Organization is my friend

Hooray - Getting the house in order is fun! Or not - but it is pretty satisfying. Putting things in their place and throwing stuff out. It's really rather therapeutic. I have a newfound drive to be a minimalist....or at least a maximum-ist who keeps her stuff neat and tidy. I am organizing the closet. I got shelves and clear plastic boxes to store out-of-season clothes and other stuff. It looks so much nicer than printer paper boxes I bring home from work. Plus, it means I might actually avoid keeping endless piles of paper around, since I'd have to see them through the box and not just stuff them away in a cardboard box and tell myself they're not there.

In an effort to focus my home renovations and get the damn place finished - a plan is in order, don't 'cha think?! I need a break from paint fumes, so....this weekend's goals - finishing the closet, listing stuff on here, and installing the in-the-wall box in the kitchen. Baseboard if there is time. Wish me luck.

In cat news - which is, of course, more exciting than baseboard - we built the little critter a scratching post. Lovingly constructed out of sisal rope, and scrap wood from R*, she completed ignored the thing for days on end. Actually, ignored is the wrong word - feared is more accurate. But she has now started to actually use it on occasion. Not to say she doesn't still use the shelves, or the couch, or the baseboard laying on the floor (sorry, I'll stop talking about the damn baseboard). You should hear us when we see her using the scratching post - "Good kitty!" "You're such a good girl," and other innane sounding things. I refuse to speak to babies in "baby talk," so why am I speaking to the cat like that? I'll rationalize it by saying that she has a pea brain (let's be honest), and needs all the happy-sounding vocal patterns she can get!

She's pretty funny - one second she's all interested in her ball toy. But then, she hears a noise and starts looking around. Then, she forgets all about the ball toy and the noise, and jumps up to the window. She has the attention span of.....well....a cat. It's all about the pea brain. So tiny!

Oh, and SHE has a new name. Smidgen. Better than "Daisy," which as MikaJ pointed out, sounded kind of like a cow name. So - Smidgen it is! - cause she's small, and because it's actually the name of a candy made by a candy company back in good ol' Pennsylvania. And I do so love candy....almost as much as ice cream. Her nickname is "Cat and a half" because with 26 toes, she has enough to make 1.5 regular cats. Penny and the German word for 'foot' were also in the running, but ultimately, I figured Smidgen was more fun.

Couch with kitty

I've been incognito lately because every waking moment has been spent spackling, painting, rubbing, wiping, cutting, scrubbing, lifting, or otherwise preparing the house.....well, at least half of it.

So, now there is a kitchen, a kitchen table, and a living room....at least mostly. I still need to do the baseboard in the house, but I need to go in on a miter saw with R*, so that I do not need to cut many, many pieces of baseboard by hand. But it is so nice to have a table with chairs, and a couch for lounging, knitting, and watching TV. I am usually not terribly interested in TV, but having gone without for the last 5 months or so, I think I will get sucked in for a little while.

The apartment has another new accessory - a kitty cat. I've been mulling over getting a cat for a while. I'm still not 100% convinced this was a good idea. I am concerned that I will get grumpy with it for scratching my furniture, or that it will eat something it shouldn't, or that it will claw through the screens in the windows and run off somewhere. Okay, I need to calm down - I know. I'm trying. :)

So - the kitty low-down -
she's a "she"
she has 7 toes on each of her front feet - she's polydactyl
she came from a rescue organization
she is pretty small, but very long
she wants to climb into, onto and over everything she sees
her name is/was Daisy, but we're waiting for another name to 'come to us'

We've had her for only about 48 hours, so we're still figuring her out. But she's cute, yes?

Interactively Creamy

Oh yeah - making progress on the living room! With a little help from R* and Steve-o, the living room spackling is done. And there is a lovely coat of primer on the walls, tinted to match my chosen paint color - interative cream.

So, stirring orange(kitchen), flows into interactive cream(living room), which abuts cloud white(hallway), which will then split off into perhaps baize green(bedroom #2) and a loverly light aqua(bedroom #1) yet to be chosen. So far, the bathroom is just white.....and will probably stay that way for now, since I'll be knocking out a wall to intall the pocket door. No sense painting when it will all have to be re-done anyway.

And Steve-o and I went shopping this weekend for another bit of decoration for the house - a kitty. Stay tuned!