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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
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I am going to completely rearrange the living room.
Haven't been doing well the past week or so. Headaches off and on haven't helped. Right now it feels like someone is trying to pry my skull off my vertebrae with a large flat chisel. I took three ibuprofen and two magnesium an hour ago, so my stomach is unhappy and I've got my fingers crossed for whatever relief I can get. Bad sleep, I am so tired when the pain ebbs. Just frustrated, stuck, demotivated. Hard to get traction. Half my brain is preoccupied with making the pain stop. It won't stop, I can't make it stop. The pain is not debilitating but it just. Doesn't. Stop.
I am going to completely rearrange the living room. Why? Because I am sick of half my shit being over here and half over there, constantly going back and forth. I am sick of not having a proper workspace. Haven't rearranged the furniture since we moved in. Need a change. Stagnant. Need to feel, I dunno, organized? We don't have people over anyway so optimizing it for guests is silly.
Yesterday I measured the room and made a layout sketch on grid paper and cut out little shapes for the furniture. I thought the rearranging would be fairly straightforward, but turns out the living area suffers from being poorly proportioned and has frustrating traffic flow requirements. What I thought would work, wouldn't. I tried all kinds of things but only one new layout is possible. I suggested throwing away the couch for more options but spouse vetoed. (It did really suck when we first moved here, we had to sit in folding camp chairs until we found something decent at the thrift store, so spouse is of the mind that any couch is superior to no couch.) But it forces one to sit in a slouch. Sometimes you sit on something for 5 minutes and it seems fine, but it's very different if you have to be on it for over an hour and you shift around and try all the pillows and nothing helps. It's like it's passive aggressively trying to pour you on the floor the longer you sit on it. It satisfies the requirement of being a sitting place and not a floral/pastel eyesore, and that's about the best I can say about it. It has a dumpster destiny, sooner or later.
Anyway, the best possible furniture layout is still wonky. The living area is roughly 12' wide and 24' long. The new layout divides it into two 12' square areas, with the main entry, couch/coffee table/tv and spouse's desk in one, and my art area and a reading nook with the stuffed armchair ("the hobbit throne") and the sliding glass door in another. I don't love it on paper, but I'll have a proper work area near natural light and it satisfies requirements. I think I still need more useful storage, somehow. Maybe a rolly trolley thing that fits under a table. I'd put up wall shelves, but it's an apartment so can't put up anything large enough to hold decent weight and there's no more space for another tall shelf unit.
So that's what I'm doing today. If the headache doesn't win.
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Got all the furniture moved and actually the layout seems to work better than expected. It's nice having the couch closer to spouse's desk, and now I won't be constantly going back-and-forth, back-and-forth in front of the TV when he's playing games. The hobbit throne angled for a view out the sliding glass door feels restful. I put down the cheap rugs under the art area (for paint drips & sound muffling) and it carves out a space and looks so much nicer than a sea of beige carpet. The cats highly disapprove of furniture moving. 1) the last move was very traumatic and whenever I make big changes to the living space they act like it's happening again and 2) I had to get the vacuum out too, and 3) I moved their food dish to the hallway and they were basically starving for whole hours because who looks for food in a hallway, honestly. But now that it's done they are running around and finding new nooks to hide in. Other Cat, in a fit of tiny predator energy, figured out she can get on the back of the couch and leap to the high back of the hobbit throne, which is the highest point she only gets brave enough to explore when she's really wound up, and sat there looking like a miniature panther. They love the new rugs.
I had the couch stood on end while rearranging and Cat managed to scurry up to the top like a bear climbing a tree. It's very impressive considering both our cats are three legged cats. Cat is missing a back leg, because he got shot while temporarily living with spouse's parents on their rural property. His femur was shattered beyond saving. We never found out why, but now Cat is a three legged indoor cat. Which he hates. He was a holy terror with four legs (frankly he probably was making a nuisance of himself when he got shot), and he still manages to get places he rightfully shouldn't be able to get. So we got Other Cat to entertain him, and Other Cat was born missing a front leg. She is a rescue, found all by herself as a kitten in Dutch Harbor/Unalaska, famous for where they film Deadliest Catch. I like to imagine she is a descendant of a ship's cat. I suspect her mom of being feral and abandoning her due to her condition, and maybe that's why Other Cat is so shy and has her cat instincts turned up to 12. Anyway, the great thing about three legged cats is 1) I don't feel the slightest bit bad about keeping them indoors and 2) cats missing a back leg can't physically jump high and therefore can't get on counters (unless they are evil geniuses like Cat). Other Cat can jump, she just doesn't, because being high is scary. She has trouble getting down from tall things - even getting down from the bed, she's about as graceful as a falling cow pie.
So Cat squirreled his way to the top of the couch and was TERRIBLY pleased with himself. He was taller than the person! He was taller than the birds! We call him King Cat sometimes, and he was like a lion surveying his realm. I let him stay up there a while.
The cats have real names, but they're in Mando'a, the made up mandalorian language, and even our friends don't remember the names Verd'ika and Burc'ya. We do refer to them as Cat and Other Cat sometimes. Cat is THE cat, and Other Cat is the other one.
I still have a lot to do when it comes to organizing the clutter, but I think it this is a change for the better.
I think the headache is going away but it's been on and off for days. Really odd, and more stabby painful than normal. Ugh, what did I do wrong?