Inventory

I have no furniture. None. I've been looking for a bed because sleep is up there on my list of favorite things to do, and I'm one of those people that really values a good night of sleep. Without it I am grumpy and sore and not happy for most of the day. It's just not fun. But mattresses seem to either be suspicious or really expensive. Apparently someone caught on that people value sleep and now they're out there charging tons of money for something as essential as a mattress.

I had mentally decided that it would be acceptable to get a cheap mattress and live with it and then get rid of the mattress when I leave here. Most craigslist mattresses, though, are either still expensive or they are suspiciously cheap. When I learned that a new mattress is almost never below $500 (plus boxspring and frame, if you want to get fancy) the $50 mattress on craigslist suddenly seemed like a really bad idea. I haven't made a decision about this whole thing yet, we'll see what direction this lousy air mattress pushes me.

I started unpacking today, getting everything out from the middle of the room, but I haven't really unpacked. Since this feels temporary, I'm not really into completely unpacking only to have to pack everything up again in a couple of months.

There's also very little room in the kitchen for me to move in there. I got a bookshelf at Wal-Mart for $12 and I think I might go back and get another and use it as my in-room pantry so I have a place to put stuff. I was going through cabinets today to see where things were and where there might be more room and her "infrequently used goods" were on the top shelf. Guess what was up there? A one pound bag of flour and a bag of sugar. I went grocery shopping today and the first thing I bought was five pounds of each. I had two baking cupboards in my last apartment. They were the small ones, but there were still two of them.

When I was packing up my apartment I had a whole shelf of magazines that I had saved. I love home-making magazines. My favorite is Real Simple. But I also like Good Housekeeping and Better Homes & Gardens, and I'll read Family Circle and some other ones. I've recently discovered Southern Living and Country Living and I like those a lot, too. Anyway, I had a whole stockpile of them and knew that I could not take them with me. I spent 2 or 3 days going through all of them and tearing out the pages that had recipes I wanted, things I liked, or information I thought would be useful and throwing them into a folder, with the intention of one day compiling them into a recipe notebook or typing up the ones that would be too difficult to paste on a page.

Going through them the first time was fun because I got to see all these tidbits that I'd actually used over and over again that I had learned in these magazines. I think my favorite one is putting marshmallows in with brown sugar to keep it from getting hard or forming clumps. Works really well! And now I'm going through them and looking at all these recipes I have very ambitiously collected. But it's exciting because I feel like getting your own collection of recipes is one of those things--I don't know what words to use--it's just one of those things. I have a document on my computer of recipes I've done before. It's mostly cookies, but it's also got the pie crust I like to make the most. And I have a couple different sugar cookie recipes, depending on what I want to do with the cookies. It's fun.

Oh, but going through them also makes me think of things I don't have, wish I had, or haven't seen in my things yet. One recipe instructed me to "whisk" something and I froze and thought "Where are my whisks?!" because almost everything is out of my car and a whisk will only fit so many places. I sat and thought and thought and then it came to me: there are in my toaster oven which is still in the front seat of the car. Whew! I have, however, misplaced my most prized little stuffed animal and I'm in a panic about it. I took my teddy bear and my cheetah out of the car today and then went looking for the snow leopard. They've all been close together for most of the trip, but he was nowhere to be found! I'm going to go look again tomorrow, and I'm sure he has to be there, but it felt like I looked through everything. Keep your fingers crossed that I find him. He is my most favorite. I take him everywhere with me. Not in the little kid way, where he literally comes everywhere with me, but I took him to England with me and I took him to Italy and Greece with me. I take him on all my trips so that everywhere I've been, he's been, too. I'm worried he fell out of my car one day and I didn't notice. I'll keep you updated since I know you're very worried now.

Today wasn't a big day. I wandered around looking for furniture stores. And then grocery stores. I was really disappointed by the grocery store closest to me. The produce section is really lame and everything is a little higher priced than it needs to be, probably because it's a small store. There is a Whole Foods a little ways further away, and I love Whole Foods, but decided I probably would spend waaaay too much there. Partially because I get really excited around new, exotic looking foods and partially because everything is expensive there. And I don't need organic butter. It's not one of my priorities. I ended up at Wal-Mart. And their produce section wasn't all that great, either, but it looked like it needed re-stocking more than anything. Their peaches were super cheap though, so that was awesome. I got a bunch of peach recipes off the Southern Living website. I love peaches.

I did my staple shopping today and I'll do some meal planning and go back, but I think I'm going to have to find the Winn-Dixie and hope that meets my needs better.

My new roommates cooks and last night she made red beans and rice and tonight she made a stew with black-eyed peas, okra, and fairy eggplant and it was delicious! And I'm finally getting vegetables and home-cooked meals and I didn't even have to put in any effort. I love this arrangement so far.

Right-o. I'm kind of sleepy and want to type up a few more recipes from my folder before I go to sleep.