Clare-Dragonfly

My NARAL "she persisted" sticker arrived in the mail! (For a while they had a promotion where if you signed up for their email list you could get the sticker for free--I don't know if that's still going on.)

It's a beautiful sticker, but it's so big--four inches square. I never know what to do with stickers this big. My laptop is full, and there's no way I'm covering up any part of my glorious, copyright-infringing decal of Snow White's stepmother offering her the Apple apple. I could put it on the front cover of my bullet journal. That would be a nice inspirational spot to see it a lot, except that I'm almost through this journal, so it won't be a nice inspirational spot for more than a couple of months. My next bullet journal will probably be one with a pretty cover, though, so maybe the current one is the best place for it.

Apparently the tree pollen is out in full force. Ugh. If I hadn't noticed an increase in symptoms when I went outside for an afternoon walk (there are all kinds of decorative flowering trees in the parking lot at work), I would have thought I was getting a cold. I am so snotty and sneezy and gross.

Actually, the weird thing is that I used to get nasty sinus headaches as my main allergy symptoms, while being sneezy and snotty was much more a sign of a cold. This is the first time I'm aware that I'm having these symptoms consistently for allergies. I haven't had a really bad sinus headache for a long time--maybe due to no longer living with either a bird or a dog (I'm allergic to feathers and dog dander)? I haven't had a really bad headache in general for months...

We had a few minor plumbing problems in our apartment, and I let our landlord know about them a few days ago. Yesterday he came in and fixed the toilet, so when you flush it, it just flushes and you don't have to push the handle back up again. Today he sealed up the hole behind the sink, replaced the sink faucet and drain, and replaced the showerhead. It's awesome having a responsive landlord (who is also my upstairs neighbor).

I really like this thing where people give me free tea. Recently at work there was a tin (quite a pretty tin!) of orange cranberry rooibos with a note on it saying "try and take if you want." I was nice and patient--I figured I should let other people give it a try--but when it was still there at the end of the day I nabbed it. Free tea!

I dropped one of my hair clips down the sink. (Our bathroom sink doesn't have a drain thingy in it to block it when I do stuff like that. We should probably get one, but eh. Rental.) I couldn't reach it with my usual means, tweezers, so I enlisted my husband in hopes that his bigger hands would help.

He eventually got it out while I was doing something else, but wouldn't tell me at first how he did it. Then he explained that he'd used one of the pipe cleaners from on top of the fridge.

Apparently, there has been a pack of pipe cleaners on top of the fridge since we moved in, a year and a half ago.

He says there's a whole world taking place a foot above my head...

He also tried to convince me that there's a rabbit living on top of the kitchen closet, but I know that's not true. He wouldn't be able to resist presenting it to me when I am feeling sad.

We had a lot of work at work today. A lot of the time, maybe 60% of the time, I am sure we could get away with only having a team of two editors. And then there are days like today, where something would have slipped, been late, or just been shoddily edited with only two (there are three of us). Huzzah, my job is safe!

I have to post something! I don't know what to post. I am tired and nothing I did today is very interesting.

In addition to the furniture from my great-aunt's apartment, my parents brought me some of her other things. There's a bag of many pairs of pretty, old-fashioned leather gloves; I tried on one pair, but it was quite a bit of effort to get on, so I hope some of the other pairs are bigger.

But the more exciting gift was hidden underneath the gloves: quite a few books, many of them illustrated books by Maurice Sendak. And some of them are signed, to my great-aunt, by Sendak himself!

My parents brought the new-to-me bureau, that belonged to my great-aunt, down today. It's really gorgeous! I'm not sure what kind of wood it is, but it's real wood with a dramatic grain; the brass drawer pulls have a very interesting design.

It's also a lot bigger than my old IKEA bureau, with more space in the drawers. The only problem is that it's quite a bit higher off the floor than my old one, and I can hardly use the top two drawers. I can just sort of see into the second-highest one, so I put some things in there that I don't use very often. The top drawer is just empty. Hopefully, I can get my husband to use it (he has shelves--he doesn't like to put things in drawers).

I had to stay up kind of late to put everything away, but at least my socks are much better organized now!