my version of being a "cat lady" and Easter (the two topics separately)

Last night, I looked around my home and thought, here it is, my sad preschool teacher (in my case toddler teacher) existence. And so I took pictures of it for you. I am not a cat lady. I only have a guinea pig. Instead, I'm a teacher of little kids. And I spend my money accordingly. Well, maybe I should spend it less, but I do spend it fairly consistently with what I care about. So this, my friend, is what a single lady toddler teacher's studio apartment might look like, down to the mess. I use most of my cleaning impulses up at work.
Toys, toys everywhere and not a drop to drink, to misquote Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
This (the cars, people, and animals) is most of the result of one of my larger thrift store purchases. You know my kiddos will be thrilled to play with the cars. At least the ones they consider cool, which should be most of them. But where shall I store them in my tiny apartment? Meanwhile, they are like a constant OCD trigger (I could call them an exposure, but I'm really not so sure I'm doing much Response Prevention, and OCD doesn't want me to risk telling a lie). Did. I. Waste. My. Money??? Possibly. Oh, how terrible. Now where will I store them. My kids will like them. But maybe I shouldn't have bought them. Oh, dear. Now where will I store them. Loop complete. Well, if it could be completed and still be a never ending loop. P.S. I would just love for you to reassure me that it was okay to buy so many cars for my classroom, but you probably shouldn't. Nonetheless, please don't make my exposure any bigger by assuring my OCD that I should not have bought them. I'll just satisfy myself with explaining my predicament and move on to other triggers.
Like my superbly messy studio apartment. Yes, I walk through it as if it was an obstacle course. Because it is, even if I didn't design it to be. Oh, and do you like the stack of pretty boxes on the wire shelves that now hold up my tv antenna? Safe to answer because OCD is busy elsewhere. The stack isn't straight. That keeps annoying me, but I always forget about it when I am up and moving, and Newton's law about things at rest (me) staying at rest is pretty accurate in this case.
And here is my kitchen. Yes, it is pretty much that small. And I am proud to show you how clean it is. There is not a giant pile of dishes from months ago. I think I even washed dishes last weekend.

And now, since people tend to only read one new post at a time (as far as I can tell and have experienced, I shall segue into my second post without actually changing posts, because I want to attempt to keep my audience for both posts that are now one post. This is my Easter post. My upbringing and OCD defying Easter post. I'd rather not say I was defying my upbringing, though. More choosing a different path. A path with Easter bunnies and chicks and eggs. Not real eggs, though, because both OCD and I dislike eggs, though not entirely for the same reasons. Anyway, here is my first Easter basket of my life as far as I can remember:
And here is the neatest, cleanest spot in my whole apartment, because I had to clear the table off to switch out my valentine's table cloth. By the way, if you want an Easter table cloth that isn't fabric but has that vinyl or something like vinyl surface, do not shop for it the day before Easter. At least where I live, they were gone. With the exception of ones that were merely striped or something not specifically Easter and two (and only two throughout every store I searched) oblong ones that were not round (and thus, would not be perfect). Correction, one was square, but it was too much into the yellows and oranges, and as you can see, I'm pretty big on the teal/light blue and the pink and purple. In short, Easter supplies disappear and there probably wont be multiple aisles of clearance afterwards like there can be after Christmas. Thus, I would advise anyone following my footsteps in deciding to begin their drastically different Easter celebration habits earlier than the weekend of Easter.

That about does it for my double post. Except that I want to mention the migraine that came today. It was mild enough that I wouldn't usually call it a migraine except that it was the exact same configuration and it annoyed me enough to still call it one. I am suspecting stress and some really disgusting Easter candy I ate last night along with staying up late and not eating too well. The candy was so not good that I actually replaced it with better candy (that was one cent cheaper - the advantage of Walmart over the dollar store) and threw the yucky stuff away. By the way, the other two kinds of candy that I got from the dollar store were good and are still in my eggs. And I gave up on trying to give myself the Easter-egg-hunting experience, at least this year. Throwing eggs around my apartment might work, especially with my apartment already being a messy obstacle course, but something about having the plastic eggs fall from that high and cracking open just isn't appealing. And I like my basket quite well. And the place mats are perfect, despite being almost a centimeter different in height. Why would you mass produce place mats that are not the same size? (The labeling said they were the same size.)

So, happy Easter. May you enjoy the pastel colors, rabbits, lambs, chicks, and eggs if you want to. And my enjoying pastel colors, rabbits, lambs, chicks, candy, and eggs does not change the fact that Jesus died for me and then came to life again, saving me. Jesus dying for me seemed pretty strange back when I wanted to kill myself. It is still something that I don't fully comprehend, but I'm okay with that. And I am grateful for Jesus making a way for me to come into a relationship with Him and stay out of hell. I didn't want to go to hell, even when I felt suicidal. I wanted non-existence or a better life, not a worse one.





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