Trying to get organized
Nov. 21st, 2023 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillilahThere are things I want: to improve my Portuguese, to paint, to move to our new house. Each of those has many steps. For Portuguese, I have trouble breaking down all the ways I could learn into the best ways to do it right now. Finally, after at least a week of thinking about it, I asked ChatGPT to help me come up with a plan for improving my Portuguese. I asked it to be for just 15 minutes a day, but ChatGPT is terrible with things like that. Its plan is 25 minutes and is divided into listening (something I totally struggle with), verbs (which have to be memorized), learning new words and reviewing old words, and speaking. I figured out which resources that I have easy access to would work for each thing and started on that. So far, so good. I still haven't done the speaking, which is the hardest. I'll work on it.
As for painting, I decided to try painting clouds on the paint-testing strips that I made, since I am too anxious to paint the box that I was going to use for this purpose (I'll do that when I'm done with strips). I'm using this image and, once again, this and this tutorial. I don't have it perfected yet, but after the first hour, I figured out what I needed to do (a lot more acrylic medium to make the paint fairly translucent). I'll see tomorrow if a second layer helps the clouds look better too. Trying to blend with a brush didn't work at all, as the paint dries too fast.
And for moving? We sat down to have a meeting tonight as to what we need to do and when. Joel has contacted companies about the solar water heater. I have sent information to our insurance agent to get the ball rolling on homeowner's insurance. There are other things we need to get done, but most of them are dependent on the house being livable, which it really isn't without the water heater. I am trying _so hard_ to not obsess about all the other stuff that needs to be done. I wouldn't be so crazy about moving right this minute if it wasn't for my problems with the water here, and I wouldn't be so sure it was the water if my stomach problems didn't immediately disappear the second that we are somewhere else. I don't drink the water or cook with the water, but I still use it to wash vegetables (although I dry them off after). We also wash our dishes with that water. Since I can't brush my teeth with it, I'm guessing that _any_ use of it is causing the problem. So, hopefully, we'll get these last things resolved so that we can move.
As for painting, I decided to try painting clouds on the paint-testing strips that I made, since I am too anxious to paint the box that I was going to use for this purpose (I'll do that when I'm done with strips). I'm using this image and, once again, this and this tutorial. I don't have it perfected yet, but after the first hour, I figured out what I needed to do (a lot more acrylic medium to make the paint fairly translucent). I'll see tomorrow if a second layer helps the clouds look better too. Trying to blend with a brush didn't work at all, as the paint dries too fast.
And for moving? We sat down to have a meeting tonight as to what we need to do and when. Joel has contacted companies about the solar water heater. I have sent information to our insurance agent to get the ball rolling on homeowner's insurance. There are other things we need to get done, but most of them are dependent on the house being livable, which it really isn't without the water heater. I am trying _so hard_ to not obsess about all the other stuff that needs to be done. I wouldn't be so crazy about moving right this minute if it wasn't for my problems with the water here, and I wouldn't be so sure it was the water if my stomach problems didn't immediately disappear the second that we are somewhere else. I don't drink the water or cook with the water, but I still use it to wash vegetables (although I dry them off after). We also wash our dishes with that water. Since I can't brush my teeth with it, I'm guessing that _any_ use of it is causing the problem. So, hopefully, we'll get these last things resolved so that we can move.
