our apartment leaks

From the relative safety of my good friends' apartment in Lutsk I will try to post to my blog. I've been dashing around, weaving in and out of consciousness, bobbing up and down in the water and so on since my return here, so there has been no time for narrative reminiscing.
Opposition always seems to inspire me, and this evening I am inspired.


This kitchen would inspire you wouldn't it?
It's the new bache where we'll be this fall. I've been moving in for the past couple of days. Of course there are a few things a person needs when one starts up housekeeping. One thing I decided I needed today was a vacuum cleaner. The story of how I got the vacuum is a separate blog post for later maybe. So then after the whole deal of getting the vacuum cleaner, (a really good one that can do water and even clean carpets), (but do I really NEED one that good?) was the conflict I was struggling with.
This is a vacuum cleaner with an instruction manual containing directions on how to remove "dirtiness". You can put water in it and then you don't have to use the paper vacuum bag to collect the dirtiness. I was thinking I'm going to have to vacuum every day now for a while so I can get the hang of this thing.
After doing a great job of vacuuming the hall I went to do the kitchen floor. It has (had) reddish colored old style linoleoum, from hammer and sickle days. The interesting thing about linoleum in these parts is that it is just is laid on to the floor, forget about glue, moulding, or cutting it to fit. There is/was an about 12 inch overlap in the middle of the floor, so as I'm happily vacuuming my trouble away, I decided it would be good to fold back a bit of the overlap and do a good job of vacuuming. That's when my troubles began.
I neglected to mention that when I left to go shopping this morning I was stopped by the neighbor lady who shouted at me from her doorway. "you flooded my apartment last night!!!" I tried to be all polite and inocuously friendly, so she invited me in so I could look at the result of my crimes; sure enough, her ceiling and wall had water marks. Oh well, the landlord had told me that the previous residents had been careless with the water and flooded her out before I appeared on the scene, so I forgot about her. So now as I'm vacuming I discover that the concrete floor is soaked, the linoleum is black with mold, green and slimy.
To make a long story short, I got my exacto knife and my camera.
The pile of garbage is what was under the sink from the previous residents...

So I moved all the kitchen furniture, and look at all the goodies!

dead empty match boxes and other stuff behind the stove...
The moral of the story is I'm glad I got the vacuum cleaner I got, because I'll use it when I clean the mold off the concrete with bleach, after the concrete dries in a few months, I'll put down new linoleum.

Voldemort revives

reminds me of Nagini, the Dark Lord's snake...click here

organized my purse

I like my purse a lot, but is a nightmare finding my stuff. I looked online for some kind of dividers organizer and I found this idea. I decided to try:
The purse is here, and the green 3 ring binder I used.


This fishing vest served me well in the rubber inflatable kayak on Hume Lake a few days ago.



I sewed one pocket onto the outside

and these 5 pockets are sewed onto the inside of the green three ring binder. I could take the rings out, and I might, but I might leave them in there too, they could be useful.

Here is the organiser unit tucked into my purse.

This is all that's left of the vest now.
My mom said I could label the pockets for what goes where, is a good idea, because my brain rebels against order.

Plein air drawing

This was all I had time to draw, too busy hiking and kayaking and fishing! I might post more pics later, but life is getting hectic as I prepare to fly east for the next epoch.

The Yale book of Quotations

Mark Twain
Few things are harder to put up with than the
annoyance of a good example.
Pudd’nhead Wilson ch. 19, ‘‘Pudd’nhead Wilson’s
Calendar’’ (1894)

psychedelic psamsonite psuitcase (Decorate your suitcase)

I bought this Samsonite at a thrift shop for $16.99 today. It was hugely boring, so I decided to decorate it.

Here I am with mom's oil paints stenciling in a turtle.

I like the looks of this lots better.

And I don't think anyone will get mixed up at the airport and think it's theirs!

From the Yale Book of Quotations

Catherine Aird (Kinn Hamilton McIntosh)
English detective fiction writer, 1930–
If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just
have to be a horrible warning.
Quoted in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1 Nov. 1989