Mission Accomplished

[wlotus]

T and I drove to NJ yesterday evening with minimal headaches from traffic jams. There was a slight delay getting into the Holland Tunnel going there, and there were no delays getting home. We were able to get everything loaded into the car with little trouble and lots of laughs. It was great to see Mom again, who gets along just fine with T. (I'd better be careful; that means at some point the, "Let me tell you this funny story about wlotus," stories are going to start happening!)

Last weekend we rearranged our bedroom to more efficiently use the space we have. Not only does the room look less cluttered, but the energy in the room feels different, more free-flowing. (I have always sniffed at feng sui as a myth, but now I wonder if there's something to it, after all. I want to look it up and see how much of our new arrangement follows feng sui principles.) Before I left for NJ I took a badly cat-attacked, overstuffed easy chair to the trash. That corner is now occupied by my uncle's table and chair; a set that is just the right size for T and me. We had planned to save the money and buy one in the near future, but.... Anyway, for the first time we have a real workspace for studying and writing and reading, so we no longer have to contort ourselves on the floor or waterbed. Best of all, the table looks as though it belongs there. In fact, I am typing from it, now.

Ah, Uncle, I am blessed. I miss you terribly, but I appreciate the gifts you left behind. (It hurts less when I think of them as gifts.) I think of you often, these days. Thank you for the tidbits of wisdom you shared with me over the years, especially the latest one; you'd chuckle approvingly to see how at ease I have been letting her be her while I continued to be myself. I hope you are at peace.

Oh, and if I see you on the other side, please excuse me if I fuss about you not seeing the doctor the way you should have. I guess now you finally realize heart disease is no joke, huh?

Comments

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Bias is allowed. :-)

Did you get it from Ikea? The other chair was broken, so we need a second chair to match.

[saffronrose.livejournal.com]

You have an OTT light, too!

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I have two table lamps, both from Verilux. They are WONDERFUL!

[scream4noreason.livejournal.com]

Glad youre feeling better, thee is something in how adding a new piece of furniture can really "settle" a place down.

[saffronrose.livejournal.com]

I think I had a flexible neck table light, or maybe that was my MiL's. I have a floor lamp with flexible neck, which MiL Edna uses to get more light on the table for her watercolor students. Overhead lighting is wrong color and much too faint for painting. She also has my HappiLite at the other end of the long table to cast natural light there as well.

In our last house in Satna Cruz, over the "hill" (SCruz mountain range, and a tectonic plate boundary), we had fluorescents in the kitchen, which I hated. One day, two lights went, so off to the hardware store I went. They had full spectrum f-tubes, more expensive than the ordinary kind. I bought the two I needed for replacement, installed them. The difference was phenomenal! However, I noticed that the icky plastic screens covering them were badly stained. Off to the hardware store again, for two more FS f-tubes and two plastic screens.

I felt so much better after that was done. The next time I needed to replace them, they had even better specimens. The cost was insignificant compared to one month's bipolar meds!

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for yr loss...

When my mother died she left hundreds of vinyl LPs behind -- this was the music i grew up hearing. And I kept the LPs for years and years, but then when I left CA I had to dump them. It made me so sad...

Was reminded of this when you posted a picture of yr uncle's LPs. I wish you joy as you listen to them!

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Thank you, very much.

Because of my mother's religious beliefs, I did not get to hear most of the music in my uncle's collection while I was growing up. This is a wonderful chance for me to catch up on what I've missed.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing that...and how discarding something which has served its purpose and then some can cleanse the energy of a place. I discarded both overstuffed, run down easy chairs over the weekend, and I am very pleased. The air feels better in the apartment, especially in our bedroom, where the worst-off chair used to reside.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I don't remember how I discovered full spectrum light, but I'm a believer in it, now. I am convinced it helps me deal far better with the dark, cold days of winter. I have full-spectrum CFLs in our bedroom's ceiling lamp, and I've taken the shade off the lamp to give us the full effect. The bare fixture may look ugly, but the light is great.

[saffronrose.livejournal.com]

My reaction would be to head to the hardware or llighting store and find a new fixture that would let the light shine through. When I became a homeowner, I was surprised by how many *nice* ceiling covers there were for under $15! I wondered why landlords didn't choose nicer ones at the same prices at the ugly ones.

There are some nice ones with gently transparent or lightly frosted glass. I chose some of those to replace the downright cheap&ugly ones in our new house. In this house, we haven't had to do that, but for some reason, the fixtures in EVERY room differs in what kind of light bulb they need! Weird!

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

It never occurred to me to search for a different cover for that fixture! Thank you for the suggestion.

[saffronrose.livejournal.com]

I always hated the white globes that seemed to live in every rental I ever took. I dreamed of pretty overhead lighting short of chandeliers! We will never have a house in which such a thing works. There was one of those loathesome wagon wheel "chandelier" lights over the dining area of our Santa Cruz house that got replaced immediately. WIth what, I can't recall, but once I got a dragonfly fan light, that went in. I took it with me when we moved, since finding another one at the bargain I paid for it was not going to happen.

We also had to replace one that was on the okay/acceptable-but-not-pretty side when the Jedi Master & the padawan had a lightsaber fight and whacked it but good.

I mostly don't like overhead lights in small rooms, but they come in handy. Small rooms without them require more than one lamp, and in my sister's hose there were no lamps for bedside reading! Drove me bats. She also have every available surface next to the bed covered with stuff so that you couldn't put a water bottle or a phone/clock there.

Every bedroom in this house has a fan/light combo. Our room has a remote that I just leave on the holder by the door, since we don't use the light that much, and the fan is on at one setting or another most of the year. Edna's happy enough with the one in her room, Arthur's is broken, and I have a Tiffany Dragonfly knockoff one in the shed or garage. I need to move the one in the guest room to Arthur's room, and the Tiffany to the guest room.