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Nova Terra

~ Just another way of stalling on my other writing

Nova Terra

Tag Archives: dollhouse

Blizzards, Paychecks, and Sloth

26 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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blizzard, cold, dollhouse, family, ferrets, fun, poverty, reading, snow, writing

My governor has shut down public transit for tomorrow, which means no work for me. Although I do have a vision of making the two mile hike over the Longfellow Bridge, pretending to be Eliza crossing the ice, or Matthew Henson, or maybe one of the Yeti who might be poking their snouts into my 2014 unfinished WriMo, I probably wouldn’t end up being paid anyway. We have a policy of being closed when the Boston public schools are, which is a pain in the sheep because the Boston public schools are wussies. Last month when we had a cold snap they closed down, which at least gave me a *quiet* day here at home, as the Cambridge schools laughed and told the kiddies to pile on another sweater–as well they should.

But tomorrow there’s no arguing from me, because we’re SUPPOSEDLY getting up to 30 inches by Wednesday morning. Even the new boots Sunny gave me this past weekend ain’t gonna cut it. I’m just hoping we’re dug out and back to quasi-normal by Wednesday, because we had two weeks of enforced “vacation” cutting into the budget this month as it is. Grrrr. I had always assumed that this was a way of balancing the department budget, but was told when I complained to the leadership committee that it was “just tradition” because “peers don’t ever take breaks.” Until my as-unwhiny-as-possible email, it apparently hadn’t really sunk in that “peers don’t really like being forced to eat ramen noodles,” and now for 2015 it’ll be only one week break. Yay!

But it is what it is, and with both spawn working, we’re hanging in there, doing much better than we have in the past, and much better than the people I serve, so I can’t really complain. (Much.) So much for blizzard, so much for paychecks, and on to the sloth!

Snow days have an American magic about them, because even the vaunted Protestant Work Ethic has to bow before Nature’s divine tantrum. I suspect we’re really supposed to clean out that closet we’ve been ignoring, but instead everybody treats it like a free Saturday, when we can’t even do errands because everything is closed. (Sort of like Christmas, only the Chinese restaurants may not make it either.) We sleep in, we read trash (which is all I ever read anyway, even though my trash has mellowed for a century or so), we eat whatever we find in our larders. (This depends on when we got to the store the night before and whether or not we staggered home in a daze, clutching only the last battered packet of toilet paper and half a box of butter.)

I myself will be doing at least some work, as I have a couple hours of graphics stuff piled up and I haven’t entirely forgotten the paycheck–and there’s always *shudder* query letters and Real Writing–unless, of course, the power goes out. But I have charged and loaded up my Kindle accordingly, and can always do the next stage of dollhouse repair, until it gets dark at teatime. Then all bets are off, and I don’t know what will happen. We might even play a board game by candlelight–at least until the cold drives us to huddle under our blankets in defeat. I’m almost looking forward to it, because it always makes our usual impoverished prosperity so shiny and valuable by contrast.

All in all, I’m a lucky girl. Even if Amaterasu the ferret did drag the insoles out of my new boots.

Update: Boss called and informed me that Boston schools are closed Wednesday too. Sigh.

Hiatus, or Dumb Stuff About My Life

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

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dollhouse, life, NaNoWriMo, sf cons, surgery, writing

Am I the Lamest Blogger Evah, or what?

The dollhouse project stalled, and might be stalled for a while. It will be Shiny again, and in the meantime, the ferrets are in serious love with the thing. All the furniture and the inhabitants (um, the intended inhabitants) are in the attic out of reach; meanwhile, Meeze (5 months old) is making a soda straw collection in the living room. Shoulda been there when he tried to go in through the door with it held dogbone style. . .

In terms of technology, I have gone one step forward, and one step back: Got a Kindle this Christmas and am much in love with it, but I gave up on my phone’s calendar because it wouldn’t upload to Google, so what’s the sheeping point? Returned to the paper version (Harvard seal on the cover, natch) and am much happier, even than when the old phone uploaded. That was neat, but I’m a note scribbler and a page marker. It occurs to me that if I read the same way, the Kindle might be annoying–but I don’t.

Rewrote the opening of Max and he is now in the paws of my beta team. I will just take tranquilizers or something (not kidding) and get back on the agent trail.

Failed to “win” NaNoWriMo this year (thanks for a last-minute migraine, grr), so now have *two* unfinished stories languishing on my desktop. Am planning to *sob* join a writer’s group, if I can find one. The very thought of mixing “talk to strangers” and “writing” makes my tummy knot.

I am going to Arisia this weekend, which makes the first sf con I’ve gone to for over 15 years. I will probably do what I’ve done at other sorts of cons, namely watch costumes and find some gaming, but again, there may be a writer’s group . . .

Kidney stones have been baa-lambs all year; we’ll see what the CT showed when I see my crew in a couple of weeks. Arthritis still evil, but I had a lot of little pieces of surgery done on my right foot/leg over the holidays which promises to increase my mobility. It bettah–while recuperating from this I’ve put on nearly ten pounds and am wearing classy sweat pants to work.

And that’s where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. I hope the writer’s group will help me figure out why I don’t blog more. So how’s by you?

Itty Bitty Rocks

10 Sunday Aug 2014

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dollhouse

Not to pun, but I’ve been hitting a wall. I just learned I have anemia, which is one of those now-you-tell-me things which explains a lot of little physical weirdnesses, like the fatigue attacks. I’m coming out of one now; had it for most of the week. Wednesday’s gym workout was a labor of–if not love, then determination. But I knew that Thursday was out of the question. I crawled home and went to bed.

Been that way with the house–now I’m starting to appreciate how big a project this is (in a small way, of course), but there’s only one way to go. Le sigh.

Shingling is proceeding slowly. Not only do they ruck up for a while during drying, but the entire roof is curling at the edges like one half of a pagoda:

I'm betting a lot of actual roofs look a lot worse.

I’m betting a lot of actual roofs look a lot worse. (The row nearest the peak was just put on an hour ago.)

Worst come to worst, my daughter thinks that if I untape it when it’s done and put it under a stack of encyclopedias it should straighten out. I’m afraid that some of the shingles will crack off; I’m probably going to decide to live with it.

Started the repainting with the addition:

Yup, I'm working on this instead of finishing dealing with my laundry.

Yup, that’s my laundry basket I knocked over to do this. So sue me.

And then (oh God) decided to go ahead and do it in fieldstone. Just finished roughing in the first layer of stones:

Why, yes, as a matter of fact I *am* crazy, thank you.

Why, yes, as a matter of fact I *am* crazy, thank you.

Next is the detail, for which I need a better brush, so enough for today. I draw and paint fieldstone a lot. I don’t know why, because it drives me nuts. It’ll certainly be a decisive change from the pink.

Anybody out there have any insight into what it means to do teeny little obsessive details? Come to think of it, that describes having a dollhouse to begin with.

Loss and Breakage May Occur

04 Monday Aug 2014

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dollhouse, teeth

I had a tooth come apart during dinner. I’m looking at my usual hellweek, but I’ll call BU’s Dental School first thing in the morning. Feh. A dentist once told me that the tongue has a mind of its own, and it’s an inquisitive toddler, forever getting in the way of what they’re trying to do, or exploring anything new in the mouth’s landscape. I want to plug mine into some cartoons or something. Grr.

Meanwhile, I have the kind of tired that means I’m fighting something off, so this will be brief–a looky-looky of what’s been happening to the house:

I'm impressed this many shingles stayed on, actually.

I’m impressed this many shingles stayed on, actually.

The shingles I ordered aren’t as good quality–the old ones were like sawed-off tongue depressors (are we working on a theme here?) and these are much thinner, with many of them being defective. Hope I have enough. But they do the job:

Patched!

Patched!

I’m going to be painting them, going for a slate effect, so the color difference shouldn’t be a major deal.

Meanwhile, by means of a small miracle, I took the right measurements and managed to hack off a proper piece of foamcore for the main roof, which I attached with duct tape. (It has to hinge for the attic, and I don’t have the proper wee little drill and itty bitty hardware.)

And we're well on our way to middle-class pretensions!

And we’re well on our way to middle-class pretensions!

The instructions that came with the shingles said to hotglue them. I’m not sure we have hotglue. I’m not sure we don’t have hotglue, so I don’t want to go out and buy a whole new set-up. Besides, I am a su-u-per g-ee-n-yus at burning myself with it. So we’re going with Elmer’s. Works fine, except that it sort of rucks up as it dries, so each row has to be really, completely, I-mean-it dry before adding another, which means it takes forever.

Grrrr!!

Grrrr!!

It lies back down when it’s dry. I think I’ll lie back down too. But wait till you see the painting!

Just Whose Rehab Is This?

03 Sunday Aug 2014

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dollhouse, mental illness, projects

I forget how the dollhouse got to Maryland from Wisconsin when we divorced. I think maybe my ex put it in the truck when he moved the kids in for their placement with me. Or maybe he added it to the several exceedingly heavy boxes he air-shipped. I know that somehow it got there, but I had my hands full having a new life with a job and single parenting. Losing the job made things harder, not easier; so did losing one of the kids. I fell apart. Got really sick. Looking back, my being held together with duct tape was a bad idea–maybe a hospital would have been a Good Thing. Maybe they would have given me an accurate diagnosis. Or maybe I would have just lost the kid I had left. I just kept on applying layers of duct tape and soldiered on.

Speaking of tape, somewhere around there, the dollhouse was taped shut to move it. (Unlike the tin ones we looked at yesterday, mine opens in the front, with its facade on hinges.) On some moves I would remove the tape and wince at the “scars” the glops of adhesive left and vow to fix it. Someday. Once in a while, I would find some miniature furniture at a craft store and sort of toss it in. I had an assortment of small dolls in there; at one point they included She-Ra, Princess of Power, who was being clearanced out at Toys “R” Us. I also had (still do have) Mammy, from Gone With the Wind. She’s a classy little doll, made in Germany with bendable limbs (they sit at the diningtable in Deutschland), complete with rustly red petticoat from Massa Rhett. It was a motley crew, and seeing as my furniture didn’t match either, what the hell?

We had two episodes of being homeless, where we had to put our stuff in storage. And even though the damn thing was falling apart and taking up space (it’s roughly a meter square and half a meter deep) I . . .  just . . . couldn’t . . . let go of it. It got jammed into corners, and I kept waiting for something to bash in its walls. But it held up. Mostly.

sad dollhouse

This is how it looked as of two weeks ago. Half the roof is missing. You can see the tape on the addition.

Things got a lot better for me, but not for the dollhouse. Lack of time, lack of space, lack of . . . moxie, I guess. But it still mattered. I’m not a giver-upper, as a rule.

Last apartment, when my son (now an adult) moved in with us (yay!) was only a two-bedroom (boo!) and although I thought we would move in July, it took til December. It was . . . stressful. I remember breaking down into tears at one point, and what was I sobbing? That I didn’t have space for my sheeping dollhouse. Mind you, even before he moved in it was in the combination storage/ferret room, where the only pleasure it was giving was to the ferrets themselves, who when let out to play could get through the gaping door. I felt like getting that novelty scotch tape that has “crime scene” printed on it. At least the ferrets weren’t doing crack in there, to the best of my knowledge.

So now this hunk of junk is in my room, and . . . for some reason, mainly because it’s close enough to the computer to touch and my debit card was on my desk at the time, I thought, “Hmm,” and checked to see if they had dollhouse shingles on Amazon. They did, with free shipping no less. So . . . what the hey. They were cheap, which was good, because I knew that with this horrible piece of wood’s history, they’d just lay around inducing mild guilt until the end of time.

But then the next day I found myself buying a sheet of foamcore and a sharp knife. Gotta put the shingles on something, right?

The house is designed to have one (missing) side of the roof hinge up so you can use the attic for storage. Or something.

The house is designed to have one (missing) side of the roof hinge up so you can use the attic for storage. Of your refrigerator.

Tools of construction. What bodes this?

Tools of construction. What bodes this?

I now have a history of finishing complex projects, so I’m just sort of sitting back and watching myself now. Pretty scary.

Nova Terra

just another way of stalling on my other writing

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