ellenmillion

There are six big boxes and a giant bag in the back of my car destined to the Counseling and Adoption center, all purged out of Guppy's room. In addition, we hauled five boxes to the connex (from various rooms in the house), and brought a dresser in to hold linens out of everyone's closets. This entailed moving Guppy's couch-box-house to the basement, as well as the air conditioner, which required moving around shipping boxes and various other items in the basement. And the little side table from Guppy's room went into the bedroom, and the cube shelf moved to another wall, and we installed a closet rod in Guppy's closet, and the sum of the whole thing is that we basically have a WHOLE NEW HOUSE. I don't know where anything is, but there is all kinds of clear space, and it's all much prettier.

Here is Guppy testing out the size of the dresser drawers.



Compare to a similar photo from almost exactly 2 years ago:


Some writing now, while Guppy finishes her lunch!

I was not planning to get a tree. A holiday tree is a silly expense, especially with a toddler not quite old enough to appreciate it (except as something to be destroyed or collided with!), a giant dog, and a cat who is not quite geriatric, in a small house with a woodstove.

My husband, however, teamed up with his sister, and there was a triple-dog-dare involved, so on Friday, toddler in tow, I went to look at the local options. The first place I tried was closed (no tree for us, I thought in triumph), but the second had the perfect tree, right within the price range I was willing (if barely!) to pay. There were others in that price range - and one that was cheaper - but they were all poor substitutes for the gorgeous tree that had already stolen my heart. (The cheaper one was very, very sad - about 1 foot of tree, and then 1 foot of spindly bolt. I have a terrible habit of buying the 'poor, sad, sick' plant to nurse back to health, but this one couldn't win even me.)

I wrestled that thing out of my car myself, set it up, and dug up all our Christmas boxes so that I could surprise the husband when he got home from the airport. Sadly, only one of our three strings of Christmas lights still worked and I couldn't fix the others, but I got that one up, and the star. I even wrapped up his presents and risked putting them under the tree. And so far? The dog seems a bit afraid of it, the cat only wants to eat the ribbon on the presents, and the toddler is reverently respectful of the whole affair. She occasionally sniffs it deeply.



There are no ornaments yet - I will wait until I buy another string of lights to put those on, but isn't that the prettiest little tree? I am not sorry that the husband and sister-in-law ganged up on me.

My list of things to mail gets whittled smaller and smaller almost every day. I have THREE Kickstarter orders left to ship - one that hasn't answered their survey, one that hasn't dictated their custom work, and one that I'm in communication with that involves a little more work. I have one more thing to print tonight, and two packages to pack and ship...

And I have confirmation that some of the custom work I've done has been received and approved, so I can share them!


This client wanted their dog, Slinky, portrayed as a superhero, which was insanely fun.


Pets were a theme of the Kickstarter commissions - this one is Rufus, for Evelyn.

Guppy keeps adding more and more words to her vocabulary: Dahpuh (diaper), zippuh (zipper), chih (chip), okay, poo, pee, bahr (bear), mine (pants... I don't know why!), cookie, cake (you can see what's important to her...), ball, box, and block (which all sound very much alike), gahgoo (cracker), hahahah (hot, hot, hot - said whenever I put wood in the woodstove), a wide variety of animal sounds and names, and body parts (elbow is her favorite). She knows more and more of her magnetic letters well enough to volunteer them, and brings me new ones to ask what they are.

Today, I must make bread, and go shopping, and make a trip to the post office. Lots of fun!

Oh GOD, we've been invaded! They are these horrible, horrible beetle things that are striped like bees and have that horrible loud beetle buzz when they're flying around and there've been three of them in the house and I had to kill the last one myself because Jake is gone and I thought it was dead, but came back and it was upright again and an inch away from where I left it and OH GOD IT WAS STILL ALIVE and I had to kill it AGAIN until it squished and I had to make myself pick it up with a papertowel and seal it into the trash and now every little flutter makes me flinch and I keep feeling THINGS at my toes and they won't die and they'll eat my face while I'm sleeping!!!!

*panting*

Sorry.

That probably TOTALLY killed my tough, Alaskan, can-do, girl-power image.

But... zombie beetle things! That won't die! Eeeeeeee!

I don't seem to have an icon that suits this post, so I'm using this one because I'm going to start carrying that wrench around with me to squish zombie bugs.