July 21, 2013

• food and floors

  Well, the weather this weekend was pretty crazy. We started out with a heat wave during the week, then on Friday a storm cloud quite literally rolled in and we had a storm from about mid-afternoon and well into the night. The power flickered in my neighbourhood, but in other places it went out... partially due to the winds knocking trees and power-lines down. I had the day off and was outside reading when it went from stickily hot to windy and dark; it literally happened in about a minute. I was going to wait and see if the clouds would blow away, but decided I'd better go inside. And it was a good thing I did too!

  

  The reason why I was outside is because my dad was in my room putting in new flooring. Now some time ago mum and I had ripped out the carpet and cleaned up the flooring underneath. It kind of looks like faux wood tiles, but it's so old that it is apparently some kind of tar paper. I had thought to paint it, but soon realized that the paint would get dirty or worn off and look far worse than the fake flooring. It wasn't in great shape, and progressively got worse, so I wasn't opposed to getting pretty new floors.  

  

  Even though dad is on holiday, it is taking dad forever to do just two rooms. Part of the problem is due to his constant calling his father --who had put the same flooring in a short time prior-- and because he is practically living at the hardware/lumber store(s). I had to move as many of my things as I could out of my room wednesday before and after work though dad was only about halfway done the first room. I couldn't move my couch by myself, but dad was "helping" with that on Thursday. I had to sweep and vacuum the floor and thought I may as well do my couch...

  The thing is, I hadn't opened my sofa-bed in about a year. I have too many things shoved into my 11-foot square bedroom that I simply couldn't do so because there was no room. There was apparently a lot of dust in there, because I had such a bad allergic reaction that I actually had an asthma attack. Not as bad as if I were in the vicinity as peanuts, but still pretty bad. For the rest of the day and most of the next I could hardly talk due to having coughed so hard for so long. 

  That mattress was also outside with me on Friday, getting an airing. I had the mattress propped up between four chairs, one of which I was using as a footstool, when the weather front rolled in. I yelled for dad to come help me and we barely got everything (aka the mattress, my kobo, dad's favourite camping chair) inside before the rain started. And, boy, did it ever pour! 

  

  By this point dad had gotten nearly halfway finished in my room and said I had to clear out my closet. Once the carpet was ripped out I thought the tile underneath was...um... interesting. *L0L* Dealing with the things in my closet is something I had planned to do soon, but never got around to and now had to. Everything got carted out to the living room and I had no idea so much stuff had been shoved in my tiny closet. It's almost like it was Mary Poppin's carpet bag or Hermoine's satchel, cuz I don't understand how it all fit! I managed to do a pseudo sorting of a couple boxes before dinnertime, and you wouldn't believe some of the things I found. 

  

  I mean, some of the university stuff like essays and exams wasn't too bad, but for goodness sake I found the notebook that I kept my work schedule at Tim Horton's in which was from when I was about fifteen or sixteen until I finished high school. I also found my grade nine sketchbook, a cartoon doodle I did in grade ten, some song lyrics for the "band" dawleigh and I planned to start, and my childhood diary! I know I should just toss pretty much everything since it has all been buried in there for so long, but it's hard to get rid of nevertheless. 

  On Saturday dad got a lot more done on my floor while I tried to figure out how I wanted to rearrange my furniture. I mean, with everything out of my room to the point I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, now would be a good time. I thought I should do something different since my room hadn't been rearranged in a year, and that's saying something. Mum usually rearranges the furniture in the some portion of the house up to six times a year (though admittedly that often is rare), but mine is too much for her to do on her own --a good thing because I generally hate her messing with my stuff. But between the fact I've been here a year and really wish I wasn't, I was feeling antsy. I was planning to do something crazy with my hair, like dye it blue or purple, but couldn't really afford to fork out the money, so sorting out the junk and rearranging my room seems like a really good route... especially if I plan to move to Ireland most of this stuff has to go. 

  

  On Saturday dad was nearly done, but I was still sleeping on the floor because he has to finish the finicky stuff. My room is a touch too small for one last row of full boards to fit, so dad is going to have to "rip" (this is apparently a technical term) the boards to be a bit narrower, as well as put in a new baseboard. He hasn't finished my closet either, but that just gives me more time to go through my things and decide how I want to arrange my room... I have created six different possible layouts, but have yet to settle on the perfect one. Given the fact my room is way too small I doubt any are going to be perfect, but c'est la vie. 

  

  The exercise thing is going pretty well. I had to take Thursday off due to that horrible allergic asthma attack, but I managed to get myself back on schedule by the next day. I'm also trying new foods or old foods I hated but am trying again. I got a kiwi and tried that... it tasted pretty good dipped in chocolate pudding. And on Saturday I got kale because it was on sale. I've only had kale once before when my sister-in-law made some dutch recipe of the stuff in mashed potatoes. I remember liking that, so thought to try it again. I was hoping I could use it for salad since I hate lettuce, but the texture is pretty similar and thus caused me to spit it out. 

   

  As we were having burgers for dinner, I thought to make a potato salad and put finely chopped kale in it. Mum also threw in celery, which I'm not fond of but forced myself to eat anyways. I think my salad turned out pretty well! A few friends offered some recipes to try with kale so maybe I'll do something else tomorrow! I will even find a recipe for a kale smoothie and try it... well, maybe. 

  SUMR

  • 9:08 am
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