy about with abandon. Say that one five times fast.

After I'd hit all the chair postings I cared to see, I decided to take a peek at art.

It is yet another term loosely applied by frequenters of Craigslist.

Call me strict, but I do not consider an original painting to be something you bought at Z Galerie. Because it wasn't actually painted. If there are multiple of them on a rack in a store, then it's not original.

Original means: Not derived from something else; fresh and unusual.

Original does not mean that you are buying the 80th one of something. It means that there is only one, that you are the first to do it or to make it or to find it or to say it or to write it.

And now, I'm thinking of Eddie Izzard's riff on original sin. I think I'll leave you with that for your listening pleasure.

(Warning: some offensive language... and a man in drag.)

The Magic Lamp(s)

A few months back, before my niece was born, I visited my sister in Houston. I went expressly to help her find lamps for her bedroom, and a dresser to use in the nursery as a changing table. It's always best to have a friend along, for these momentous decisions.

I came home with two brass lamps of my own. They're big: 34" tall from base to the top of the solid brass finial. The lamps themselves are solid brass, and polished to a mirror-like sheen, except for one small tarnished spot on the back of one of them.

Because they're solid brass, they are also incredibly heavy. They double as weapons in case of zombie attacks.

The lamps forced me to buy end tables for my living room, as I had nowhere to sit them. So I bought the 1960s Baker Chinoiserie end tables I blogged about in May (see Eating Crow).

The lamps are also, at present, indecent. They are naked. Undressed, if you will. Devoid of lampshades.

When I bought the lamps at a charity retail shop in the Heights, they had enormously broad aubergine coolie shades on them, a bit dented and scratched, and altogether unattractive. I tossed them in the trash before bringing the lamps home with me.

For months, I looked at lampshades online, searching for the perfect ones. I received money for my birthday with which to buy lampshades for my beautiful lamps. I visited a lamp shop just down the street this past Thursday, and received a quote for the lampshades, about what I had expected to pay for them. I just wasn't entirely satisfied with the dimensions.

Coolie lampshades are a strange and rare breed. They were popular in the 1950s and 1960s - which is why they have such an atrociously politically incorrect name - but their desirability has fallen off significantly as everyone rushes around, snatching up drum shades and square pyramid shades and the like. Coolie shades are much much smaller at the top than at the bottom. Most of them in the 22" diameter category - the category I need - have an 8" aperture at the top. Which was broader than I desired. I was afraid I'd have to have custom shades made.

And then, I discovered Enchanted Lighting, which gets rave reviews in D Magazine. It's the sort of place that does inexpensive lamp repairs, but sells $600 lamps. No, that does not include the shade. And that's a small ceramic bird lamp, mind you, not a big lamp. Not like one of their carved rock crystal pillar lamps, standing 48" tall and costing in the thousands.

That's what we call an "aspirational lamp."

They do have reasonably priced lampshades, however, and their customer service is wonderful. Unlike the customer service at a couple of other lamp stores I've visited, the clerk didn't try to push me to buy what they had in stock because it's such an imposition to order a lampshade.

It's the sort of store where they don't see a young person and immediately assume that I have no idea what I'm doing, even though I'm carrying an enormous brass lamp.

A brass lamp the likes of which you would be hard pressed to find new in Dallas.

Because it's amazing.

Happy Feet

At my former place of employment - a more corporate environment where I spent half my week in meetings with clients - my wardrobe consisted mostly of high-waisted skirts and sky-high heels, typically with rounded toes.

The former exaggerated the length of my legs in proportion to my body, and the latter exaggerated the utter tininess of my feet.

As I am wont to say when a shoe salesperson looks at me incredulously: "I got little midget feet."

I wear a ladies' size 6-1/2, which, given that I am 5'-8" tall, means my feet are woefully undersized for my height. This creates all sorts of problems, such as the tendency to lose my balance while standing perfectly still.

Now, dear reader, do not believe that I exacerbated my balance issues by wearing stilettos. Au contraire: I had to concentrate more on locomotion, and so tended rather to be more successful at walking than otherwise.

Now, I spend at least one day each week wearing steel-toed boots. I had looked at myself in the mirror while wearing them, of course, but until today, it had not struck me that they give me the appearance of having "normal" feet, or, at least, feet that are more proportional to my height.

I don't think I like this.

As Sir Francis Bacon put it, "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

My personal appearance has always played on this idea, although I did not come across the quote that exemplifies the theory until earlier this year. I like to set off my relatively slender frame with enormous handbags and to overwhelm my somewhat delicate features with outsized sunglasses. Then, of course, there are the previously mentioned methods of exaggerating my already uncommon proportions.

At least I know something that the casual observer does not: my boots are too big.

In order to shove my foot into a Wellington-style boot, I had to buy a pair much larger than I would normally wear. In addition to the tiny foot, attached to long legs that reside at the bottom of a truncated trunk, the arch of my foot is extraordinarily high, and has an instep to accompany that trait.

So my high arches required the boot shaft to be of larger diameter than a men's size 5 (approximately equivalent to a ladies' size 6-1/2). I wear a men's size 6. And thick socks.

And I sigh over the apparent return of my feet to a seemingly normal dimension.

Cut and Paste

Pacman returned to the office, today, and immediately expressed his satisfaction at how I'd been running our current project. He then left me to continue running the project, while he and Scooter deal with some tricky questions and needy contractors who are bidding a church addition. Let's hear it for earning more Intern Development Program hours for Contract Administration! Woohoo!

I decided to celebrate by... treating myself to a shower caddy. And a little plastic organizer thingy for my medicine cabinet so my tubes of face cream and tweezers don't rain down on my head when I open it to pull out my toothbrush in the morning. I threw in a new cutting board as a prize, too.

Once my shower caddy was installed, and my tubes and tweezers and extractors were all safe and sound in their cubbies, I cleaned my makeup brushes, and decided I'd indulged in enough obsessive behavior for one evening.

Let me rephrase that: enough non-creative obsessive behavior.

Shall I explain?

I'm a scrapbooker. Now, before you decide Ms. Strainedconsciousness has turned into a suburban mother of twelve, I should clarify that it is a highly curated design scrapbook, encompassing multiple facets of design: interiors, architecture (the two are inextricably linked, in my not-so-humble-opinion), fashion, and product design.

My "scrapbooks" are Moleskine A3 sketchbooks and/or watercolor books. They can fit a full 9x12 magazine page, or a multitude of tiny pictures. Recently, I've been arranging - carefully, methodically - the latter.

The pages containing multiple images and are arranged similarly to the salon walls of 18th and 19th century manor houses, with one central painting/image surrounded by smaller ones that are more or less related. I tend to related things by color. For that reason, this lady:

(okay, dame) is surrounded by interior images, all of which have a decidedly orange or red tinge, like so:

And an image of Iris Apfel - who wears the world's most amazing jewelry and spectacles - is accompanied by images of a marine hue. As long as that marine area is not Galveston.

Are you catching what I'm throwing, here? It's a wonderful exercise in the study of interiors and architecture and how they relate to individuals' tastes. In addition to Great Personalities, I also collect images off The Sartorialist website (http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/), firstly to help me in expanding my personal wardrobe horizons and in targeting my wardrobe goals, but also because the way people design themselves can have an impact on the way I design interiors and architectural spaces. The following images are all from the above website.

And I'm in good company, it seems. A collection of Cecil Beaton's scrapbooks is slated to be published in the near future - November, if memory serves. He created his scrapbooks from magazines, movie posters, and snapshots to help him in his studies of lighting photography shoots and how to pose people, and to study how they interacted with their surroundings.

Ms. Strainedconsciousness and Cecil Beaton. Whodathunkit?

Ready! Set! Curse!

I will throttle Pacman upon his return from NJ.

Not only for the fact that he failed to tell me how long he'll be out of town (no one is actually certain when he'll be returning), but also because his absence has placed me at the center of a potential s**tstorm of contention between the firm, the contractor, and the owners.

Big'un pointed out to me some staining on the wood framing, and I took a look at it. Radio had expressed his concern about some areas, too, when I casually dropped the subject in conversation. It looks like mold (black spots on the wood) and not like staining (black streaks running along the grain of the wood).

I discussed the problem with the guys in the office, Wednesday morning, and Scooter helpfully suggested that I discuss the difficulty with the contractor, and that I might moot the possibility of having a bleach solution sprayed on the affected areas as a precaution.

I followed through with that suggestion today.

I now know why Pacman swears loudly after every conversation with the contractor.

Not only did he address me by a nickname I loathe and that - if he were not in his 70s - would earn him a stern "My name is Ms. Strainedconsciousness," but he became immediately defensive. And worse, he became dismissive.

I'm the fourth person to bring this up - the third to broach the topic with him - but none of us know what we're talking about. I tried to suggest the bleach treatment as a preventive measure, seeing as the areas where there appears to be mold don't receive enough light to adequately treat it with UV radiation, and he guffawed as if I'd just suggested we sing to it or something. He also accused Big'un of talking through his hat in regards to who had initially brought the staining to light (Big'un told me his dad noticed it, and that it concerned both of them).

I shot back, telling the contractor - who might need a nickname... Connie? - that we had just recently had a GC replace all the framework supporting the first floor of the house because there was mold growing in it from improper storage, that the contractor had had to pay for testing of the material, and then ate the cost of the framing. It was sort of one of those "you can do this the easy way, or you can do this the hard way" implied threats.

And then, he asked me not to discuss it with the client until he had a chance to look it over and discuss it.

And he tried to tell me that mold won't grow if it's surrounded by open air.

Yeah, tell that to the apples in my fruit bowl...

Just kidding! I ate my last apple this evening!

The EPA, however, would disagree with him, and does, explicitly, in their handy guide entitled "A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture, and Your Home."

And then he called me back ten minutes after he'd hung up to reiterate everything he'd just said, as if I wasn't listening.

So I am meeting Big'un at the site tomorrow morning to discuss mirrors in the exercise area (which is bigger than two of my apartments, just in case you were wondering), and Connie is meeting us there to discuss what he calls the staining, and what I call the mold.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, for the battle of the century. Or, at least, of the week.

What the Modern Female Contract Administrator is Wearing NOW

I saw my neurologist, today, and it's okay, guys: my head is not going to explode any time soon (unless severely provoked by contractors and/or clients' sons). My doctor was a trifle worried by a few things, however.

1) The fact that the delightfully named Neurotin I'm taking - doesn't it sound like something Batman's nemesis would put in Gotham's water? - doesn't completely take care of the neuralgia I'm experiencing as a result of the pinched nerve.

2) The fact that I had three migraines in the past week.

3) The fact that my purse is too damned heavy for her liking.

Issues 1 and 2 are within her purview, but Issue 3 isn't, really. Except that migraines can supposedly by set off by carrying heavy weights on your shoulder. Supposedly. Attractive purses are expensive, though, so I'm going to hold off on satisfying her by buying a lighter one, for now. In the meantime, I've culled the herd of belongings within, and switched to a smaller, lighter weight one in dark green and black... which segues nicely into my post-doctor activity.

I decided I'd lighten my purse's load a bit by hitting The Gap's 40% off Wednesday. Last time around, the delightful cashier somehow managed to take 40% off my whole purchase (I bought a couple of T-shirts and a sweater, despite the 90+ degree weather outside). This time, he was not so generous, perhaps because I spent more.

With the advent of fall-ish weather (followed by its rapid disappearance, unless you consider 85 degrees to be fall-ish), I started surveying my clothes. A lot of the clothes I bought this time last year no longer fit me properly for one reason or another (no, I have not gained weight), and I'm tired of wearing jeans all the time.

But I don't feel confident in khakis. Maybe it was the summer spent trapped in the attic floor of a reputably boring architecture firm with a bunch of bitter female architects, all of whom wore khakis and pastel sweater sets every single day, but I just can't abide wearing khakis. I'd rather wear a nice pair of dark denim jeans with a trim crease down the front, thank you.

But I wear jeans every day, now, so I decided to shake things up by buying a pair of *gasp* corduroy pants, cut similarly to jeans, in a nice shade of dark grey.

The (attractive and straight) cashier at The Gap looked at the clothes I was buying - a few long-sleeved T-shirts, a lovely and soft cream colored blouse, the cords, and two turtlenecks - and remarked that I seemed fond of grey and olive green and cream.

He has a point, and a well thought-out one, at that. I told him of my Master Plan for clothing myself, which involves buying limited colors of clothes that can all be mixed and matched in endless variations. So olive green, grey, cream, and a lovely rusty-orangey-pinkish color are my go-to colors. I'm not about to toss out everything that fails to conform to the New Closet Order, however, because navy blue chiffon blouses from DKNY... from 10 years ago, natch... look smashing with dark grey and olive green.

And, of course, I still have black clothes in my wardrobe, because I'd have to hand in my Architect Card if I didn't. The funny glasses were recently made optional in order to retain the (imaginary) Architect Card, but I cling to the old ways and proudly wear them on those days when I get shampoo in my eye.

OCDesign Taking Over My Life

Once again, I took out my OCD tendencies on the company archives. We ran out of archive tubes for the drawings, however, so I unleashed my fury on the jumbled slides of past projects and miscellania littering our slide and materials library.

I accomplished a lot. Whoever last attempted the project had no idea what they were doing. In all honestly, I don't always know what I'm doing, either, as some of the projects in the slides are older, less prestigious projects that aren't much discussed around the office. Putting them with their fellows is difficult, at best, and I can't exactly ask Oldsmobile for help, as he can't see the slides well enough to tell what they are showing.

During my lunch hour, I performed my daily cruise of the Dallas Craigslistings in the furniture section, and found a pair of lurvely orange chairs, very mid-Century Modern and fantastic. They are not quite what I'm looking for for my apartment, though, although the $200 price tag (for the pair!) made me stop for a second look. And then a third.

Of course, the idea of chairs for the apartment - to replace the love seat that is looking rather sad, even under its colorful coverlet - got me on a roll, and I obsessively began collecting images on the interwebs of the shape of chairs that would be acceptable for my apartment.

Because, you know, I don't need lampshades or anything. Or clothes.

I gave up looking for chairs online - I found the ones I want, and they're beautiful, but some jerk in Elle Decor already owns them, sheesh - and began obsessing about other facets of design.

Facets of design that include my personal appearance. In particular, a facet of design called My Face.

This is not an unusual phase for me. I'll go through a period of time where I'll roll along, same old same old skincare routine, and then BAM I will want to try something new, because what I've done for the past 27 years just isn't cutting it in the pore-refining category.

Over the weekend, I had a little bite of the Skincare Bug, in the form of trying to use a mudmask my dad brought me back from his last trip to Jordan. I had used some of it about a year ago with no ill effects, and decided to do it again.

It appears that Jordanian mud masks do not last more than one year. It smelled, quite literally, like perfumed crap, and the salts and solids refused to reincorporate with the liquids, so it was rather runny, blobby crap, indeed. Not a pleasant experience.

I manage to mix a bit of it together in my hands to the right consistency - at this point, I honestly don't know why I was proceeding - and rubbed it onto my face.

I have sensitive skin. Skin that is sensitive to past-its-expiration-date once-wonderful-now-crappy perfumed mud. It burned. It stung. I cursed.

I was nowhere near as happy as this lovely young lady appears to be:

The resurfaced top of my lovely rental vanity was covered with watered-down muck by the time I succeeded in rinsing off all the mud/muck-mask.

I pity my neighbor. Every time I whack an elbow in my closet (once per week, on average) or slather something on my face that I shouldn't, she has to hear me bellowing at the top of my lungs, usually in language about as offensive as the mud-mask turned out to be. She should get a discount on her rent, akin to ambassadors who get hardship pay for living in uncomfortable or hostile environments.

So my disastrous dalliance with the mud-mask launched me on my newest skin-care expedition. When I had my facial a few months back, the aesthetician used some lovely glycol peeling pads on my face. I cannot locate them online. I could call the Spa at Nordstrom and inquire about them, I guess, but they're really expensive.

Or, I could go to Sephora when I go pick up my jeans (they're being hemmed, and not for free, because I wanted it done correctly), and hunt around until I find the particular product I saw recommended in a friend's copy of Real Simple magazine. It's the mid-range one, pricewise, and it looks promising.

Hmmm... Of course, that's one fewer shirt next month.

Decisions, decisions.

Recovering

I am still at the office, but I am taking a much deserved rest... before I leave for the day.

I spent the entirety of my day in the Archive Room - an oversized closet with plywood racks to hold drawing tubes - and sorting through boxes of old vendor files and personnel files. We don't want to shred everything, mostly because our shredder is terrible, but we also didn't want to risk a voided check falling into the wrong hands. So I sorted through the boxes, pulling out file folders pertaining to financial documents, and scanning for potentially historically significant correspondence.

As I winnowed the boxes down, piling the culled ones in the hall so I could move more freely, I came upon two enormous banker boxes of correspondence pertaining to projects from the 1960s and 1970s. They were in complete disarray, as the file folders had been piled haphazardly in the boxes to begin with. The boxes themselves were crushed, rotted from the dampness in Oldsmobile's garage. So I sorted through the boxes as best I could, and put the papers into new file boxes.

I was terrified.

Some of the paper was thin, onionskin paper, the weight of tissue paper, almost, and I kept imagining myself tearing some potentially priceless piece of paper a future biographer might require in order to complete a (hypothetical) biography of Oldsmobile.

I managed to get all the papers into new boxes - we ran out of file boxes, by the way - and placed them into our materials and slide library, along with the slides we have that show Oldsmobile's work, and that were scattered throughout the offices and the Archive room, taking up precious space that I need.

Of course, I also found more things belonging to Oldsmobile's son, and I cried over them. Maybe it was the physical stress, or the fact that I didn't sleep last night, but I found the boy's High School ID card, and a photograph of him with a friend. I found the letter Oldsmobile sent to the exclusive prep school in the northeast that his son attended, establishing a memorial scholarship in the boy's name.

I also found some humorous things. Oldsmobile collects postcards (there is a book on the shelf above my desk entitled Boring Postcards), and there was a book of postcards in a box - yet another haphazard collection of ephemera - called Lost, Lonely, and Viscious: Postcards From the Great Trash Films. They're reproductions at 5"x7" of movie posters for "films" such as Juvenile Jungle. It was good for a laugh.

We also, I discovered, were archiving a bottle of sweet vermouth from the 1980s. It is the second bottle of hard liquor I've found in the Archive Room. Oldsmobile, when I waggled it in his face with a mischievous grin, said "Babe, toss it! It's probably vinegar by now!" I didn't taste it, but the smell seemed to confirm that it was no longer drinkable.

Heh. Oldsmobile called me "Babe." And at a point when I was feeling very much not a "Babe": sweaty, dusty, and with aching smelly feet. Ugh.

Throughout the day, curious neighbors poked their heads into the door of the Archive Room. "Whatcha doin'?"

"A little bit of weight lifting."

"Haha. Well, I guess it's got to be done at some point, eh?"

"Yup." Leave me alone. I've got files to purge.

Jill of All Projects

I am not a Jack of all trades, per se, because 1) I am female and 2) I generally know what I'm doing. I am, however, something of a Jill of all projects, because I keep getting shuffled from one miscellaneous task on one project to another miscellaneous task on another project. I'm not really in the loop on either of the projects, but that doesn't stop the guys from assigning me things to do.

Like lay out tile patterns for hideous tile that our client picked out. Her interior designer doesn't seem to realize that part of her job is to help pick out things like counter tops and tile, and she just wants to select furniture. You know, the fun stuff: playing with fabric swatches and buying sofas. I can kind of sympathize, particularly as our client acts like she's bankrupt. She could buy and sell our whole firm and our extended families many times over, but oh my God, she cannot spend more than $5 per square foot on tile! That's outrageous! Yeah, honey. Sure it is.

In between tile patterns and calculating seating capacity for church sanctuaries and wandering around church property doing a half-a**ed job of a tree survey - isn't that civil's job, anyway? - I've been archiving drawings for the office.

It's a mess.

We have drawings in our "current projects" drawers around our desks that were completed in 1985. You can see what I'm up against, here. Not to mention, our archive room is a wreck, with file boxes of receipts from 2000, for computers we no longer own. Seven years of records are all that are required. Come on folks.

I'm blaming the pitiful state of our archives on Lola, as that was supposed to be one of her jobs. She was too busy Facebooking and emailing her friends to actually perform any of her tasks, though.

So now, I'm in charge of the archives, which is okay, because it's the sort of task my little OCD heart goes pitter patter over.

It's not easy, physically, as it involves rolling up drawings (which requires some upper body strength), putting those drawings into tubes, and carrying the tubes 30 feet down the hall, then lifting them into their appropriate cubby spaces. If there's already a tube started for the project, I sometimes have to move 10 tubes out of the way to be able to pull the required tube out of the pile so I can check to see if it's full, in which case I have to start a new tube.

It's also turned out to be emotionally difficult.

My boss has two daughters. He also, at one time, had a son. His son drowned in the Gulf of Mexico as a young man, in his late teens or early 20s, I think.

There are things that belonged to his son in the archive room: a box of buttons from peace rallies, a magazine article with his name scrawled across the top, and family snapshots of he and his younger sisters on the beach.

I found the items on accident when I knocked over a precariously perched box, and three smaller boxes from Sakowitz spilled out, dumping buttons and photos and dice everywhere. I picked them up, and read a few of the things in the boxes, and realized that they belonged to Oldsmobile's son.

I sat down on another box (the lid of which promptly caved in) and sorted through the articles, looking at the funny quirky collection of odds and ends. The boxes were, appropriately enough, labelled "Odds and Ends."

The emotions I felt are difficult to explain: a mixture of sadness and happiness and a sense of loss, although I never knew Oldsmobile's son. Also, I suppose, there was surprise: why were the things in our office storage closet, instead of at Oldsmobile's house?

It's a question I can never ask, but I can guess at a few answers.