my weekend was so busy, i had to go back to work to recover from it. friday was mostly normal, exept i didn’t head over to my mom’s place to do the laundry. (that’s right, my mom’s place. because the laundrymat at my apartment complex costs $1.50 per load, that’s why.) no, i took the opportunity to take it easy on friday night, because i knew it would be the only moment that weekend i got to do so. (^^;) besides, i have recently rearranged mine livingroom, so i thought it was about time i got to hang around in it. 
i really only rearranged the craft section, the TV section hasn’t moved. it’s difficult to rearrange that area. the tv’s bolted to the wall. (^_^) but as you can see, i now have a nice little L shaped craft metropolis, complete with swedish towers in the closet~ (because of their blue, white and golden colors, that’s why.) i pulled The Machine (that grey monstrosity next to the Errant Chair) out of the closet, where it wasn’t fitting anyway, and now i can actually use it! now i just have to invent a reason to. (^_^) unfortunately, all this saturday-prep meant no friday-night anime, a tradition my sibs and i have recently re-establed after a too-long absence. we’re working our way through Chevalier D’Eon (so far not bad, but not especially awesome) thanks to that great and wonderful god, Netflix. but this week, meredeth had to go to bed early (!?) so she could get up early (!!??) saturday morning (T_T) at the hideously and not at all good time of… … 7.30. A.M. seriously. so what would cause me, she who loves a late wake up time so much she once slept through an entire day (not kidding), to wake up at a time normally reserved for going to sleep (at least in my world)? one of my friends was getting ordained! ok, so what does that mean? (seriously, i’ve had more than one person greet me with that awkward silence that says, “i don’t really know what that means…”) my friend Elise was mystically turned into a priest this past saturday~ (^_^) 
actually, she’s been studying for a long time (a lifetime of learning!) and she was ordained as a deacon last year, so this was the big final step. unless she’s thinking of being a bishop. (^_^) she’ll make a great priest though, she’s very thoughtful and so tactful! meredeth couldn’t be that tactful if her life depended on it. (^^;) elise is the one in the dark red on the left. my mommeh made her vestments~ there were seven people ordained that day, and it was pretty cool. a whole group of us from my church went down together. the church was in West Chester, and it was so WHITE and kind of sparse. i guess that’s protestantism at its purest, but we’ve got all the smells and bells at my church, and a fairly awesome piece of stained glass, and some really nice warm wooden exposed ceiling beams, so i tend to prefer that. a church isn’t a church w/out at least one piece of super awesome stained glass. they tried to liven up the place with that square plaque thing you see above the altar, but it just wasn’t the same. also in that picture, you might be able to spot (although maybe not, i had to take it with my phone) our deacon Douglas (over on the right in the red robe… oh wait. the one facing the camera and standing up. the one sitting down is bishop Briedenthal. who’s name i may have just misspelled.). the blonde lady to the left of him is TJ. she was a visiting deacon at our church for a while, she’s cool too~ well, after the service was a nice little brunch thing (we are episcopalians, after all, we have a tradition to uphold, people) and then my mother and i took advantage of the fact that we were in West Chester Ohio to visit the nearby (i mean like 6 blocks away) IKEA~~~ that’s right, that bastion of self-assembled, inexpensive and modernist furniture and other home goods~ i’m totally addicted, and so’s my mother. coincidentally, i had just been paid, so it was the perfect moment. we took along one of our fellow church-goes, who had never been and said she’d certainly never go on her own (gasp!) and we had a blast. i got a bookcase (BADLY needed) and a fancy ceiling-mounted curtain track (wherein you slide your curtain back and forth like a vertical blind instead of drawing them back like a normal curtain) and some more bamboo. because i can never have enough. it’s the only plant i can’t kill. (^_^)b here’s our haul: 
that’s my stuff and my mom’s stuff together. kinda small by our normal standards, actually. (^^;) jane (our fellow church-goer)’s yellow bag of joy is on the other side of the picture (cut off~) and front and center, you will see the pepparkakors of song and story. that would be ginger snaps for the rest of you. these are thin, and flower-shaped, and totally perfect in every way. (^_^) the other thing that’s perfect (although not flower-shaped and not in any way thin) at IKEA is the cake: 
that thing sugar-fueled me for the 2.5 hours we spent in that place. (^^;) my feet hurt. jane fell asleep in the car for a little bit on the way back. (it’s about 1.5 hours back to columbus.) but it was super fun! and then i got to go home and put my stuff together~ see, some people would use this space to gripe and complain about trying to assemble furniture. now, i don’t know if these people are stupid, but i don’t find IKEA furniture, or indeed furniture of any kind, even the crazy wall-mounted TV thing i have with multiple shelves and a track and a sliding door, to be particularly difficult to assemble. also, i enjoy using screwdrivers and mallets and wall-mounting pieces of plastic, so that may have something to do with it. (^_^) in any event, here’s my bookcase(s): 
the one on the left, the tall one? that’s the bookcase i bought from IKEA, called BESTA, and it contains books that i have already read. the one on the right, the short one that’s full to overflowing? yeah. that’s the bookcase i’ve had for about 15 years now and it “contains” all the books i have not yet read. i repeat: yeah. i couldn’t get a good shot of the curtain thing, coz the light in my little nook is messy, but it was these: kvartal. we bought some clips that slide into the track and clipped my blackout curtain to it. now i can sleep till appropriate hours of the day. very cool~ then, i had to plan out sunday’s trek, because sunday was … MIDSOMAR~ here’s the story: a few years back my father got laid off right at thanksgiving. it was like, here’s your thanksgiving vacation, don’t bother coming back. thanks. (X_X) so, not surprisingly, we had a pretty rotten christmas. mom and dad were like, well that sucked. we need another one. so my dad was like, christmas in july could be more than just a phrase? and my mom was like how about midsummer, like our swedish relations? so it was decided! we had a second christmas, in june, and we called it midsomar, and we had a nice bbq out in the back yard and a nice dip in the pool and some gift exchanges and some movie watching and some family board games (which we super love at my house). it was awesome. the next christmas, we had an acceptable, some might even say good, christmas, but then that next june, we kind of all looked at each other like, how about another midsomar? (^_^) so we did~ and now it’s a tradition thing, we get two christmases in my house, in rememberance of one christmas that really bit. we like to thumb our nose at fate whenever possible. (^_^)b this year, it seemed to sneak up on us, but we still managed to come through with a pretty good sized display: 
yeah, not shabby. (^_^) i crocheted my brother a dalek, which he seemed to enjoy. he put it on his head anyway: 
i got a sake set: 
haven’t used it yet, but not for want of trying. (^_^) everybody got some cool stuff, actually, it was a terribly festive occasion. (^_^) the aftermath: 
we usually have a pool party, but it’s been raining here in columbus a TON (a ton) lately, and so the water was too chilly to get in. that didn’t stop my little sister, but it did stop the rest of us, thank you very much. and it was a little too late to get over to my apartment and hop in that pool (which i finally got to do the week before, finally) which is very cool, but closes at 9 pm: 
so instead, we took our new stuff inside and set about using it! actually, meredeth did her laundry mostly, but michael organized his new spices and spice jars. he’s a super cook, and he does pretty much every night’s meal now at that house, i hear. (^_^) so mom got him some lemon salt, some parsley and some dill (which i can’t find a link to) she saw at IKEA and some nice large spice jars with screw on lids and the ability to sit at an angle as well as straight up. (coz… um, it looks cool, i guess, that’s why.) so we were all standing around remarking upon how good the stuff smelled. the lemon salt was neon yellow, but smelled awesome! we were like, i thought the package color was an advertising exageration, but no. the salt actually is that color. the parsley was good, you know, parsley-ish. and then michael busted out the dill. and we were like, WOW! that’s some strong stuff. good, but strong. everybody wandered in and out of the kitchen, attracted by the smell. we were like, “smell, but not deeply.” unfortunately, dana-chan was the only one of us to have the right idea. she wafted, the rest of us sniffed. i myself sniffed, and i paid a heavy price. i don’t know if i’m allergic to it, or if the fineness of the powder just destroyed my nostrils, but i swear i sniffled and sneezed and used up literally half of a box of tissues over the next three hours. i could. not. stop. sneezing. it was CRAZY! we watched our friday night anime on sunday night, and by the time the allotted two hours had passed, i was surrounded by a white drift of used tissues. it was just as disgusting as you think it was, and the worst part was that it wouldn’t stop! i went home, i washed my face and hands, and i changed my clothes, and my nose was still running. i blew my nose so much that the inside of my nose hurt. when i woke up monday morning, my eyes were puffy and watery and oozing this kind of yellowy nastiness (i know, way tmi) and i was STILL SNEEZING! i was like, should i make a doctor’s appointment? jesus! thankfully, it let up over the day, but really, my nose still kind of hurts. i’m staying the hell away from that stuff from now on! (X_X) monday, after work, i decided to reward myself with a little swim. dana-chan (using her fancy new phone, a nokia nuron that is, i have to admit, moderately cool) had been texting me and i asked after the pool, which was confirmed to be slightly chilly, but much better than sunday night (thank you, 90 degree temps…) so i did the tiny bit of grocery shopping i hadn’t been able to do during the weekend and headed over: 
because dana is constitutionally incapable of being photographed w/out Striking a Pose, that’s why. (^_^) we had a great time, as we clones usually do when we gather together. (^_^) in other news, i finished a needlepoint QR code for one of my (other) sister’s friend today. carolyn’s always good for some pimpage, and this time it paid off, in the form of one @stylesmith, whose goodie shall be shipped off on the morrow~ also, hopefully, there will soon(ish) be some acceptable fictions available for your reading perusal here. i bought a couple of highly recommended books on editing from amazon (which came a full two days early! srsly!) and i fully intend to put them to use. i’m going to start with something smaller, with the intention of not overwhelming myself straight away, and then i’m on to past NaNoNovels~ so, i shall head back to that, and in closing, i shall give you a picture of the clouds above my place of employment about a week ago. this is what we have to deal with around here. ENOUGH RAIN ALREADY! 
~meredeth. -who does not own even a single umbrella.
FACT 160 – recovery
