Weblog Wannabe

It’s been years since the last time I got any comment demanding me to update, and I got one today which made me feel all warm and fuzzy, so I just have to update. This one’s for you, Tia! :)

So, we’re taking possession of the house on Monday, which is only four days away. Already we’ve started figuring out ways of getting a mattress into the house without having to rent a U-Haul truck so that we could spend our first of many nights there right after we got the house keys. The current solution is to get one of those cheap IKEA spring mattresses just because they come roll-packed and hopefully easy to take home.

We’re going to have overnight guests the weekend after our big move-in weekend so I spent last night making a list of things to buy to make all three bedrooms sleepable for under $1,000. I think I did a pretty good job because I got Troy’s approval and we’re going to IKEA on Saturday morning to do some bedroom shopping. Yeah, I know. IKEA is not exactly the symbol of premium quality furniture but it’s all we can afford right now.

Last night I came to a realisation that there’s no way I’d be able to pick a paint colour for the living room until we got ourselves a couch. If we had unlimited budget, we could paint the living room any colour we want and then buy any furniture that goes with the wall colour regardless of the price. Since we’re on a tight budget, it’s the other way around. We’ll have to paint around the couch. There isn’t really a very wide selection of couches within our budget. I found one that I really loved that we could actually afford only to be told by the furniture store that the couch wouldn’t be available until August 21. Seriously, if it’s not available yet, why on earth do they have it listed on their website? If they really want to do it, they could at least put the date where it’ll become available. That would’ve saved me a big disappointment. Hopefully by Tuesday we would’ve found ourselves a couch because that’s the day I’m planning to start painting.

Troy packed around 90% of all the books we have on Sunday, which was a big accomplishment because the majority of our possessions comprises of books. We’re going to pack the rest as we go all through next week.

I’m going to miss Waterloo, but I will learn to love Stratford, my next hometown, where the winters are more than just a little snowy.

I miss Winter already.

It’s only 17 days to go before we take possession of the house. Have we started packing yet? Well, Troy has. Like REALLY packing? Not quite. Troy has packed all his DVD collection and some of his CDs and books but not enough to make a dent. We simply have So. Much. Crap. And I’m going to have so many clothing items to donate to thrift stores.

Speaking of thrift stores, is it so wrong that I want mismatch furniture for our house? Of course the mismatch furniture has to be solid wood furniture that people are letting go for cheap. Fortunately, there are plenty of those. Unfortunately, Troy is not a big fan of the mismatch furniture idea. He’s a traditional guy when it comes to home decoration. :)

Well, mismatch is probably not the word. I do have one particular style that I like. I’m a big fan of vintage Danish Modern furniture. I spot them all the time in online classified ad sites I’ve been scouring for the last three months. Unfortunately, a certain used furniture store in town has been doing the same thing, probably for longer than I have. Needless to say, the lower-priced pieces of furniture that I like don’t usually last very long in the market because the store always moves quickly and snatches all the good deals, leaving me with some overpriced (or rather, consciously priced) stuff sold by people who actually know how much the furniture’s worth. Not that we currently have any storage for furniture. I wish we did, but we don’t. We also don’t have a truck, so it’s a really frustrating situation for me. I hate watching the pieces of furniture I like disappear one by one and I hate it more because I know where they’re going and I know that the store is reselling them for more money than what they paid to get them.

I’m not a big fan of carved wood furniture. They might be hot about 75-100 years ago but now, I find most of them rather ugly. And man, let me tell you. There are so many ugly pieces of furniture people are trying to sell for crazy prices! A lot of them are couches. I’m kind of tempted to start a new blog to showcase all the ugly couches I found. Tonnes of cringe-worthy material out there. We might have to buy ourselves a new couch which, sadly, is neither cheap nor green.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, I’ve been obsessing over paint colours for the house for as long as I’ve been obsessing over furniture. At least when it comes to furniture, I know for sure what I want. Not so much when it comes to paint colours. It’s just that one day I like cheerful. The next day I like dramatic. And the day after that I like calm. I wish they sold paints that change colours according to the inhabitant’s mood. Kind of like the mood ring but for the walls. Wouldn’t that be great?

Well, it’s almost lunchtime. I’ve been denying myself stinky fried rice for days that my taste bud is feeling deprived so I’d better make some now. What, you want the recipe for my beloved stinky fried rice? Well, all you need is onion, garlic, an egg, ground chili (also known as sambal oelek), salt and pepper, vegetable oil, and of course rice. Cook the rice, chopped the onion and garlic, heat the oil in the wok, fry the onion and garlic until fragrant, throw in a pinch of pepper, throw in the ground chili, break the egg into the wok and scramble, throw in the rice and salt, mix well, and voila! Stinky Fried Rice a la Firda! (Note: Stinky fried rice is only stinky to those who don’t like spicy food. You know. Like Troy.)

“Sometimes the world makes me angry,” I said. “Sometimes I put the weight of the world on my shoulders and I cry.”

He said, “Don’t worry about it. The world will fix itself.”

I said, “I don’t know about that…”

(I do want to believe that the world will fix itself somehow, but I just can’t.)