At Least I Will Eat Well, This Week

I no longer eat gluten. My migraines occur less frequently, my skin is improved (or, at least, it is improved between the days when I have dates, but always seems to unleash its full fury the day of a date; I think my skin wants me to stay single), and I lost 10 lbs. without changing my exercise regime a single solitary bit.

Awesome, right?

Yes, in most ways. And now, I'm going to sound like the world's whiniest person.

Because I have very little to wear in the way of "Date Clothes."

I didn't date for about two years, and now that I'm dating again, I'm rapidly discovering that the clothes I wore pre-gluten-free-diet are, for the most part, too big.

I know: P.O.O.R. B.A.B.Y. (and then you make a gagging motion when I turn my back. It's cool, I understand).

(Also, with my broad, square shoulders, some of the things I used to wear when I was bigger now make me look like a freaking Greenbay linebacker).

For the date with Mr. Ihavenoideawheremylifeisgoing, I bought a shirt from Banana Republic to wear that goes with my limited color palette wardrobe rule/theory, wore it with my great-grandmother's gorgeous gold pocket-watch/necklace, and felt fabulous.

Too bad the fabulousness was sort of wasted...

But I can't go out and buy something new to wear every time I have a date. I'm a grad student. I don't have that kind of cash.

So I'm trying to figure out what to wear for the two first-blind-dates I have this week (one of which will take place with the Man of My Dreams. Pardon me while I run around the apartment shrieking at the top of my lungs for a moment. Okay. I'm better, now). I want to look like I tried, but not like I tried too hard.

Complicating matters is Houston's weather: it was in the 50s a few days ago, and now it's in the 80s... during the day. The temperature drops to borderline-chilliness in the evenings. Do I wear winter/fall clothes, or do I chuck the Southern Lady conventions and wear whatever the heck the outside temperature suggests?

I DON'T KNOW!!!!!

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have a panic attack in my closet, for the next 3 hours.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check It Out!

I now have a tentative idea of what my monthly income will be once I move to Houston. As a result, I was able to begin apartment hunting today, if only virtually.

I emailed an apartment location company recommended to me by my sister, via one of her friends. I told them what I'm looking for and the areas in which I'm looking, and continued to look online.

A few minutes on Craigslist.org led me to another property locator that specializes in 4-plexes, duplexes, etc. It allows you to look at the different properties, and then request more info. I thought it was pretty cool.

Then, after submitting the list of apartments I would like information about, I received an email that definitely qualified for a "Too Long: Didn't Read" response. If printed out, it would be 4 pages long.

Seriously, who the hell is going to read through 4 pages of snarky commentary? The people who wrote it pretty much say, "We run this website as a business, but we might choose not to get back to you because, meh..."

And I quote:

Obviously we cannot help 10 or 15 or 20 people a day--which means that it is inevitable that many prospective clients are going to fall through the cracks. We try hard to get back to everyone, we try hard to return every email and phone call, but we're people, not machines.

Not "a few prospective clients" but "many prospective clients."

They then go on to insinuate that their users are morons if they overlook a piece of info in the property listings but include it in the "what I'm looking for" section. I, for example, said that I would prefer a washer & dryer in the unit, but I put a couple of apartments on the list that didn't have them just because they were uh-mazing and had a laundry room in the building.

We'll see if that brands me as a moron.

It never ceases to amaze me how people who run a business seem to have no concept of whether or not their "auto-response" or their work emails are going to hurt their image. I tend to take the approach that, no matter how annoyed I might get or how frustrated I am, it's always best to be nice to someone, to try not to sound arch or holier-than-thou, because that person might be impressed with my service and decide that they want to work with me again.

On the off-chance that I receive a response from these guys, we'll see if they merit a repeat performance.

Eh...

It's been a busy busy week. After discovering that the framers our general contractor hired roughed-in the windows on the front and rear facades approximately 2 feet away from their intended location (really?) and that they are putting up walls where they don't belong and leaving out doors elsewhere, Pacman was in a car wreck.

He's alive, but bruised and cut up from all the windshield glass. And guess who became de facto head of our project?

Ms. Strainedconsciousness, that's who.

I had a meeting Thursday morning with the framers and the superintendent to discuss the windows before they set about rectifying their mistake. During the course of the discussion, one of the framers asked Radio a question, who deferred it to me, and I answered.

The framer replied, "Maybe we should hold off until Pacman can give us an answer."

WHAT. THE. HELL.

I'm not usually the project head, so I don't talk a whole heck of a lot to the subcontractors, but the guy asked Radio first, and when I gave him his answer, he said we should wait until Pacman got back? Which could be as long as two weeks?

I suspected a bit of sexism was involved, and I looked the framer in the eye and said, "I just gave you the answer. Pacman would say the same thing. And I produced that drawings, not him. So you're ready to go."

The superintendent seemed to get a kick out of the situation. The framer just nodded and said, "Okay," in a somewhat cowed voice.

He was much more respectful of me when I met with him on Friday - along with the midget electrical contractor and the interior designer - to discuss electrical outlet and light switch placement. We had a couple of questions for him, and he answered, and then asked me a couple of things, and I gave him answers, which he accepted.

All is right with the world.

I may be pretty and I may look young, Mr. Subcontractor, but you sure as hell better not underestimate me. I can be just as aggressive as Pacman, when you push me to it.

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.