Failed experiment

I guess we left the sheets over the mirrors for two nights, but when they didn't seem to have a huge impact on our sleeping, Bob relunctantly removed them, saying that his little experiment had unfortunately not been a success.

I seem to be sleeping better, though, but can't really attribute it to anything. Less caffeine, maybe.

Night before last he was tired, and he went down to the basement to take a nap. I'm not sure why there, and not the bedroom, but I think he felt like if he laid down in the real bed, he'd stay there all night and wake up at 4:00 a.m., but if he went to the basement, he'd have to wake up and come upstairs at some point.

I was working, but after he'd been down there awhile, I went down to check on him. I laid down and cuddled with him for awhile, and fell asleep. At some point he got up and went upstairs, but I just stayed down there for awhile. There's something so luxurious about a nap. Of course, I did eventually have to wake up and come upstairs and go to bed . . .

When I got home last night Bob had left gifts on my desk -- a Valentine card, a small box of chocolates, a single red rose in a bud vase, and a jewelry box with a necklace -- a sterling silver hammered heart on a silver chain. The card was to "The Queen of my Heart." He is such a sweetie. I got him a card and an iTunes gift certificate.

I'm sure we won't go out tonight or anything--we don't generally do that--but it's nice to acknowledge the day.

I've got a bunch of new jewelry that I've made over the past few weeks but just haven't gotten around to photographing or posting. I'm going to try to do that this weekend, and I'll take a photo of the heart necklace, too. It's really nice!

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Feng shui

Bob read an article on feng shui the other day, and told me that it was a bad idea to have mirrors in the bedroom. He thought that might be why he'd been having trouble sleeping. I thought it might have more to do with too many Diet Pepsi's in the evening, myself. So I basically laughed at him, but said I'd like to hear exactly what it said, so he looked for the article again.

It was apparently an article about feng shui, bedrooms, and romance; as I recall, it seemed like the advice was contradictory -- it said that if you were a single person, and sleep alone, that a mirror would reflect back that "singleness," and prevent you from finding a partner, but if you were married, or otherwise slept with someone, that a mirror would attract a third party into the relationship and cause problems in the marriage.

But then somehow Bob started talking about mirrors sucking the life force out of you or something, so I said, well, do whatever you want to do, if you want to cover up the mirrors, go ahead. So he went to the linen closet and got a sheet and covered up my big round vanity mirror.

I was already in bed, and he was going to stay up awhile, but as he started to close the bedroom door -- we've been closing it most of the way, with a doorstop there so it can't close completely (non-cat containment issue) -- he realized that there was a mirror on the back of the door, and one that wouldn't be as easy to cover up as the vanity mirror.

So he went and got a hanger that we use to hang an ironing board on, put that on the door, then got another sheet and draped that over the mirror. I said, "Can I go to sleep now?" and he said that yes, his work was done.

That was, I think, Wednesday night. On Thursday morning I asked him how he slept now that his soul wasn't being sucked out overnight, and he said he thought he slept better, maybe. But this morning he said he didn't sleep very well last night (we left the mirrors covered up), so maybe that wasn't it. I was telling Anna about the feng shui experiment yesterday at work and it sounded even funnier recounting it out loud. He's pretty hilarious sometimes.

Feng shui had come up earlier in the week when I was trying to explain how odd it feels to me when I move offices at work, and end up facing a different direction. I said, "It's like my feng shui is all messed up." I know that isn't really an accurate term, but it's sort of like the adjustment that has to be made when the time changes -- everything just feels kind of "off." It's been a week now, and everything seems to feel okay now, but earlier in the week I felt kind of tense and stressed out.

Like I said, it seems to be a matter, for me, of having my desk face a different direction. It just takes me awhile to get used to it. I think before I was facing north, and now I'm facing west. I don't think there's any significance to the direction, I think it's just that it's different.

P.S.: I did a tiny bit of research, and found this:

Mirrors, now this is another misunderstood topic as again many homes we visit have all the mirrors covered in the bedroom. It is only a problem if the mirror faces your bed and you can see your face and upper body in the reflection. If the mirror looks sideways onto your bed it is not a problem, why are mirrors in bedrooms considered bad? Two schools of thought, the first belief is when you sleep at night your soul is supposed to leave your body and when it leaves the first thing it sees is a reflection of itself and gets startled and this is what causes nightmares and a restless sleep. The second is when you sleep your body recharges itself with fresh Ch'i and the negative Ch'i leaves your body, if there is a mirror facing you the negative Ch'i cannot leave you. This does not just apply to mirrors, anything reflective like a photo, painting, computer screen or metal surface. If you cannot move the mirror place a cloth over it when you sleep.

So maybe it's not so crazy after all.

From Feng Shui for the Bedroom.

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Moving day

We moved the office yesterday. It's not completely finished, there are still boxes sitting around, and furniture that we haven't quite figured out what to do with, but for the most part, we're moved. We moved to a different floor (two floors) in the same building, so we had been taking things up all week. By Wednesday, all I had left in my old office was a desk, chair, and the computer.

The cable company finally finished installing the cable on Thursday, so the wireless network was set up on Friday morning, and we were able to move everything up.

The "after" pictures:

The big square thing to the left in the picture above is Jojo's kennel. Later, Dave moved it over in front of the stove, and now he's moved it into his office; there just doesn't seem to be a good place for it, but I'm sure he'll find one. I'd kind of like to have her as a roommate, though.

The kitchen:

The view:

I hadn't really thought about how it would look after dark, but it's pretty cool:

I'm sure I'll be still be settling in for a few days, but all is well.

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New office

Last weekend, in the wee hours of the morning, someone drove a car through the stone "monument" at the entrance to our subdivision. We don't know what happened, exactly, but there was a police helicopter hovering over the neighborhood, and the police had the street closed. There was a car smashed up against, or rather, through a neighbor's fence; we assumed that the police had the streets closed because they were looking for whoever had been in the car.

We never did hear what happened, and the monument is still in pieces. Probably alcohol-related, Bob said, and that's probably right. I was wondering whether it was a high speed chase that ended with the crash, but I guess we'll probably never know. One of the weirdest things was that there was a message from a police officer on our answering machine, asking for me, saying that they were working an accident in our neighborhood, and needed a phone number for the homes association.

I called back, wasn't able to get hold of the officer, and left a message, but he never called me back. I have no idea why anyone would have called me -- I don't have anything to do with the homes association, and can't imagine how they would have gotten my name. It's a mystery.

That same night, or the evening before, I guess, we lost power for a couple of hours. Nothing specific had happened that we could pinpoint, i.e., no storms or anything, but it didn't come back on immediately like it normally would. I had to take a shower the next morning--I needed to wash my hair--and Bob was concerned that if the power didn't come on overnight, the water in the waterheater wouldn't retain enough hot water.

So I took a shower in the dark, with him holding a flashlight. Now that's something we don't do every day!

We're moving at work. We won't be in the basement anymore--we're moving to the third and fourth floors of the building we're in now.

This will be my office ("before" pictures, obviously):

It has a kitchen! Well, it's not like an office that has a kitchen, it's a kitchen/office. But it has windows! It's been a long time since I could see out of a window at work.

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Cute outfit

The cold really hasn't been all that bad. I took cold pills for a couple of days, but they make me feel so weird that I couldn't stand it, and I've just been struggling along without. I thought I was doing pretty well, anyway; last night when Bob came to bed, he woke me up to tell me that he was going to sleep in the basement because I was snoring so loudly!

I said, "okay," and went back to sleep. At least the kitties didn't desert me . . . He came back at about 4:30, I think. This morning I told him that I'd sleep in the basement tonight, but he said no, that he didn't want me to. I guess we'll worry about it tonight. I hate that I was keeping him awake, but at least we do have somewhere else to sleep.

I was surprised that Pyewacket stayed in bed with me, but maybe she didn't realize he was in the basement. She may have thought he left. He didn't have to go in to work until early afternoon, so hopefully he was able to get some more sleep.

For some reason, this made me remember something that happened last weekend, I guess it must have been Sunday. I had been cleaning. I was wearing one of the pairs of new pajama pants that I got at Sam's; this pair was kind of a turquoise blue with white flowers on it. I was also wearing a big lavender t-shirt with an embroidered flower on the front--I think it was one that he brought me back from a vacation sometime a few years ago.

As I said, I'd been cleaning, and somewhere I'd run across a handful of stretchy beaded bracelets that I needed to take upstairs, so I'd just put them on rather than lay them down somewhere else.

When Bob got home, he looked at me, and said, "That's quite an outfit you've got on." I laughed and said, "What's wrong with it?" (I know he isn't crazy about the pajama pants, but so what, they're comfy, and I like them.) He said, no, it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. It's the bracelets that really make it, though."

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