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.

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.

Hell Hath No Fury

Like a woman referred to a collections company when she should not have been.

I wrote earlier about my being granted charitable assistance from Texas Health Resources Presbyterian Hospital in Plano. They granted me my assistance on February 14 (but did not send the letter until February 18).

They had my paperwork for a month before they reviewed it.

A week after I am mailed the letter, stating that my application for charitable assistance has been granted, I receive another letter from a credit collections agency - with the new lower amount posted - stating that I am past due and must pay immediately.

Whether or not this has been reported to a credit reporting agency, I don't know, but if they screwed up my 810 credit rating, I'll be one pissed off unemployed architect.

I had already vowed to myself that I would not return to their emergency room, because their visits end up costing in the range of $700 after my insurance has paid, and I can't afford that even when I am employed. So my neurologist can tell me to go to the ER at her home-hospital, but I can't.

I haven't told her, yet, about the impossibility of using her ER, but it's sure to come up at some point.

Needless to say, right now - running on 30 minutes of sleep - I'm about to explode with anger.

Texas Health Resources: you are dead to me.