The Ouchie

I showed the bug-induced ouchie on my foot to J. yesterday. It's turning funny colors and such, and I was worried. Also, she's Boyfriend's mom and moms know everything. Ask anyone. She told me to go to the doctor AT ONC--Oh, wait, the doctor wasn't seeing anyone in the afternoon.

So we looked up when the doctor was seeing people, and it turned out the doctor is on holiday for another three weeks. Then we napped for hours wracked our brains trying to come up with a solution. When none presented itself, we called J. and asked what now. J. had the number of a different doctor.

We called it, and looked up where the doctor was located and got an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. If it turns out this is nothing serious, I'm going to feel really silly.

The Not-Sleepy-Syndrome

I didn't sleep last night. I wasn't tired.

I'd woken up really late, so when bedtime came round, I just kept going. The bottle of spezi I was emptying might have been a factor.

I went to the fun fair with Boyfriend and had fun with duckies and crossbows and cotton candy. Okay, so the crossbows was mostly Boyfriend while I cheered him on, but still. I'd put in my septum moustache. Most people ignored it, a few looked up, but puppies passing by still were more interesting than me. It's a fun fair. People do funny things there.

Then came the night. Not much happened, including sleepiness. So I just stayed up.

When it was time to go to the studio, I still wasn't tired, so I went, happy and energetic. It was a lot of fun. There were new things to be learned and nice customers and a dog that actually fetched things. Just imagine. Fetched things. Nail files and Boyfriend's hats and everything. It was amazing.

I even did the four nails I'd destroyed for being too crappy to live with. One of them I still don't like, but the other three are cute. I now have an array of animals that are easy to fingerpaint on my nails. A lady bug, a fish, a turtle, a doggy and, of course, the sheep. Nevermind that I spent over twenty minutes on each. Half of that or more was usually time spent hardening out. Half of the remaining time was filing down and correcting my ground layers so I didn't burn my skin. I may have used several bad words under my breath as I worked, but still. 85% of my work looks the way I wanted it to. The way I wanted it to doesn't look very professional, but the point was to practice shapes with the swirl tool, not to create a masterpiece. I'm satisfied.

By the time I got home, I'd forgotten to eat again and I'd been up for almost twenty-four hours. I was  a bit sleepy, so after a snack I decided to take a short nap. Yeah, I crashed. Boyfriend tried to wake me up at some point, but I mumbled something including the words 'eight pm' and 'sleepy'. Eight pm came and went, Boyfriend sleeping as well. By the time he woke me up, it was ten and we were both hungry.

Is it too late to make spaghetti sauce?

The Laundry Basket

Our laundry basket is full. Partly because we didn't do laundry all week, partly because we have bedsheets to wash. Lots and lots of bedsheets. And we don't wanna.

First, there's winter bedsheets which have been lying around the apartment for a month and a half. They're new and colorful and promise to ruin anything old we dare wash with it. Also, they're huge and are tricky to dry with one drying rack.

Then there's the winter bottom sheet we just removed. It's new and a contrasting color to the aforementioned bedsheets, and even bigger. Groan.

There's the second half of bedsheets Boyfriend loved, which are stinking up our bedroom. I want to wash them, but we're not really getting around to it, though Boyfriend might be changing sheets as we speak. We could wash those, if we ever get around to it, but they're still pretty big and make our drying rack look like we have a tent in the living room. Not a fun tent, either, because it's too small for anyone over five to have adventures in.

And then there's my pillow covers. I'm a pillow whore of the highest category. If I have less than four pillows in a bed, I get this feeling of emptiness in my chest. I can only use two, three at the most at a time, but Boyfriend needs to sleep on some if we're in a big bed and I need a buffer from the wall if I'm alone in a small one. The problem is that bedsheet manufacturers rarely cater to my whims, and so I bought pillow covers at IKEA. These now have a month's worth of drool stains on them and really need washing. They're small and can be dried easily, but they're also new and bright green and don't fit any of the other new stuff.

Oh, and I think we need to wash the new, pale summer sheets we got to 'tide us over with', too. On half of it spent three weeks on our bedroom floor and I slept in the other. It's polyester microfibre. It's smooth and has an interesting texture, but in high summer, nothing beats good old-fashioned cotton for sweat absorption and coolness. We now have some cotton, but, yeah, washing.

And on top of all that bedwear, we still have a load of pales, coloreds and half a load of darks that need cleaning too.

We're leaving on holiday on the 5th. Something tells me we're going to spend a lot of time laundering before we leave.

The Cuisine

Boyfriend and I cook most days. Contrary to what my writings here sometimes convey, we do not in fact live on chocolate ice cream and toaster schnitzel.

We do have a few solid habits that have developed. At least once a week, there's spinach with mashed potatoes in there somewhere. Another day, we'll probably have pasta pesto. Once a week McDonald's, once we order out from an Italian place and most of the time we have pizza in the freezer for a quick dinner. We may deviate a bit, but usually we're not eating ready-made food.

For breakfast, it's usually cereal. Lunch, if we notice it, is whatever will fill our bellies. But dinner, we usually make something. It's usually something easy, something with a very low screw-up potential. You can't overcook bolognese sauce. It's very hard to make mashed potatoes too mushy. True, you can overcook pasta and burn pizzas, but Boyfriend's second girlfriend is his phone, and it has a timer.

We cook together. Boyfriend is in charge of pans and ovens, I'm in charge of pots. Chopping and peeling usually is a toss-up, depending on what it is. Boyfriend is a great cook, even if he doesn't believe it, but he's also a perfectionist and a teensy bit clumsy. If he drops something to the floor, I learn new and interesting words. If I drop something to the floor, he's more forgiving. I don't care who drops what, since we never cook for an army anyway. Yes, it's a mess, but it's very rarely a big mess. We have sponges and soap and cloths and water and, on rare occasions when someone (okay, me) misses the bowl while handling sugar, a vacuum cleaner.

And I love baking. Peanut butter-smartie cookies are becoming a glutenfree staple in the household, just because they're easy to make and I love the smell of the dough. That, and they're delicious. Then there's cupcakes and cakes and the ill-fated chocolate bread. We usually have some stuff that's starting to go slightly stale by Friday, but that's when Boyfriend's friends come over, and they seem to be omnivorous.

Our burgers were delicious. My carrot mash got complimented by Boyfriend's friends, even if the idea got some funny looks. Boyfriend has gone off store-bought rice pudding since he tasted the stuff I can make from scratch. I have amazed with my ability to bake cakes without store-bought mixes or adding oil.

But we do cheat. Instant mash happens frequently. I don't bash pork into submission for schnitzels, I get those things from the store's freezer section. We usually cook meat that's either ground to a pulp or cut in small pieces, mostly because we want to make sure it gets fully cooked. And our sauces are usually a powdery mix with some ingredients added.

But we do make the effort of cooking. We have the time and we're willing to develop the skills for it. Never mind that we've killed a few utensils by leaving them in hot pans or putting them in the dishwasher when they weren't supposed to. Yes, sometimes things turn out crispier than expected. When you fail, you can always have a nutella sandwich.

Or chocolate ice cream.

The Green Nails

I went to the studio today, as per usual. I even chickened out to the point where I was just wearing a retainer in my nose, just in case.

There was laughing. There was chat. There even was knitting when the only client was there for a pedicure, which is not my responsibility. There was no eating. I forgot. Again. Now I'm ravenously hungry.

But J. pointed out I should try to gel my nails again. Customers ask questions if you work on nails when yours are all natural.

So in the last hour of the week, I decided to practice some more. On me. Okay, just my left hand, but dammit, I get points for taking initiative here.

First of all, I took a pointer from a customer, who pointed out that you don't see if gel lets go if it's a solid or dark color. So I painted my nails lime green. Three layers (ouch, hot!) later, I'd messed up my hand more than a little, but you couldn't see my natural nails any more. So far, mission successful.

Then, I decided just green was too plain. On the other hand, stamps are hard work and I was starting to feel that I hadn't eaten since a quarter to nine in the morning. I wasn't going to have the patience to pick out a stamp, wrestle it on my nails in a color that might or might not work and then work in accents with glittery gel. Hell, the polish remover smells like fruit. I might try drinking it to fill my belly.

So I collected a bit of white, a bit of flesh tone and grabbed a swirl tool, dotting and swirling as I went, hardening the gel inbetween stages of my project. After I was done, it was missing something. I needed black.

I asked Sis if there was any, and she said there was. I hadn't seen it so far, but apparently, it was in the studio somwhere. 'Somewhere' being inside Mt. Mix-Boxes. I asked if there was anything else I could use for two tiny dots, and she lent me her personal stash of black gel. I put on eyes and tha-da! I'd painted a sheep on my thumbnail.

It's not a very in-focus or detailed sheep, but it's unmistakably a sheep. My canvas was fifteen by fifteen millimeters, it wasn't going to be a Mona Lisa.

Everyone was delighted. I got a frowny face from J for the amount of gel on my skin, but the sheep got a thumbs up, no pun intenden. S. and Sis squealed happily over it, so I was happy too.

So now there's nothing to do but to let it frolic happily over my keyboard on its green background for the rest of the weekend, and try not to file it all off by tonight. Wish me luck.

The Package

I told you I re-ordered the stuff from the package(s) that never arrived. This time, my thing were here practically before I could spit. Neatly packaged, slightly abused by the German postal system, sporting a stamp featuring an overpierced cartoon character. Boyfriend was up before me today and woke me up with it.

Yes, I managed to get out a good morning and I love you before I threw myself on the cardboard and cellotape with a victorinox product.

Inside were goodies. So many goodies.

There was jojoba oil. There was a new case to store my goodies in. There were silicone hider plugs and steel tunnels and skin eyelets. I may or may not have gone out later and bought myself some padlocks to wear through the eyelets. It's surprisingly comfy, even if I broke one of the cheap things already.

And there was a lot of loot for my septum. I've been trying it all out.

One of them, a captive bead ring, I can't open. I don't have steel ring openers and my plastic ones aren't sturdy enough for anything above 2 mm. It promises to be pretty in a semi-subtle way, though. If only I had money for a ring opener. Sigh.

There's a steel retainer that's comfy, not too big and has no sharp corners like my glass one has. Heavenly.

There's a delicate little pincer that looks a teensy bit more aggressive than I bargained for. It's also hard to get in place, so you need the O-rings that got delivered with it to make sure you don't dislodge it whenever you sneeze.

And then there's the labrador of the pack: a fun, huge circular barbell. It's got two big balls on it, it looks sort of clumsy, but it stays where it's supposed to and it's very comfortable. I wore it practically all day and discovered that licking ice cream cones with it is a bit tricky, but apart from that, I'd wear it all the time, unless the CBR proves equally comfy.

Problem: it's a bit very much 'in your face' on the scale of piercing subtlety. My mom doesn't know I have my septum piercing yet, but that'd mean only hiding it when I see her. The real problem is job interviews, job agency applications (note: all job agencies in Coburg that are where Google says they are, I've applied to. It's a grand total of one) or 'helping' in the studio.

If I get a job there, I'd spend a lot of time sitting very close to people who perhaps aren't comfortable with it. If people ask to be served by someone else because of the huge ring in my nose, I don't get many customers. Not many customers means J. will eventually have to let me go.

So I've gone for the slightly more subtle pincer for tomorrow. If J. asks me to take it out, I'll take it out. I usually make sure to carry a retainer in my wallet anyway. If it goes well, I'll ask if it'd be okay if I wore something a bit more 'daring' when there's a lull in the customer flow.

I can wear what I want on my own time, but J. is helping me on her own dime. It'd be disrespectful to give her studio the reputation of being full of pierced hooligans just by being stubborn. If she demands I stop wearing piercings when I'm outside the studio (highly unlikely), there's going to be words, but inside her firm, she rules supreme.

Then again, I could just let my freak flag fly and wear my black, glass, foppish moustache tomorrow. If nothing else, it'll make Sis and S. laugh.

The Bugs

Today, the house was invaded for the first time. It will not be the last until winter comes.

I'm not just talking about the summer heat either. I have my fan, I will live.

No, I'm talking about bugs. You see, most Germans don't believe in bug screens for windows. W., who owns the apartment, never had any made. So we don't have any. At night we can choose between cooling down the place or being bug-free. Of course, there's the third option of sleeping, but even that wouldn't be completely bug-free.

Like I mentioned before, I'm not fond of creatures smaller than me with less than two or more than four legs. It used to be a hysterical fear, of which my family can tell many, many stories that involve screaming, holding my pee for six hours and staying inside all summer long with the windows closed and the blinds down. It got so bad, my mom got me into therapy. I guess seeing your daughter cry for the umpteenth time when her father announces the family is eating outside asks for some kind of action to be taken. Eventually, I even decided it was getting a wee bit out of hand and went along with it.

Therapy did wonders, but it's not a cure-all. I'm currently sitting in a room with the certainty that there's bugs in here. I can see them. Some of them are even flying right in front of my screen, and I'm on a laptop, so the screen is less than a foot away from my face. I'm relatively calm. Five years ago, I'd have been screaming.

On the other hand, if they'd be bigger, or noisier or on me, my heart rate would spike. Boyfriend says that there might be bigger ones coming in August. There might be squealing. If I start getting bitten, I might get less charitable than I am now. If my knitting gets eaten, woe on them.

Yes, I require Boyfriend to save me from the monsters, but that doesn't mean I can't get mad at them. Mad is a slightly more productive emotion than scared. How much do screen windows cost, anyway? Also, can't we just tack old curtains in front of the windows? Would that work?

In the mean while, as long as it's not moths or butterflies and the ones that do get inside remain small and refrain from getting on me, I'm strangely fine with it. For close to ten years, I didn't believe it'd ever be possible for me to be at peace in the situation I am now. My fear isn't gone, but it's matured to something that is less phobia and more quirk.

I'm scared of being stung and creatures that can sting me, because I know there's a fair chance I'll have an allergic reaction to it and I don't know how big it'll be. I freeze up around creatures that haven't stung me in a while, but I rarely scream anymore. That's not unreasonable. My fear of butterflies is unreasonable, but that's because I got shown that the thing I'm afraid of, in some shapes, can grow as large as my face, and hairy too, and feasts on rotting flesh and sweat. It's an unreasonable fear, but my reaction to it has lessened to unreasonable but manageable.

So let the harmless little bugs zoom around the lamp all they like. If they scare me, there's someone close by and willing to save me from them.

Also, we have a strong vacuum cleaner with a long nozzle. I am armed.