This has been one of the better weeks I've had in recent history. It's had everything one could really ask for in a week: a lovely night with DGF, one step closer to being out of the hole that I fell into due to what might be euphemistically called "market fluctuations", and I've actually managed to stay on top of the housework (amazing how much one needs to do to take care of a place occupied only by one woman and one cat) for an entire week.
Tuesday night, I got together with DGF, so that we would see each other once before she left to visit her family. It was a truly lovely night. We played a few rounds of pool, she took me to one of my two favourite Italian restaurants. And, after a little dessert at my place of Godiva Belgian Dark Chocolate ice cream and brownies I'd made with my mum over the weekend, we watched a nicely disturbing movie (The Bone Collector) and spent the night (sans feather comforter, unfortunately, so it was a tad chilly). She also gave me (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fleur_d_elise/76380120/)the most adorable little stuffed snowman, which she had sewn by hand, which has cemented my intention to actually learn to sew, and a very intriguing gift bag. It also turns out that she had decided/been finagled into cook one of my recipes (Sugo Napoli al Rosmarino) for her family while she's there. I'm told they enjoyed it very much. It seems to me that introducing them to my cooking is one step toward introducing them more directly to me, so it seems like things are moving in a good direction. I can't wait till she gets back. We're spending New Year's together with my family.
Today, I had one more indication that I may actually make it out of the financial hole I'm in at the moment. A major client of mine had a...ahem...reshuffling of staff, leaving me without all the contacts I'd built up over the past year, and translations dried up completely for several months. For the past couple of weeks, however, things seem to be coming back. This is a particularly big relief since I haven't had terribly much luck with the local employment market, which is looking for people with a wide range of qualifications that I don't have (IT, CPA, RN, the JD I don't yet have, etc.). Plus, going to an office is a big pain in the ass, and would involve spending way more than I have on some kind of work wardrobe (when I was preparing for the one interview I did get, I discovered that the office wardrobe I had from a couple of years ago was five sizes too big. Gratifying, but also rather inconvenient), an awful commute (the bus system is atrocious), and having a boss (which has never worked out well for me; I'm too autonomous to be micromanaged).
In any case, it looks like I'm climbing out of the hole the way I enjoy: translating well-paid but incredibly boring documents that I can work on in my pyjamas at whatever time of day or night I damn well please.
Around the time I wrote my first blog post here on TNH, I did something rather unheard of, something that really shocked friends and family alike. I actually gave my apartment a thorough cleaning, including the bedroom, which I had literally never cleaned before in the year I've lived here. Based in part on the realisation that, if I handled my work for my clients the way I handled my home, they'd all be suing my ass, I made a conscious decision to start taking as much pride in how I maintain my home as I do in the work I get to send out big invoices for. It's been a little over a week since then, and I've actually managed to keep it up. Not a single dish has remained in my kitchen sink for more than an hour or so after I'm done eating. My clothes are all ironed and hung up rather than sitting accusingly in the suitcase I ferry them back and forth to my mum's house (and laundry room) in. My floors are not only not covered in dreck; I have actually polished them (luckily, it's not a huge surface area). And there is no debris caked on the breakfast cart I use for my dinners for one (eating alone at my dining room table just feels a bit too lonely).
I took advantage of having nothing much to do today to (finally) get out to a laundromat to deal with my cat-branded feather comforter. Much as I love those chenille throws as makeshift slipcovers on the futon I use for a couch, they're not great for warmth in bed; either you're uncovered from your stomach up or your knees down. Definitely suboptimal. Since the laundromat is right by the only Walgreen's I can get to by bus, I decided to develop a disposable camera that I had shot a year ago at my first dinner party ever, which had been sitting on a shelf since then. Most of the pictures didn't come out - probably due to the sheer age of the film - but it was really something to see those pictures. There was the picture of my first table setting (I'd been so proud of it that I had to photograph it), and various nice shots of my guests for the evening: my sister, my best friend, and a close friend of my sister's. What was really amazing, though, was realising how much the space has transformed since then. I had only moved in a month or two before, so the living room was covered in boxes and stuff, which I had arranged so that they lined the wall opposite the TV. The place was virtually unfurnished and undecorated with the exception of the kitchen and the dining room. I look at those, and it's just amazing to me what I've been able to do over just a year.
I'm pretty proud of myself right now.
Since it's that time, here are my non-binding New Year's Intentions (less pressure when you call them that):
1. Learn Java
2. Learn to sew more than buttons(and possibly to knit, as well)
3. Learn to bake in a manner that reduces the crappiness of the result
4. Stop smoking (working on that already)
5. Get definitively out of this financial pit and stay out of it
6. Convert my second bedroom, which is now used as storage space, into a study/guestroom/sewing room.
Technorati Tags: Kaffeeklatsch
