Suddenly I See...

….where in the hell that damn trailer will go.

The weather was kind of poopy on Sunday so we took the opportunity to spend a chilly black-fly-free day up at the land clearing for a laneway. Back in the fall we’d purchased a brand new shiny Stihl chainsaw at our local hardware store during a sale, and were starting to feel a bit foolish with a spic-and-span $500 chainsaw sitting in the basement untouched. We recruited my dad and then my brother volunteered and before you know it, we had a real honest-to-goodness work crew.

We’d gone up there a few weekends earlier, when there was still a bit of snow on the ground, and marked with spray paint which trees we wanted to cut. We chose a route that would allow us to carve out one laneway for the two properties, which would branch off at the end in an informal ‘T’ formation from my brother-in-law’s (BIL’s)place to ours.

Once on-site, and in consultation with my brother who is much more realistic about such things, we realized that the last part of our laneway (leading right down to the cottages) wouldn’t work, as BIL would have to drive smack into the back door of his cottage and down a hill too steep for any rental car to climb. Brother thought there might be run-off issues as well, dribbling into the lake, which is against our vision for the whole place. We instead made the difficult decision to end the laneways at the top of the ridge behind each place, and in future install two nice sets of stairs and pathways down to the cottages. When you visit our cottages, your vision will not be cluttered by unsightly automobiles.

My brother ‘borrowed’ (the guy wasn’t home but you snooze you lose) a super-powered brush cutter, which made short work of the saplings and raspberry bushes covering the first half of the six-acre parcel. He walked the marked laneway and zig-zagged the brush cutter through everything in its path, trees included. Here’s a picture of my brother with the fancy tool, which comes with its own harness (anonymity protected – not everyone likes having their faces plastered on the internets without their permission):

He did return the brush cutter at the end of the day.

Once that was cleared out, we could really see the terrain, and found a logical point at which to branch the two laneways apart that was nowhere near our original plan. As it stands now, we have pretty much cleared our own mini-road, which extends about 500 feet before branching off right (for us) and left (for BIL).

Ours continues down what was once a skidder track for the logging company that selectively cleared the land ages ago, so no major trees were left in our path and it was smooth sailing. We found a clearing – well, we made a clearing – filled with dead birch trees which were promptly removed. It is now a sunny site on a plateau overlooking the lake and what will be our future building site. Here’s a shot of the view from there. The birches will be removed later this summer, in preparation for future cottage-building.

BIL’s laneway ends rather abruptly, so we cleared a little area for cars to turn around and park right nearby. He will have to build a path and a short set of stairs leading down to his cottage, which my brother claims he wants to build right into the hillside. Easy.

When we were done, the neighbor (Ted) came by on his ATV to check it out, and we chit-chatted with him for a bit. Thank god he’s lovely. He and his friends have noisy toys, but if you can’t beat ‘em, you may as well join ‘em. I’m sure BIL will get himself a dirtbike in no time flat and hubby’s already told me he is absolutely going to buy an ATV someday. I can’t complain – I love me an ATV.

Then yesterday I spent a blackfly-filled day gardening and installing my new backyard squash garden. I had a temper tantrum and was going to quit when my parents came over and helped me over the hump. I am off to buy more dirt tonight – sucker’s bigger than I’d planned. I am also planning to buy myself that long-coveted pear tree this evening, so I’m pretty excited. It doesn’t take much.

I also dug in the terracotta flue liners that hubby and I found in a pile of garbage near the fertility clinic. Ha, at least something good has come of it. I will plant these up with a variety of annuals and maybe herbs and I’m sure they will look beautiful for about three weeks, until they become hidden by the monstrosities growing beside them. I always forget how big things get in the garden.

Rosie supervised.

Also this weekend I planted potatoes, cilantro, and some more bulbs in a planter by the front steps. I moved my huge terracotta containers into position on the deck but left them near the stairs, since I know they’ll have to be removed when we tear the deck off.

It was a good weekend’s work, though I didn’t touch the trailer. Sigh. Next weekend’s the Great Glebe Garage Sale, and on my list of things to look for this year are:

- more terracotta flue liners
- retro books on cottage, deck, or outdoor furniture building projects
- board games to leave in the trailer
- dishes for the trailer (metal or plastic)
- vintage tins and bottles i.e. future cottage décor
- a large enamel milking bowl with a red rim, with no rust
- galvanized buckets and things to put plants in
- weird ceramic forest animals (squirrels, bears, birds) from the 50s and earlier

As usual I will report back on our findings. Hubby is expecting a big haul this year, though I’m not sure how he can predict these things. I am going to wager that he comes back with at least one electric motor and some esoteric fishing thing that he will never use. I love the Great Glebe Garage Sale.

Satisfaction

Hubby mowed the lawn last night and I have to say it: it doesn’t take much to make me the happiest woman around.

When I was young I was kind of a bit on the edgy side; there were moments of wardrobe craziness, I used to dye my hair black (woo) and clomped around in army boots for awhile. I had a bunch of holes in my ears. These days that’s nothing, but back in 1992 I was pretty weird for my town. I never really imagined the way that my life would turn out. To be fair, I didn’t ever have a clear picture of where I wanted to be in 10, 15, 20 years, or what I wanted to do when I grew up. I knew what I didn’t want, but was fuzzy on the other details. I knew I liked to draw, I loved rock music and boys with long hair and animals and fashion magazines. What 16 year old kid doesn’t?

I sort of always imagined myself wearing black a lot, being really stylish, having kids, and maybe being an art dealer. Everyone in art history class wanted to be an art dealer.

Here I sit, 33 years old, in a wardrobe that’s getting progressively better-made yet more boring-looking, hair that looks vaguely like it belongs to a soccer mom, comfortable shoes (OK black Converse sneakers, but still. Heels? Not usually). I live in the country, 3 minutes from my parents, in a house that’s one year younger than I am but has aged less gracefully. I have a lovely husband, we have been together for 11 years and we had a beautiful wedding, and he is also settling into middle age comfortably (a recent quote: “I can’t understand how I’m getting so FAT with all this dog walking!” My response? “you’re 37 dear.” Was that supportive?). We have no kids, which I couldn’t predict and has thrown us for a loop, but even that is okay most days. I have a great set of European in-laws and a nephew, and my own brother has turned into a real man and found himself a heckuva nice lady too.

I live in a neighborhood filled with lovely people who are around our age and a bunch of nice dogs and cats. On Saturday, the big excitement was being invited to a neighbor’s house for game night with other neighbors. We had a blast and walked home at 11:30. I made dip. I take a pottery class also within walking distance, and my good good friend from a long time ago is moving in to the house behind me. I have what’s considered a ‘nice neighborhood’, filled with nice people.

My job is wonderful. I have a dream job. I’m not an art dealer but I’m pretty close, and I have a great health plan. I am downtown every day and sometimes I go to the Chinese grocery to buy my frozen squid and my fish sauce. Best of both worlds.

So this morning when I walked out onto the deck I took a moment to inhale. The grass is evenly clipped and fresh-smelling, and at this time of year it makes the garden POP. The tulips were covered in dew and the crocuses are still out, and the apple trees are starting to get teeny little leaves. The birds were chirping their fool heads off, and I made a mental note to fill a feeder tonight for the first hummingbird I saw in the garden on Monday. It’s my mother’s birthday today and as she is my very best friend, I left her a special treat on the kitchen counter, for her to find when she goes to walk Rosie at lunch. I look forward to joining a new doggie play group in my town after work, so Rosie will have the chance to run around and meet new dog-friends, and I remembered to leave meat out of the freezer for dinner. Work is going really well and we’re approaching a long weekend.

In the end, it takes little more than a nicely-mowed lawn to trigger the happy.

Progress!

On Saturday I had the opportunity to work on the trailer undistracted by anything – husband, dog, etc. I’d gotten it to a pretty good point by then but everything was still rough, and I had stopped last weekend when the wall I made didn’t fit right. I was on the verge of a tantrum and thought it best to call it a day.

Saturday I calmed myself, went into the trailer, and began to work relatively systematically. I made the wall fit, then affixed it, then cut trim to cover the parts that didn’t fit right. I caulked everything up and made it all smooth before starting onto the next area. I managed to get the trailer to the point where no pink insulation or moldy wood is showing. I swept and vacuumed everything. Behold, the before and after of the front part of the trailer:

There’s still some ‘hardscaping’ to be done; I have to build a little cabinet under the window with a hinged lid, which also functions as the seat back, and then I have to install a shelf along the width of the trailer. I also have to rig up my patented (not really) table-bracket system which involves magnets. Fancy eh? Here’s a rough outline of what I have to do to that corner still:

And in the back, I have also made good progress. It’s not totally sealed yet, but that’s mostly because that damn back wall is curved and I can’t find anything to seal the corner. I bought bathtub surround stuff but it all came unglued, so it was a bit of a waste of money.

Behold the work I’ve done so far in the back:

And the work I have yet to do (that thing above the bed structure is a shelf.)

My next steps are: to finish building that stuff at the front of the trailer. To clean the entire thing with bleachy cleaner to kill any remaining mold or other infectious stuff. Fill gaps with wood filler and caulking. Rip off the linoleum from the ‘kitchen backsplash’. (That’s one weekend). Then, I will paint. Paint paint paint. (that’s another weekend). After it’s painted, I will build in the bed frame, install the bed, put in the cushions, put in the table, remove the stove and put in the new countertop. Then I will move on to the bathroom, where I will remove the toilet and install a chemical toilet (another weekend). After that it’s the really fun stuff: the hardware and storage things that I have yet to buy from Ikea (baskets, racks, hooks, shelves, etc). I figure this thing will be ready to move onto our land by July, when we will also finally be done our laneway, we hope. Once it’s up there, I will buy the most industrially-sized tube of silicone caulking I can find, and when it’s in place, I will caulk the living daylights out of it. Water will fall upwards to get away from it, it will be so watertight.

In other progress, I planted 100 onions and some spinach this weekend. I also planted my flower bulbs in the perennial garden, so if the godforsaken squirrels don’t get them, I should have an explosively beautiful garden this year. The grow-op is trucking along, though my tomatoes are a bit of a disappointment. One of the two varieties I grew didn’t produce at all (maybe two sprouted, and they are weenie). The peppers are up, but I suspect that it’s the cayennes and not the red peppers. I always have success with cayennes. I planted kale seeds and they came up, like, the next day, so that should be interesting. Some evening this week I will dedicate an hour to the veggie garden and plant carrots and potatoes.

We have reserved a guy to build our new deck the third or fourth week of June, so that’s pretty exciting, though we’re still undecided as to what we want to do about railings. I have more wood to order, but the cedar decking is sitting by my driveway ready to go. Also, I think next weekend we might dedicate a day to tree-cutting up at our land. It’s the long weekend so maybe we’ll even be able to drum up some assistants.

Things are moving along.

Happy Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day, and I celebrated it in a variety of ways.

I am one of three co-Chairs of my workplace’s ‘Green Committee’ and we recently completed a fairly comprehensive environmental audit (with an outside consulting firm) of our operations. It’s the first one my organization’s ever done. Yesterday, Earth Day, we had the opportunity to present the results of our audit to all of our colleagues (about 230 people). Co-Chair #1 went up and introduced the project, gave some background, and passed the mic to Co-Chair #2, who outlined the findings of the audit. Then they gave the floor to me, who was to explain the next steps and communication of the audit results.

I firmly believe that not all people are good at everything. There are a lot of things that I am really really good at: I can knit pretty well, I can cook a mean dinner, I am a pretty competent driver, I walk really well and I can write a list like nobody’s business. However, this means that there are necessarily things that I am not good at. This category includes team sports, juggling, dieting, doing hair, understanding concepts verbally i.e. without drawings, having patience, cooking potatoes and public speaking.

I got up there well enough – made it to the podium without falling or farting or anything* – but things started to go downhill very shortly after I got there. For some reason, about 10 seconds into my presentation, I forgot to breathe. Once I was behind myself by one solid breath, I couldn’t pace any future breaths, and started to breathe too shallowly. My voice started to wobble audibly, and my palms got really sweaty. I tried to pause – everyone in the room was uncomfortable by then – but the problem was still there when I continued. It was physical, but exacerbated by nerves. I think I told everyone I had a cold but I can’t remember. I think I must have blacked out. Anyway, I managed to skip part of my presentation, get the slides screwed up, then tried to back out of the last paragraph by asking Co-Chair #1 to take over for me but he didn’t get my cry for help and refused. I finished it off ok, but it has to have been the most embarrassing moment of my entire career.

People keep coming up to me and asking me if I’m ok. It’s so humiliating. One of my colleagues, an older gentleman who I like very much, told me that once he had to do something similar, and broke down crying. So you see we can’t be good at everything. Happy Earth Day everybody at my work!

When we got home, we took Rosie out for a walk. Up the road, she startled a partridge, which promptly flew into a neighbor’s window and killed itself. My neighbor came out in her cute little flannel penguin pyjamas and pronounced him dead at the scene, and offered it to us. Rosie went mental. She has never actually had her mouth on a freshly-killed anything before, and her wolfy nature came out full scary force. She was thrashing all over the road, yelping and acting the fool, so we took the poor dangly-necked bird home and dispatched it. Hubby stood on its wings and pulled on its feet and it’s really disconcerting how little effort it takes to completely disembowel a partridge. They were meant for eating, apparently. No tools required. We gave Rosie the remains and she went all National Geographic on us in the yard, rolling in it, covering herself with feathers, then after about 45 minutes of playing with the dead thing, she finally ate it all. Crunch crunch, feathers and all. We went on our walk and came home and she promptly barfed up the entire dead bird on the futon. Happy Earth Day everybody!

* Sorry, that was crude, but it’s always a concern. You know.

So about that camper...

The saga of the camper continues.

I found, once I really got into it, that there had been more water damage than I expected in our beloved trailer. Some of it was still wet when I opened up the walls. I ended up having to remove the back walls, the back ceiling, and re-build the wooden inner structure of the walls and back end. The floor was wobbly, so I firmed it up with some 2x4s, and have ended up unscrewing and screwing everything back together. It’s been a challenge.

I am now nearly finished ‘shoring up’ the back end of the trailer. I have yet to screw the outside of the trailer to the new 2x4 on the floor, but that will happen soon.

I am discovering new things every time I go into it. I lifted up the seat bases in the ‘dining room’ and discovered the water tank, filled with black mold. That will be coming out, or cleaned and repurposed as grey water disposal. The trim on all of our cabinets is loose and gappy. Whoever did the last paint job wasn't so careful about avoiding hardware, doorknobs, etc. I discovered that someone had likely run the camper into a tree at some point, and the front end is all crunched in at the back of a cabinet. Water damage followed, so the bottoms of the upper cabinets have to be replaced. I found a little plaque that says “God Bless This Camper.” Indeed.

What do you get for $600?

All of this being said, I am still enthusiastic and my vision for the trailer still stands. I have or will have torn out:
- the bunk bed in the back
- the stove (we will use a coleman – same thing)
- the cushions on the front benches (will replace)
- the countertop
- the linoleum backsplash
- the fluorescent light above the sink
- the toilet (will replace with a chemical toilet)
- the window cranks (replaced)
- the window screens (replaced)
- the mattress at the back (replaced)
- the table (replaced)
- the furnace/air conditioner
- the walls at the back end
- the walls at the front end
- the floor of the cabinets at the front
- and potentially the vinyl flooring, to be replaced with wood-look laminate, of which we have a ton left over from previous projects.

We’ve determined that we don’t need a tap, a flushing toilet, a stove, an air conditioner, electric lights, or anything that requires electricity, propane, or running water. This is pretty much a glorified tent, that you can stand up in and keep stuff in during the week, with a chemical toilet and a place to wash dishes.

I’ve already thrown a bunch of this stuff out, and have purchased many of the supplies needed to get it shipshape. I have a vision. Behold (this is as if you were peeking into the kichen window):


Maybe I’m dreaming in technicolour, but stay tuned.

Springy?

As I write this, snow is pelting past my window at a 45 degree angle. I fear for all of the teeny little perennial nubbins that were popping up in the garden this past weekend, which I uncovered (silly me), all excited that spring had finally arrived. I’m assuming that these early bulbs and perennials (tulips, columbines, crocuses, jacob’s ladder) will survive a couple of days of wet snow but it’s still sad to think of them out there, all soggy and freezing. Boo.

Rosie loves it though, the little freak. I let her out to pee last night and she tore around the snowy yard in a big circle, her back end nearly flying over her front. She loves the snow – and the water. Anything wet and messy.

The seeds in my grow-op are coming up; so far I’ve got a bunch of tomatoes, and I think one basil or some other stringy thing (an errant weed) in the basil cell. Eggplants and peppers aren’t up yet, and neither is tarragon or basil. The tomatoes win the race this year. They’re so tall (and stringy) that I had to remove the cover of the seed-starter. I grew two varieties this year: ‘Winterkeeper’, which I will apparently be able to pick late in the season and keep in my basement into the winter, and ‘Teton de Vénus’, which I bought because I belive it means ‘Venus nipple’. How could I resist?

As for progress made on other projects, so far I’ve been really good at finding people to do stuff for me. I have to nail them down still with regards to specific dates, but I have found an eavestrough/sofit person who charges very little, and a handyman to do all of my heinous jobs, also for very little. This makes me happy. I have a bit of preliminary work and shopping to do but I look forward to coming home and having the work done for me. I am getting so bourgeois and old.

I called a lady who does slipcovers in my area, to see what a couch slipcover would cost me, and nearly snorted my lunch out of my nose when she told me it’d run to about $1,000. I paid $600 for my couch, and it is used primarily by my dog, so I won’t be going that route. Looks like the mother and I are going to have to do it ourselves.

Tile backsplash is done, and it is beautiful. Photos to come (as soon as I tidy up the kitchen).

I have booked a ton of appointments over the course of the next month or so. I will be all caught up and checked out by mid-may. Also, have booked an appointment with the municipality guy for April 30 to discuss permits/allowances/bylaws/regulations for our new land.

Have also collected two cedar logs (free) for my side garden project. More progress will be made on this soon…maybe hubby can practice using our superduper new chainsaw.

And another project that I have not yet mentioned: turning Rosie from a crate dog into a free-in-the-house dog. We left her out of her crate last Friday, and it went swimmingly. We’re trying to get her used to the idea of being mature and responsible, a little bit at a time. So far so good.

Speaking of dogs (when am I not?), we will soon have a new doggie extended family member. My brother-in-law in Austria called us last weekend to tell us to check our email, where we found pictures of their tiny little four-week-old black lab puppy, Dakota. Little Austrian Dakota, who goes home to them on May 3. I am very excited for them, and look forward to hearing their tales of chewed arms, sleepless nights, ruined furniture… good times. Here I was afraid that Rosie was too much for them to take at Christmas time. Guess she wasn’t that bad after all.

Camping, updated

I would love to tell you that I am a camper. I would love to be able to talk about the latest high-tech tent I bought at Mountain Equipment Co-op, the fancy little one-burner stove I’ve got for making my coffee in the neat steel percolator I found at a nifty camping store in so-and-so little town. I would love to be able to brag about back-packing into remote locations and setting up shop, pooping in the woods and taking it all back home with me.

Unfortunately, I have to be honest with myself. I live in the country. I have never lived in the city (except for a couple of years there, which I didn’t love as much in practice as I did in theory and during which I did actually like to camp a lot) and have usually had a home where I could see more trees than neighbors. I have never felt the primal need to get ‘out there’ and set up camp, feeling like an explorer, reveling in the hardship. I’m already out there. I don’t like sending my food up a tree. I hate having my legs restricted in sleeping bags that I can’t pull up over my ears. I hate trying to track down that one mosquito who got into the tent. I’ve done it, I’ve enjoyed it, and I’ve got some great memories of really fun camping trips, but when asked the honest question “do you want to go camping?” I would have to say the answer is usually no, I prefer to keep my bed dry and my food close by.

I’m a good camper, too. I can cook a mean dinner on an open fire. I can set up a tent in the dark. I can wash dishes with very little water and very little impact. I do actually like camping on islands (fewer bears, more swimming) and can canoe there and make it downright homey. I don’t even so much mind going to the bathroom over a log. However for some reason, whenever I go camping I have the overarching urge to sleep. I become narcoleptic. Maybe it’s because I’m like 100% relaxed, or maybe it’s because there isn’t much to do but sit around, but all I want to do at all hours of the day is sleep. When I’m awake, I like to drink. I’m usually too cold, or damp, have allergies or sore hips or both, am dirty, or my hair is itchy, so sleeping and drinking distract me from all of that.

When I go camping (and there will be more tent camping in my future, I’m sure), I must have access to the following things at all times:
- un-frigid water to swim in, preferably rocky and clear;
- sunshine, lots of it;
- a toque for sleeping;
- food, lots of it, mostly junky;
- booze, see above, beer for hot afternoons and red wine for cool nights;
- lots of polar fleece clothing;
- many changes of underwear;
- a book or magazine or something to distract me;
- a folding camp chair;
- friends, for variety.

So it ends up being “well for both of us we need the big tent. Then I need something to sleep on. Then my sleeping bag isn’t warm enough so I need a fatter one. Then we need the coleman stove, the cooler, the food bag, the beer, the wine, my backpack, hubby’s backpack, something(s) to sit on, dishsoap, toilet paper, spatulas, forks, knives, salt and pepper, towels, tarps, bungee cords, rope, rain jackets, life jackets, paddles, fishing equipment and I am exhausted just thinking about it.

All this being said, I am about to take camping to a new level. Behold, the camper:

(not our picture or our stuff)

This little puppy was found on a local used-stuff website, and we got it for only $600. It will be placed permanently on our piece of land, at the lake, and will be our ‘summer home’ until we have a cottage built, in futuretimes.

I have big plans for this camper. There was a feature in Domino magazine (R.I.P.) called ‘can this outfit be made into a room’ or somesuch nonsense, and for this camper project, it will be Genny’s design challenge: Can This Room Be Made Into A Camper?

(a terrible picture of what is actually quite a nice room)

Our new little acquisition will be completely gutted, its fittings replaced with new ones, a wider bed, better storage, sleeker accessories, a comfy seating area, nice flooring, a decent (chemical) toilet, a deck, patio furniture, BBQ, and outdoor lighting. We have zero power up at our land save for what can be powered by propane and solar panels, so living in there will be a challenge, aimed at readying us for our eventual off-grid cottage. It has to be comfy, dry, well-ventilated, spacious, and Rosie-fied (i.e. easy to clean). I will paint the interiors, build a new and spacious table, make nice foam cushions for the seating area, buy all new plush bedding, get baskets for our stuff (Scrabble, first-aid kit, blankets, etc), and install laminate wood-look flooring. And decorate. I’m going to leave the outside looking shabby, and make the inside sleek, elegant, and cozy. The deck will be built out of our former deck at home (once it becomes the former deck) and my dad built us some lovely compact patio furniture. I bought exterior solar lights at Ikea (they have a lot of solar-powered stuff for summer!) and look forward to stocking the kitchen with finds from the Great Glebe Garage Sale.

I am really looking forward to CAMPING in my CAMPER this summer. I may never be satisfied with a tent again!

Spring Things

Oy vey it's going to be a warm weekend, and I am so looking forward to losing our snow you have no idea.

We ran out of firewood about two weeks ago. We borrowed a batch from my parents, and hubby dug a pile of it out from underneath the snow last weekend (he had to split it, it was all wet, etc.), but it still hasn't been enough to indulge in fires on days that are not the coldest. If it goes below minus ten, sure, but above that, we've been sucking it up and wearing polar fleece.

I have a number of objectives for this spring (spring being defined as March, April, May). They are:
- start my seeds in the basement grow-op: zinnias, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, basil, and melons.
- install a new white tiled backsplash in my kitchen, to replace the beige/orange daisies we currently enjoy.
- chop down/thin out some of the cedar trees in the woods beside the house.
- get back into the groove of doctor's appointments that I've been neglecting.
- slip-cover my sofa.
- build a long raised bed out of previously-cut cedars from beside our house.
- Fix the fences on my veggie garden. Weed garden.
- Evaluate the perennial garden. Remove/move wrong or wrongly-placed things.
- Hire someone to replace my eavestrough and install sofit.
- Meet the guy from the municipality where our land is and tackle all the permits, assessments, etc.
- Install a cable run for Rosie somewhere where she won't get all tangled up but can still run around.
- Begin the siding project for one more (final) year.

Then we'll be on to summer. I think that's very reasonable, considering that I could do the first two in the coming two weekends, doctors' appointments are currently booked, and my mom is on the slip-cover case. Hubby loves to use his chainsaw, so he will be in charge of thinning the cedars. A number of things can't be started until late April, so everything has its place.

I am watching the sun shine into my dirty office windows, and it's 4:58 p.m. Daylight Savings is this weekend, which is wonderful, and means that while it'll be miserably dark when I get up in the morning, Rosie might sleep until 6:30 like she's supposed to, and by the time we get home at night, it'll be full-on bright when we take her for her walk.

I have a stressful week here at work next week, so wish me luck!

Sleep well, little magazine

A few weeks ago I learned that one of my new favorite magazines was folding permanently. This recession has been a bugger for the publishing industry (according to all the sad stories on my one source: Gawker); logically, advertising is really low, luxury brands are tanking and a number of less-relevant publications have consequently met their maker.

Domino was one of those magazines that I wanted to hate. Kind of smug, cliquey, they guilelessly promoted a whole lot of products affordable to not many people. Their ‘look’ was deceptively high-end; often kind of boho, but with a very professional price tag. The people they featured in their pages lived extravagant lives, like the painter who lives in an open-air villa on acreage in Africa or the textile scion in the fancy Moroccan country home. To a certain extent, this is common fodder for decorating magazines, but in Domino, everyone was approximately 40 and lived the kind of lives where I would constantly ask myself “how in the hell can they afford to live like that? Who ARE these people?”

All this aside, what I liked about Domino is that the aesthetic was eclectic, colourful, a bit hippie sometimes, and unafraid to celebrate complete over-the-top decorating insanity. One recent issue celebrated the home of LA designer Kelly Wearstler, totally filled with giant useless objects, brass, and patterns so crazy and mismatched that if I visited for tea, I would completely miss the couch. The wallpaper (designed by Wearstler herself) reminded me of the oceanfront condo my grandparents rented in Panama City Beach in the 1980s. In the article, they promoted the decorator’s own line of tchotchkas, including a brass ashtray-looking candy dish-thingy for $995 and several useless and gaudy small stone boxes for over $1,000 each. It was so delightfully insane. I like to see how the other half lives, and I also enjoy a good train wreck. I feel smug reading about people who revel in a complete loss of perspective.

Alongside the nuttiness, there were some profiled homes that I could really get behind. I learned that Thom Felicia from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has the world’s most beautiful cottage. I was inspired by a small one-room kit home that was built in the woods somewhere by a couple of people in a week or so. There was a British woman, a friend of one of the writers, who bought an old home somewhere in the country and re-did it in the most wonderfully colourful and loopy way. I applaud the magazine for letting us into these inspiring spaces.

Overall, what I gathered from this magazine more than any other out there were ideas. The objects in Domino were usually things that I could keep in mind and attempt to replicate at home, search for at garage sales, re-finish, or emulate by splurging on a small piece of fabric or something small to jazz up a whole room. It gave me the inspiration to buy a bright turquoise vinyl and wood platform rocker from a former local nunnery, and pair it with a zebra-print cushion, and place in the corner of my bright orange tv room. I drank martinis and happily wallpapered my walk-in-closet in leopard print and hung my scarves and purses and shoes all over it. It reinforced my love of large plants, paired with old framed botanical prints. I became unafraid to mis-match all my cushions, inspired by both Domino and What Not to Wear, where Stacey and Clinton are forever reminding us that “it doesn’t have to match, it just has to go.” Everything in my house just kind of goes. Very few things match.

These are the sources that reinforce, rather than dictate, my own personal style. Before Domino, I’d never seen a North American decorating magazine that celebrated the eclectic to this extent (from France, Maison Français is excellent – the French do high-class kooky very well). I’d always bumped along thinking that my own personal style was sort of hobo-garbage-dump-meets 5-year-old-kid, but it turns out that there are other people doing similar things, and much much better. It allowed me to see what the progression of my decorating style might be, as I transition from my broke-ass-poor 20s into my rather more comfortable mid-30s – from using garbage and hand-me-downs by necessity to seeking out just the right kinds of garbage and hand-me-downs. I could never put my finger on what my own style is, but in Domino, I could see it all played out, in various colours and options and price points.

All this being said, I will never become a Kelly Wearstler. I still get tremendous satisfaction from finding stuff in the trash and fixing it up. Though I now understand that this is illegal, some of my nicest furniture was found late at night before garbage day, hauled back to our home by hand or in the trunk of our car, and stripped/re-upholstered/painted/reinforced/patched up. Via this method, we proudly acquired hubby’s dresser (a beautiful wooden wave-front cabinet made in Quebec in the 60s), a lovely dressing room chair, a kitchen chair, a silver kitchen chair (decorative – I still have to fix the seat), a bamboo outdoor chair, a child’s chair, used as a plant shelf…. I seem to have a thing for chairs. I adore chairs. Also people tend to throw them out often for some reason. What we didn’t get in the garbage, we inherited from family members, bought at garage sales, or were given as gifts. The only ‘new’ items of furniture we own are our couch (no longer new) and our bed. Posh for me is splurging on something new at Ikea. I can’t foresee a day when this won’t be the case.

I will miss Domino. I will miss their zany decorating profiles, their weird “Can This Outfit Be Turned Into A Room?” feature, their little sticky tabs, the profiles of working professionals who come home on a weeknight and host 12 for dinner – Easy! – and their monthly human guinea pig article. I will miss those $1,000 ashtrays and $250/yard textiles. I gained a lot of great ideas from that magazine, which I will take to the bank. Meanwhile, when I need inspiration I will trudge down to the big magazine store and seek out Maison Française. R.I.P Domino – no surprise you folded in a recession, but it was sure fun while it lasted.

In Pursuit of Happiness

So there’s this lady, Gretchen Rubin, who made a pact with herself a number of years ago to ‘be happy.’ She went about it in a very scientific manner, studying all kinds of philosophical, psychological and logistical methods for improving happiness to find out which one would work in various situations. She turned this study into the Happiness Project, an online resource of insights, tips, and interviews with happy people in the form of a daily blog, which she dutifully writes 6 days of every week. She has a list of 12 life commandments which she’s developed for herself, and encourages everyone to write their own list and begin their own Happiness Project.

I can’t decide if I this is incredibly thoughtful, useful, or self-indulgent. It kind of reminds me of those online quizzes, or the “25 Random Things About Me” on Facebook over-sharing kind of internet phenomena, like this here blog.

I am a fan of over-sharing. I don’t know why, or what aspect of my personality finds it so appealing to tell everyone everything about myself, but I find that when I meet people I have an overwhelming desire to recount all the daily minutia of my life. I guess that’s why the “25 Things” activity, and others like it - which land in my email inbox every so often (“what’s your favourite flower?” “when’s the last time you cried?”) appeal to me so much. Guilty pleasure. If I dig a little more deeply, I guess I have a fear of seeming boring or socially retarded as I can be kind of quiet and awkward, so I overcompensate with factoids. I make a great cocktail party guest. I nod a lot.

My suspicion is that writing stuff down makes me more clearly able to assess. Or writing down certain answers makes me feel good about the kind of person I am or ought to be. Weird.

Anyway, I read her blog for a bit. As someone who struggles with the question of basic happiness on a regular basis – I always seem to be dissatisfied with something – I found it interesting to imagine a rigorous process through which we might correct ourselves in negative moments and remain happy. Or at least happier.

Aside from all of the insights, and the psychological tricks required to keep myself ‘thinking’ happy, I believe I have a list of physical requirements for happiness that must be met, and are much easier to quantify. Herein is my list of 8 physical requirements for happiness:

A full stomach. I can’t even think straight if I’m hungry, and I can get really snappy.
The correct temperature. I need to be relatively cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
Comfortable feet. Nothing can ruin my day more than barking dogs.
A clean body. If I catch a whiff of an errant or unexpected smell, I will be ‘off’ all day long.
Clothes that fit well. No distracting pulling or pinching or bagging or sagging.
A comfortable place to sit. I will choose a restaurant or other public place based on the comfort level of its seating. I have a sensitive tushie. I’m like the princess on the pea.
A quiet place to which I can retreat. As a proven introvert, this is very important. Like a dog, I need my own den.
Lots of sleep. Duh.

Most of these are abundantly obvious to any human, but I feel like they need to be itemized before we can dig into any psychological rules, which I’m still elaborating for myself.

Overall, I am pleased to report that I am a much happier person than I was a decade ago. There’s a certain happiness that comes with contentment, of course, and age and wisdom. Maturity teaches you not to sweat the small stuff or to be completely self-absorbed, and I’m sure hormones iron themselves out around your thirties as well. But as someone who once struggled with depression (and I can’t call it major, in retrospect, but it affected my quality of life at the time) I can say that I’m pleased as punch to feel the way I do most of the time. I have a few little secrets up my sleeve.

More on this tomorrow.

Spring fever

It’s got me. It’s got me bad. Like the trees that I saw poking out of the snow last week sporting tiny little buds, I am starting to feel spring in my bones. There’s no practical explanation for it – it was -24 this morning, when I walked the dog in the darkness – but the days are getting slightly longer and as a result, the trees are in bud and the seed catalogues have come in the mail. Like clockwork.

I promised myself I wouldn’t go insane this year. For logical reasons, I plan to hold back on the ambitious and usually-unsuccessful experiments. This year, we need to replace or resurface our deck, which will not only take time but also take up space. We will also be overseeing the construction of my brother-in-law’s cottage and starting to clear our own land, which we will be using on many weekends. I am not going to attempt to do planters of flowers on the deck this year because as much as I love them in June, in July they always get ignored and bake to death and end up looking awful. I had visions of window boxes on the north side filled with coleus and other shade-loving plants, but somehow I think if it’s not in the books in January it won’t be in the books in June.

This year, I really do want to focus on having a great veggie harvest. I am more and more interested in sustainability, which for me includes being self-sufficient as much as possible. I like to think of myself as an island. It’s delusional, yes, but it keeps me going.

The one large project I will take on, aside from the deck, is a new bed at the back of the house, on the south side. I want to cut some of the scrappy cedars out of our forest, which will open it up a bit for other plants to grow and also cut down on the bugs, increase the breeze, etc. I will then use these bits of cedar (and some metal spikes) to build a raised bed, about 18” high and 20” wide, along the wall at the back. I will build a trellis up the wall as well. Into this raised bed will go gravel, a batch of fresh compost, peat moss to absorb the roof run-off, black earth and maybe some sheep manure or something. I will plant this area in a concerted way with my squash vines, so they don’t trouble the veggie garden. I will surround it with copper mesh, so the slugs can’t get any purchase on my beloved squash. Dammit, I will have squash this year. If I have to cut down trees to create sunlight, I will have squash this year.

I have ordered some seeds, against my better judgement. Yes I have a two-litre tub in the basement filled with seed packets, but I can’t rely on their viability. Some of them are pretty ancient. I have ordered from Greta’s Organic Gardens once again, despite having mixed results last year (tomatoes were tinier than expected, melons didn’t really germinate, squash did nothing). I have ordered the elusive kale, which I will inter-plant with my garlic for a late harvest. I will plant a lot, so boerenkool all winter! I have ordered two kinds of tomatoes – one is an early harvest type, and the other is called ‘winter-keeper’ and apparently if you pick them slightly unripe, they will last up to 4 months in a cool dark place. Fruit flies here I come.

Also in my order are butternut squash and tiny little melons, which apparently ripen early. I love melon in summertime. You always have dessert ready! Lately we’re really into grapefruits. Dessert is either a grapefruit or yoghurt. Anyway I am off-track. In addition to that, I will grow peppers and small eggplants in pots on the deck – red pots – because I have had no success in the garden and they need more sun. Baking is good, as long as I water them every night. Also I can keep the earwigs and slugs at bay a lot more effectively in pots.

The main garden will be focused on: Tomatoes (x2), onions, basil, kale, garlic, mint, strawberries, beans, carrots and cucumbers. And cilantro, inevitably.

The new bed in back will be: butternut squash (they’re a compact variety, bush-style), melons, and zucchini (up the trellis in back). This bed will be about 10’ long. If that’s all too much, maybe I’ll do the zucchini in the garden as they’re easier to grow.

I will plant potatoes in the potato bin once again, as that was pretty successful. Last year’s successes were pretty much only potatoes, garlic and onions.

I’m giving up on all herbs that aren’t basil or cilantro. Turns out, I don’t use them. Maybe I’ll try a bit of dill for fish.

As for annuals, I want to get a few to fill in the perennial bed – orange poppies, maybe calendula. I have some other planters that need filling but I promise not to go nuts. I really want cannas but that has never really worked for me. Maybe this will be my year.

Finally, perennials. I always have to wait to see what lived through the winter before buying anything new for the spring. There’s a weird garden area at the back of my place that needs something permanent and ground-covering, so I may invest in that a bit – perhaps a variety of hostas would do the trick. They’re so low-maintenance - I love them.

This post has been very helpful. I have now made a shopping list, and will attempt to stick to it. I promise.

A Really Uneventful Week

So nothing much happened this week. Just status quo. Nothing to watch on t.v., no exciting international events, nothing. Yawn. What a tedious week.

Oh except for that whole Barack-Obama-thing. But what's so exciting about that? So he's the first African-American US President. So he's young and sexy. Who cares that he has a gorgeous amazon of a wife? And the fact that he's been in office only two days and is already on his way to fixing everything is so banal.

In all seriousness, it's like the second coming. I am a huge fan. I drank the kool-aid and loved it! Gimme more! I could not watch ENOUGH inauguration footage. I even watched the boring marching bands (actually not so boring - did you see the one with the ladies in the gold pants?) I worry that he's going to burn himself out though. I mean, save some work for next week. Take the weekend off. I love how he's like "this morning: shut down Guantanamo and broker peace in the Middle East. This afternoon: cap salaries and make government more transparant. Make peace with Cuba. Then have an open-house party, confirm my Secretary of State, and re-take my oath. Tomorrow maybe I'll work on the economy. On Friday: fix the environment." And I thought my schedule was tough.

At least he works from home.

In other news, my parents are in Cuba. Rosie's been at day-care all week and she's so pooped. Every morning now, she stands at the door and looks at me beseechingly, like 'please can't I just spend 11 quiet hours sleeping in my crate today?' but she's still so excited when she gets there she's totally out of control. It's a little embarrassing. I worry about her throat and neck because she pulls so hard, she barrels in the door to go find her friends, which is technically bad behaviour but so damn cute because all the dogs seem wait for her. Cesar Millan would not approve. Anyway she's a peach at home, so Cesar was right: exercise, discipline and affection in that order. Except that with the first and the last, the middle one is almost totally unnecessary. She's been really good all week. It's hard for her to get into crap when she's lying on the floor snoring.

Parental units are getting back tomorrow so Rosie will be back to normal. She will be beyond excited to see gramma, and will likely pee all over the place.

Also, on Saturday Farley goes to his new parents. We said "anytime after 9 am would be fine" and the husband said "we will be there at 9:01." I love that they are so excited. Farley got fixed (he would argue that he was not broken) on Tuesday, to celebrate the inauguration, and he looks like a little baboon with his shaved arse. Poor guy. I wonder if it's cold? I have pre-warned the new parents not to be put off by the baldness. Farley seems perfectly happy, like he has no clue what happened, which is for the best I guess. Tomorrow night I will brush him again for one last time (I've already removed a bunch of dreadlocks, most noteably from under his chin), and attempt to cut his toenails so he's all ready to be on his best behaviour at his new house. I won't be at all sad to see him go, because I know he's going to the best possible home.

So after this weekend we should be back to normal. I promise to clean out the basement and maybe even start letting Rosie down there. It'll be nice and cool for her in the summer.

Last weekend was a blast: we took Rosie to town. She was great! She only tried to jump on a couple of people but it was pretty easy to deal with using the harness. She sniffed the ground constantly, which made me realize that the city's a horrible place for dogs. There's crap everywhere! Cigarette butts, frozen vomit, food bits, garbage - it's so distracting for a country dog! That's likely why she was too busy to jump on anyone. But she walked beside us, was friendly to strangers (especially those carrying bags of food), was very popular, sat before crossing the street and was not at all put off by the traffic. It was total saturation. We were walking around for an hour and a half and she slept all evening long, she was so exhausted.

The next day my brother, his girlfriend, hubby and I took the dogs up the mountain for some snowshoeing, which was beautiful and exhausted the dogs once again, and then we all went out for dinner (not the dogs) for his girlfriend's birthday. Fun times.

We went skiing Monday. God we sound so active. And god, we are not really. I have sat on the couch and knitted a sweater every evening since. It's coming along though! I'll be on to the sleeves soon enough.

That's all I've got for now, but WHAT an exciting week! Jam-packed full of heart-warming goodness.

See?

Gorgeous.

Weekly check-in

Hi all, it's time for a check-in. Last time I wrote all about Harry/Farley, our little basement tenant. I have spent the last several days thinking about the following things:

- seed catalogues have started arriving, and I have been looking even though last year I SWORE I had WAY TOO MANY SEEDS and would NOT be buying ANYTHING this year. Ha.

- we bought our ski passes yesterday. Now we have to figure out when to use them.

- Mom and Dad are off to Cuba on Friday. That means Rosie gets to go to daycare every day for a week! Wow will that ever be fun for all of us.

- tomorrow's temperature is supposed to be something insane like minus 48 or something. I got a new coat in the mail, which weighs exactly zero grams, and am excited to check it out.

Picture my head on here. And my hands.

- Harry/Farley continues to do well. No changes there, except that his new parents are beyond excited to meet him.

- I love my job. I get to look at art all day. It's rough, people, but somebody has to do it.

- Am waiting on the two new magazine subscriptions that hubby got me for xmas: Dwell, and Cottage Life.

- I am now an amateur architect (ahem), and so have designed about 6 different cottages on my computer, all under 850 square feet. It's hard to stop. We are gonna go to the cottage show in April and do some learnin'.

- No clue what to do for dinner. I'm thinking aloud here. Nothing is thawed and the kitchen is a disaster zone. Takeout? This is one of the downsides of living in the country: no chinese takeout. I am falling down on the dinner front lately. The produce is suffering.

- I have a weird urge to make a cake. A real, decorated, honest-to-goodness-with-homemade-frosting cake. I am going to make one for my new boss' farewell party next friday. He's moving to Australia. I am trying not to take it personally. Should I make cake for dinner?

- Rosie is now not so good at sleeping in the bed. She tends to sleep in the upper part, where we are, and she sleeps sideways. Ergo, hubby and I have not really slept well for the last few nights. She's still sweet though, so she gets away with it, though half the time I think she's fake-sleeping so we can't move her.

- I need plants for my office. I have stolen two cuttings off of some existing office plants, but am also considering an aloe, a small palm, and maybe one of those plants you can grow in a goldfish bowl with a beta fish swimming around the roots. I need some life at the office and I don't think they want me to bring Rosie in for the day.

- I have the urge these days to bring Rosie into the city. Crazy, I know, but I want to see how she does when there are TOO many people to jump on and TOO many cars to get excited about and TOO many other dogs to sniff. I think she will be humbled, and I want to see that. She's a country dog, so she still gets overly excited at every passing pedestrian or car. I want to see how she does on a busy sidewalk with traffic passing beside us - to see if she actually becomes blasé about it at some point. In her harness, of course. I guess I'm a bit late to the game on this one but there haven't been a lot of opportunities. I also need to post more pictures of her, to here and on facebook, so you all can enjoy her beauty. I can't say this enough: world's most gorgeous dog.
I'm actually a bit embarrassed by it, like people will think I strive for the most beautiful dog and spend money and time in the pursuit of that, but it's all natural. I think she could work in Hollywood.

- We're running out of firewood. OK it's getting to the end of this post; I have run out of things to say.

Enjoy the week, folks. We're heading into a crazy cold snap so I will be unashamedly wearing silly hats for the next 5 days, bad hair be damned.

It's never dull

Phew.

The holidays are over and I'm back at work, staring at a snowstorm and eating a falafel sandwich. I craved garlic after a coworker microwaved her garlicky lunch in the kitchen adjacent to my office. Mmmm garlic. I am so susceptible. Also, the snow seems to be falling upwards.

We had a great time. The family was wonderful; they loved their land that we bought them with their money, Christmas gifts were all a great success in both directions, we bowled, we snow-shoed, we ate, we pipe-dreamed, we drank, and I learned how to play canasta. Nasty canasta.

When Christmas was over and the Austrians left, on Dec. 29 (Rosie's first birthday!), I had another challenge ahead of me. As we had lost our Loki, and hubby had posted notices all over town looking for him, my kindergarten teacher - with whom I am in touch regularly - called me to let me know that she had a stray black cat around her place and would I come take a look? I knew in my gut that it wasn't Loki (too far away) but I went anyway. It turned out to be a sort of ratty-looking long-haired black cat, who was very friendly. I promised my teacher that I'd make him my problem, since she didn't want to encourage him to stick around and he was getting kind of skinny. She was concerned but really didn't want a cat.

I brought him home and installed him in our basement apartment, which is apparently a popular spot for transients and needy folk of all kinds (my busted-up neighbor, our friend whose house burned down, our friend who couldn't afford rent in town). I started to feed him, and brush him. I brushed out about a pound of dull, unused fur. I learned that he is an intact male and that his pee stinks real bad. I also learned that he has worms and possible other parasites, so I made an appointment to bring him to the vet, before he could pass anything to my other pets.

I brought him in on the weekend, and when we got there, the nurse asked me "what's this cat's name?" I went "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Harry? 'Cause he's hairy?" and then Harry had his first vet check-up. We learned that he's one year old at the very most, probably younger. We learned that he is 10 lbs. We learned that he's an excellent patient (he's very friendly) who didn't complain at all when he got his shots. We learned that he hasn't got fleas, but that he had a terrible yeast infection in his ears. I made him an appointment to be neutered as well, just in case I couldn't find him a home in time and he starts spraying my house or fighting with the neighbors.

All in all, he's a healthy and friendly little bugger. I was starting to get a wee bit attached, despite my dislike of long-haired cats, which is not his fault. I put him back in the basement for now, and upgraded his food a bit. Hubby decided he liked the name 'Farley' better so now he's 'Harry/Farley'. I continue to brush him and feed him cod liver oil, as part of his makeover.

On Monday, hubby went to work and put out the word that we have a cat up for grabs. One of his most-liked coworkers said "as a matter of fact, we have been looking for a cat for our 12-year-old daughter." Turns out, she wants a long-haired, friendly, young cat, black is ok, and male is preferred. They had been looking for one at the SPCA for some time with no luck. Harry/Farley had her at hello, or rather, once she saw the pictures hubby took of him.

I suspect he may be full of beans. Ssh.

So Harry/Farley has found a forever home, starting January 24. They are over the moon and excited to meet him. Hubby has great respect for this lady and says she will be a great cat mom. It is a perfect match, and it warms the cockles of my little heart. There is something karmically good about this.

In other pet news, Sasha's getting along much better with Rosie, since Loki's gone. They even kiss and will sleep next to each other, which is really big news as she's spent the last 10 months avoiding Rosie completely. Rosie turned one on Dec. 29, and got lots of toys for her birthday and christmas, as well as a 'happy birthday' dog cookie with dog-friendly icing. She had no idea what was going on. She was ok with the visitors but she jumped on them incessantly, so I guess she wasn't really that ok. We're just used to it. She is on big-dog food (no more puppy food), and we've gradually cut out lunch, and she'll be happy to be back to her routine. She's better when she knows her parameters. She is still knock-out gorgeous.

But there has been one big change: Rosie now sleeps on the bed. Something I said I'd never do. Now that Loki's gone, she's great on the bed and sleeps like a rock - no more spite-peeing! She actually sleeps in. Sasha will also sleep on the bed some nights. In the mornings, Rosie wriggles up and continues to sleep wedged between us - it's pretty cute. Once the novelty of this wears off, I am hoping that she'll sleep anywhere, preferably on the floor next to our bed. We shall see. In the meantime, don't judge me. We no longer have a working heater in the bedroom. I am used to having warm snuggly animal bodies on the bed and was missing one of mine.

T-Minus 4 Days

Today is Dec. 15. That means several things:

- Austrians arrive in four days;
- Today is my last day in my current job;

- Loki's been missing for 11 days;

- Tomorrow is my first day at my new job.

Some of those are happy and some are obviously not.

In spite of our recent tragedy, I've been able to accomplish many of my listed items in advance of xmas.

On Saturday I went shopping with my mom and bought one of everything I saw. Or so it seemed. Christmas shopping has now tipped the scale from mostly-not-done to mostly-done.

On Sunday we cleaned the house. Most of the house. It's gotten to the point where we're only cleaning the visible areas - the basement is now at the bottom of the priority list. Each area we approach we ask ourselves "are our guests really going to see this?" and if the answer's no, we leave it a hairy mess.

Also on Sunday, I fixed a few things in the bathroom. It now is almost presentable. However, the décor is rather strange; it's like two rooms in one. If you turn one way, it's a vivid green room with lots of knicknacks, if you turn the other, it's a study in subtle browns and off-whites. I will make my mind up some other day.

Also also on Sunday, I baked cookies. Four kinds of cookies, not all successful. I bought waaay too much butter, so I can re-make some of the cookies if need be. My 'Chewy Ginger Cookies' became 'crispy burnt ginger pancakes', as I guestimated the amount of butter I used. Hubby says they're wonderful so he gets all 96 of them. The pecans on the bottom of the Swedish Tea Rings burnt, and so I yanked them out of the oven and then added the jam too late, so it didn't get to cook into the cookies. Half of my lemon-poppyseed-cranberry cookies were burnt on the bottom, and the ones on the other ends of the trays were under-cooked. I have determined that I need a new oven, or need to be more on top of the one I've got. I have to watch it like a hawk.

Another thing I have to watch like a hawk? Rosie, my soap-eating dog.

Friday night I bought a big pack of soap bars and put them in a big jar with a lid on the bathroom vanity. Two bars didn't fit, so I opened the drawer, put them in the back, and closed it again. Rosie was watching me the whole time. I went into the kitchen to speak to hubby, and about 10 minutes later Rosie came wandering in smacking her lips. I said "what have you got there?" 'cause she's always chewing on something or other, and I hooked my finger into her mouth. It came out frothy and smelling of lavendar. I yelled "oh shit!" and ran to the bathroom, where I discovered the drawer open, and BOTH bars of soap lying on the ground. Or rather, 1.2 bars of soap. She ate the other 0.8, paper and all. We called the emergency vet line, and they said "unless you can deal with two to three days of diarrhea, you should induce vomiting." So we did, with hydrogen peroxide (gross), which made her visibly recoil after she drank it.

She sat there, looking as green as a black lab can look, ears pinned to her head with sad little eyes. Then she belched.

Then 3 minutes later she barfed. It came out like a milkshake, mixed with her dinner. It was a frothy white puddle of lavendar-smelling puke, really pleasant to clean up. She did it once again after I went to bed - with soap chunks this time - and then she was totally fine. Lesson learned: get kiddy locks for bathroom drawers, in case she acquires a taste for toothpaste, allergy pills, hair gel, tylenol, or any other potentially-deadly bathroom things.

She is clever, my Rosie: clever enough to open drawers, but not quite clever enough not to eat soap.

One other new development before I head off to my new job - Sasha, my female cat, has become a lot more tolerant of Rosie in Loki's absence. Who knows what goes on in their minds or their communication, but Sasha's become a bit more self-confident and she can now comfortably lie on the couch with the dog, without any claws or chasing or anything. This is big news. Sasha's lived on top of the red chair and on the kitchen table since last February, as she never developed the required sense of humour to deal with the puppy. Hence she weighs about 25 lbs - from all the sitting around and the stress eating. Rosie's more mellow now (imperceptibly, I'm sure), and they're coming around.

I may or may not have time to write again before my holidays (17 days off woooooo!) so if I don't, have a happy one.

...And a big dose of bad news

Our wee family has experienced an enormous tragedy: Loki has gone missing.

I don't even really know how to write about this. I've never imagined it happening, while at the same time I've always imagined it happening. It was always my worst possible scenario, the thing I would lay awake at night and worry about.

Turns out, I was right to worry. Generally, I didn't even think about it during the winter, when he didn't love staying outside long, and predators are fewer and kept at bay by deep snow. But last Friday, he went outside at lunchtime when my mom went to feed the dog (as he always did), and wasn't there at 7 p.m. when we got home (like he always was). We called and called. Hubby stayed up all night. The next morning, we called all the neighbors. Nobody'd heard or seen anything. Not a trace! We searched the forests, but the falling snow made everything disappear. We've put up signs, but nobody's called.

I have had a rotten week. I have a deep hurt, and it feels like a hole in my chest. I swear it gave me a respiratory disease - last weekend I couldn't catch my breath, it felt like someone was sitting on me. I've had a busy week at work so I haven't had a lot of time to think about it, but every horrible eventuality pops into my head, and I can't deal with it. I really cannot deal with this.

Loki was the world's greatest cat. Bar none, apologies to the rest. He was wise, intuitive, wiley, sensitive, hilarious, independent, patient, and a terrific partner to Sasha. He was quick-witted, and we thought of him as the King of the forest. After 7 years of prowling the woods, he knew every stick and leaf. We never knew where he went, but he was at home everywhere, supremely confident and calm. Every autumn, when the days got shorter and the temperatures colder, Loki would grow visibly depressed, and spend his days curled up on the bed or in his red chair. He'd go out for a bit, but would mostly mope around the house. Come spring, he was reanimated, and the birds of the neighborhood suffered for it. I have seen that cat training Sasha to hunt, and bringing a mouse home as a gift to her. For a couple of years, dead rodents would turn up on the deck just as we went out to light the BBQ, and we always suspected he was asking us to grill up his dinner.

When we had people over or even large parties, Loki was always in the middle, getting to know everyone, laying in their coats - especially if the guest wore cologne - and generally enjoying himself. He was very popular among humans. I have actually picked him up upon return from one of his adventures, and he smelled like perfume or flowers. He would demand a shower from the bathroom tap every night before we went to bed, so we'd scrub water into his head while he stared at himself in the mirror, purring. He was very debonnair. He loved to eat people food, especially garlicky things like hummus, and loved to nibble on chives. He made his dislikes known as well - two weeks ago I was using a lightbulb tester on my xmas lights, and it emits a weird beeping when the tested circuit is good. After I'd been at it for 5 minutes, with Loki staring at me impatiently from the table above, he hopped down, quickly and lightly bit my hand, and ran away. Some mornings, especially weekend mornings when we were slower to get up, I'd feel something strange on my face and find Loki staring at me from 1/4 inch away, his whiskers tickling my lips. He'd then hop off the bed and tip over the garbage can, scrunch up a few plastic bags, knock chapsticks (or water glasses) off the bedside table, and generally be a pain until we woke up and fed him.

When he was just a kitten, and we lived in our apartment, every night he had what we would call 'Monkey Hour', when he'd just run up and down the hall for no apparent reason, and don't get in his way because he'd plow right into you. He'd get crazy eyes, and would run sideways he was so keyed up. After that was done, he'd settle in for the night. We worried about the Christmas tree the first year, but he knocked one bulb off once, and that was it.

He never had any health issues. He disliked the vet ferociously, and when poor Dr. Fro would hear that Loki was coming in, he needed to gather his special equipment. A heavy blanket to cover him up, and long falconer-type gloves to wear. Once upon a time Loki had his anal glands expressed by the vet, and he never forgot it. He would act like a total embarrassing jackass - panting and moaning all the way there (a hellish 10-minute drive), and snorting and snarling once he was on the table. I would feel like an embarrassed parent, repeating "I swear, he's not really like this." Still, he went in for all his regular appointments and shots, and was the picture of health. He lost a lot of weight this past year, probably due to the dog, who had him on the run constantly, but also probably because he was on diet food since Sasha is morbidly obese.

His last year wasn't the best of his life, and I feel guilty about that, because Rosie was just starting to leave him alone and be a nice companion for him. They were actually starting to like each other. I knew it would happen - didn't know it would take so long - but I feel like perhaps Loki felt he was getting short shrift, that he'd been knocked down a peg in the attention game. That could never be the case. Every morning I would cuddle with him for a minute and remind him that I loved him. I know he's not reading this, but for the record, I paid him less attention because I knew he could withstand it, and I knew he understood. He knew intuitively that Rosie was a puppy, and had great patience with her. He watched where he put his claws.

Loki will be missed by all of us. Our friends, our family, everyone who knew him. I won't focus on the specifics of what may have happened to him, but I feel like he went out like a warrior, doing what he loved best to do. He's gone to Valhalla, as it were, and I hope whatever happened was brief and worthy. Farewell, brave Loki. I love you.

1998 - 2008.

A Little Good News

Work has been a total pain in my ass lately.

Not only am I spending all my spare time preparing for Christmas in the usual harried ways, but I am also working overtime to make the house function/look decent in anticipation of our Austrian guests, who arrive in 16 days. You can imagine that I am feeling a bit stretched – I seem to fall asleep around 8:30 p.m. every evening for a short bit – especially when you take into account that I have four events to organize next week and one the week after. These aren’t cakewalk events either; they’re high-stakes.

I’ve been doing this job for just about five years. In February, it will be my anniversary. It’s the type of job that requires a good deal of energy and inspiration, both to come up with new and exciting ideas, but also to see through the administrative/financial/political things inevitably get in the way and to push through with any enthusiasm left. I have liked this job quite a lot and been proud of my accomplishments. It has afforded me many opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise have ever had, and for that I am thankful. I have traveled. I have met really really interesting people. I have stayed in very nice hotels and eaten at top-drawer restaurants and stolen all the best hotel toiletries (I never buy soap!). I have been to Rideau Hall on a number of occasions, and have a black-tie section in my wardrobe to prove it.

Lately though, people have been getting plucky. Emails are getting ruder and ruder, things are being forgotten or overlooked, and colleagues are getting snippy or emotional. Maybe I am guilty of this as well, I can’t tell. It happens at this time every year – the year is a cycle, and we are at the end of it and all ready for vacation. We are all bone weary and like siblings stuck in the back seat of a car on a long drive, we’re starting to pick at each other. On the 19th we will have our Christmas party (excuse me – Holiday party) and everyone will sit together in their little groups and lick their wounds, and drink like fish at lunchtime, and pull the curtains and pretend it’s evening so the dance floor fills up. Everyone will then go their separate ways and heal themselves before returning for a new cycle.

So a week ago, when the Human Resources department called me up to tell me that I’d won the competition for a new position, I was beyond happy. I am ready for a change, but not so much change that I would leave the organization, and not so much change that I don’t want to have a fall-back position. I will fill a two-year term as a program officer in the Visual Arts section, which means I will manage several of the granting programs in that discipline. I get a new office, a new batch of coworkers, a new floor and even new art on the walls. I get exciting new duties and lots of contact with the arts community. I start on December 16, and will come back to my current job on March 30, 2011, unless something catastrophic happens. This is a big deal for me – I have wanted this job for a long time.

Yay to me. I am thrilled. I am trying to pack up my current office in the midst of all these events, figure out what my successor will want or need to use, and still deal with the demands of coworkers, run all of my errands and do all of my shopping in between. The house is a complete disaster but I’m saving that task for a later date. I only have two hands and 24 hours in a day.

Change of plans

Funny how things can change each week, huh?

Each week has it's own set of feelings and focus and activities, I find. Just an observation.

There's nothing bad happening, for those family members who might read this and think the worst. In fact, only good things are happening: I found out on Monday that my Austrian family will be visiting us from December 16 to 30.

I am thrilled. I haven't seen my nephew, who is 13, in a year and a half. And now we get to share christmas with them! Normally christmas is pretty rote in our house - we buy a tree from the same place each year, on the same weekend, and I decorate it listening to the same christmas CD as every other year. We have a dinner xmas eve, go to my parents' xmas morning, have dinner at my parents' xmas night, and head to my grandmother's place usually boxing day or so, for a night. My brother has a ripping new years' eve party, and we hang around the house and eat a lot.

So this year, where I'd planned to be quite low-key, in fact I'm going to go balls-to-the-wall for Christmas. I've booked off work as of the 19th, and will work my butt off until then to make sure the house is in good standing, we have room for everyone, everyone is appropriately fêted and fed, and there's a good supply of everything readily available. The work starts this Friday, when I head to IKEA to find storage solutions for the crap I haven't dealt with yet, and for all of our coats, hats, mittens, boots, etc. etc.

For those relatives reading this: they will likely not attend Oma's xmas so don't worry about having extra six-footers in the room. Not like we need any more of those.

We're going to hunt for a real christmas tree (sssh don't tell the neighbors) and decorate it together. I will invest in some decent xmas music, and retire the Madonna/BoneyM/Bing Crosby CD I've been making my honey nuts with since 1998. OK maybe I'll keep the Boney M. Just for him, he hates it so.

I will bake cookies, and maybe we will make candies - together. How very Martha. We will ALL enjoy the family fun-due on xmas eve, so fun-due for 9, and we will ALL head to my mom's for turkey christmas night. We will ALL unwrap our gifts xmas eve and we will place a few under my mom's tree too. I will hang out the advent calendar my nephew made me two years ago and fill it with chocolates for him (at least two weeks' worth). We will go skiing (if there's snow) and for hikes, and I plan on making my nephew walk the dog during the day, to give myself a break. We will drive up and look at our land, and see our shared lake in the flat December light. I hope they like it.

But between now and then, I have (let's see....) eight events to organize. Why does work stack them all up like this? Beats me. Sadists. I go all summer with very little to do and then BOOM. It's not even like they're all planned-for during the summer; they pop up like mushrooms throughout the fall. It's sick. By the time xmas comes, I can only hope not to be sick as a dog and completely flattened as I have been in the past couple of years. I have work to do people! Austrians to host! Food to eat! I am trying a new persona on for the next month or so - one who doesn't give a fig and rolls with the punches. I'll let you know how it works out.

Celebrating Good Times

There are very few days of the year/decade when I say "Damn, I wish I was American." Yesterday was one of them. Barack Obama is a good man, and will be a great President - measured, diplomatic, intellectual, warm, a constitutional lawyer with a terrific international background and a whip-smart wife. What a sea change.

The only positive thing I can say about the other ticket is that I'm jealous of Sarah Palin's hair and her post-five-children body.

We celebrated last night by heading to my girlfriend's place, eating pizza, playing Wii, and hanging with her kids. We watched the early returns, for as long as it took to feel comfortable that there wouldn't be any Republican shenanigans or bounce-backs, before heading home to catch McCain's concession speech.

I don't think Americans could understand how this could be exciting for a white lady from Canada, but I am beside myself. I feel like the world just let out a collective sigh of relief. I can stop scratching my head, as I've been doing for the past 8 years, trying to figure out how a quite friendly and reasonable-looking group of people could have made such a collossal mistake. I am hoping that the world's political climate will be changed, that America can heal itself, and go back to being the friendly giant to our south. I hope too that the buzz of inspiration felt by our neighbors will spill over the border and light a fire beneath the arses of some of our stale leaders or leaders-in-waiting; it's telling that we had the worst-ever turnout in our election a couple of weeks back, in the shadows of the phenomenon down south. Our own less-than-uninspiring leader was elected by just over 22% of registered voters (about 15% of the overall population if that matters) in a system that has revealed itself to be quite flawed. We do a lot of things right here in Canada, but apparently elections aren't one of them.

So there's my political statement for this blog. I don't feel comfortable 'going there' usually but I feel like celebrating.

I look forward to seeing what SNL does in the next few months as well, as they're now going to have to up the ante in terms of African-American cast members.

My Favourite Uncelebrated Holiday

Happy Hallowe'en y'all. Today is my favourite holiday of the year.


(crickets)


Once again, I've disappointed myself by inadequately observing the glorious night that is halloween. After last year's disappointing participation (I think we had about 12 kids total), we vowed that this year we'd do it up right: have a huge party, totally overhaul/decorate the house, buy all manner of creepy things throughout the year, and make it really memorable. Do it up right. Then life happened (364 days of it) and we got a dog, and our perspective changed. Currently, I can't imagine having the time to clean my house let alone completely overhaul it for a day. Also, I can't imagine getting to a place where Rosie won't insist on chewing on random stuff, eating firewood, and jumping on everyone, thereby destroying/being injured by any intricate costumes worn by potential partygoers.

NEXT YEAR. I will send Rosie to gramma's house and have a real party, I swear. According to my handy 16-month united way calendar, which marks paydays and other important holidays, Halloween is on a Saturday in 2009, so perhaps that will be my motivation to do it up right. They had these awesome black roses at the Giant Tiger that I should have bought. Perhaps they'll be half-price tomorrow (note to self: shop tomorrow). Also, I will need the full year to construct the amazing and terrifying lawn/home décor required. Once my home renos are done perhaps I'll have some time to devote to this (ha.) Do you think that childrens' trick-or-treating will get in the way of my party plans?

For now, I'm going to have to be content with the pumpkin that Rosie and I carved late last night (Rosie carved it WITH HER TEETH), my orange jacket, and the Mars bars and Twizzlers I bought for the inevitable 10 kids who will show up at my door. Shoot maybe I should buy more candy. I had thought I might be able to dress Rosie up and pass her off as a kid so I can scam more candy for myself, but that might be hard. I wanted to tie fake arms to her and pretend she's actually a three-year old, dressed up as a dog, but perhaps that treads too close to the pathetic line. Next year, I am totally renting children.

Knit knacks

Last night I managed to finally complete a sweater that I've been working on since last christmas.

It's Kate Gilbert's Union Square Market Pullover. I made it in a dark eggplant with lime green trim, with Drops Alpaca yarn. It's a gorgeous yarn, but I think I might hate my sleeves. I am not sure. I may have to improvise them a wee bit. I'm not posting any photos because I'm not 100% thrilled with the result, though reviews seem positive so far (I'm wearing it to work). Colour is good, fit is ok, but the sleeves are too long (and wide, actually) and I think I screwed up the cuffs somehow. I'm not sure. Also it could be 2 inches longer on me, for comfort. Sigh.

Nuts for Winter

Gennyland's status update: it's October 27, work is v. busy, I'm pretty excited about the U.S. election, I'm finishing the sweater I've been working on since last xmas, I've started thinking about gifts for this xmas, the house is nearly all tucked in for winter, the firewood needs to be put away, the winter tires need to be put on the car, I'm getting over my cold and Rosie's just lovely in general.

Fall is in full swing and the leaves have mostly fallen off the trees. I'm really looking forward to this weekend, when the clocks change, because for once I will be able to use the daylight in the morning more than the daylight at the end of the day. Seriously, I can't find my dog in the mornings. That extra hour of daylight will come in handy.


This weekend, we finished off the remaining "must-dos" of the house renovations. We also put away a lot of our big outside stuff, making this coming weekend's to-do list a bit shorter. It's looking nice inside, as I've moved some things around. I have some projects on the go and have a few more lined up for the pre-christmas season, which promises to be jam-packed again this year. Did I ever show you the paintings I did for my brother last year? Here they are:

I get ambitious around this time of year.

The pressing question right now is: what to do for Halloween? What level of participation will I be able to achieve this year? Will I be able to carve a pumpkin? Hand out candy? Make the house look scary? Dress up the dog? I really want to dress up the dog but I don't know if she'll stand for it. A few ideas that I have include: a bat; a skeleton; a ghost; a spider; a witch. Somehow, if I can guage it by the number of stuffed toys she's annihilated in the past months, I don't think it's worth putting a lot of effort into. Especially considering we have nowhere to go and get about 8 trick-or-treaters per year. But fun! I tried to dress up the cat last year with very little success. She glowered at me until I took off her little witch-hat-with-orange-hair. I need to have children and fast.

I also suspect Rosie might try to eat the pumpkin. She promptly chewed the handle off as soon as we brought it home. I wonder if I could dress her up as a steak?

After the Halloween buzz has worn off I'll be knitting, printing, glueing, wrapping and generally crafting myself into an ulcer again this year. I've decided, however, I will not be giving home-made food gifts in 2008, as last year's efforts proved to be either A) extremely unsuccessful, or B) still in my fridge a year later. I'll see what Martha has to say next month. I have some ambitious hand-crafted ideas though, which I won't report on in this blog until after the gifts have been unwrapped. No offense to any readers of course.

All this creative fertility (Alannis Morrisette's words, not mine) runs in the background of my day-to-day keeping it together. A good friend recently had a family tragedy, so I want to try to spend some time with her - I think we're off to the movies tomorrow night. Our family - including Rosie - has been invited to another dinner on Sunday night, which I'm really looking forward to. Also, I'm really considering getting a cleaning lady. I have found someone who's been recommended highly, and am tempted to hire her based on her name alone (Mavis Zeitz! What a great handle!), but haven't worked up the courage to call her. I've decided I have, as my girlfriend in BC once said, "more money than time" these days (which isn't saying much really, except that I have very very little time) and have had to make some decisions as to what's most important in my life - scrubbing my own toilet or making christmas gifts? It's an easy decision for me, but one that hubby's struggling with - not that he scrubs many toilets....

New things in my life: Rosie's "Sporn" halter, which makes walking her much easier; a possibly exciting career movement; new sweaters on deck to be knitted up, with lovely new yarn; dad's recovering from his shoulder surgery; a new diet for the new year, aimed at lowering my insulin resistance or something (don't ask, it's another post); my favourite TV show premieres in three days; hubby's starting a new job; one of my oldest friends has moved back to my neighborhood; my "Green Committee" work is going very well at the office (I am a co-chair), and I have no more airplane trips to make in 2008. All in all it's looking pretty good.

.... and about that waterfront lot

So about that waterfront lot I coyly mentioned earlier.

Remember a long time ago hubby and I got some good news? Well, hubby's brother got the same good news, and piled onboard to join our longstanding pipe-dream plans for a waterfront place. After a bunch of excited emails, we came to the conclusion that it's best if we each have our own individual places, that way he can rent his when he's not using it (he lives in Austria), he can leave it to his son in his will, his friends (who live here) can use it if they want, and nobody has to worry about "well I want to buy that couch but so-and-so will be peeved if I throw out the old one....." you get the point. I have a clear vision of what I want our place to look like, and I suspect they do as well. And this way, we can all stay close to each other without sitting on one another, which sort of happens when they visit our (very small) place.

Then we got to talking to my brother and my neighbor, who are in cahoots, and they convinced us to go take a look at this chunk of land for sale an hour north of us. It's on a lake called Petit Lac Cayamant (not to be confused with Lac Cayamant, which is horrid) near the village of Otter Lake. Up until 10 years ago, it was all crown land, but I guess the municipality needed a larger tax base so they hired a developer to open it up. It's about 6 km long, and has 47 lots along the eastern shore only. That's the maximum number, set by the provincial government, so we expect that the western shore will always remain as undeveloped crown land. There are islands, as well, which are also crown land. The lake is clean and there's no electrical service to the road leading in, which is gated. There's an association, of which we will soon be members, and there's a sort of caretaker guy who lives up near the gate. We went to look, had a boat ride, met some of the neighbors, and promptly put in our little deposit for two pieces of land, 3 acres each, side by side on a sort-of point. Now we have an empire.

The brother-in-law has yet to see these properties, of course, but was willing to trust us to buy it on his behalf, sight unseen.

Now we're wandering around calling ourselves wealthy landowners. The fact of it is, I'm not sure that we are wealthy landowners, as I'm not sure what monetary surprises lurk in the darkness. For sure there will be some costs involved in getting service to the lot - cutting a laneway, bringing in a composting toilet, a water system, solar panels, etc. - but I'm just not sure what it means in terms of investments and taxes. I'm wary.

Someone asked me: "why do you want a cottage when you live in the country?" It's a valid question, and certainly must seem a bit indulgent from an outside perspective. The truth of it is, even though we live a rural setting, we still only have one acre, and it's still a developed neighborhood. We have neighbors who we can hear through the trees. The dog has to be on a leash because there's moderate traffic. There's garbage pick-up and mail delivery. The house needs to be maintained, and clean, and contains all of the modern conveniences which also need maintaining. I like the furniture to seem as new as possible and the floors to stay relatively undamaged. You can't wander into the front yard and jump off a dock, and my hubby can't go fishing at 5 a.m., and be back before breakfast (let's not kid ourselves. That will never happen anyway). We can't sleep 8 in our house. The upstairs isn't a play loft for visiting kids or sleeping babies. I have a garden to maintain and a lawn that needs mowing. I suppose our house could do all of those things, but the fact is I don't want it to. I love having parties, but it sort of stresses me out to clean the entire house only to have it messed up again, and then to have everyone leave at 11 p.m. to go back to the city. I want to have weekend-long parties, let the place get filthy, track sand everywhere, play old board games and do old puzzles when it rains, and not worry about snowplowing or deck shovelling in winter. I want to bring up only the food I'm going to eat that weekend, and spend my days NOT worrying about what needs to be done around the house before Monday. I want to be able to say to friends, "hey, why don't you use the cottage this weekend?"

Another factor is that with the markets the way they are, we really couldn't think of another way to invest our money than in waterfront land, which never goes out of style.

This mythical cottage is a long way away. We're not that rich. We got out of debt, paid a bit down on our mortgage, and bought this piece of land and we will be in debt again once the transaction is done. Once that's paid off, we can start thinking about building something. In the meantime, we have big plans for the brother's place, which will be built next spring. And we are certainly enjoying the idea of being wealthy landowners.

Readjusting my sensors

Wow, it's fall. Just like that. I got busy at work, went to Winnipeg for almost a week, and now I'm back and it's full-on crazy-time fall. The leaves are glorious, the weather is chilly, and I had to scrape the car this morning.

The biggest downside of fall is that I notice that the older I get, the more sensitive I am to environmental change. When I was young I never noticed it, but now that I'm at the ripe old age of 33, I notice when the seasons change, I feel it physically. Everyone around me is sick, and it's unusual that I'm not sick as well, though I feel like I am staving something off. My bones hurt. I am exhausted. I can't wake up in the morning, because it's so dark. I have zero energy at night. All I want to eat is heavy pasta casseroles with lots of cheese and red wine and bread, so I am not exactly losing weight. My skin's all dry and itchy. I have no desire to be outside. When I'm at home, I'm usually outfitted in head-to-toe polar fleece.

In good news, the house is done for the year. We have one more day's work on it, which will be tomorrow, as it's going up to +17. It looks fan-freaking-tastic. I actually find that it looks TOO clean, my eyes have to readjust, as I'm used to the front of the house looking like a tarpaper shack. I have all new brushed-metal light fixtures, which finally illuminate the path approaching my house, so no more injured trick-or-treaters. What's left to do are the upper parts of the house - three small angled walls for which I'll have to stand on the roof, and which will require a coordinated effort so as not to prolong the roof-standing. I have to paint the frames of 4 long windows red, but that can no longer be done this year. Then I have to hire someone to put in new soft and eavestroughing, and we have to re-do the deck including railings. I had hoped that part of the deck would be done for this year, but it's realistically not going to happen, considering that we have yet to deal with the firewood, make cider, finish off the inside of the bathroom window, have two waves of company visit, and potentially start clearing our waterfront lot.

Oh did I not mention the waterfront lot?

This coming winter I think I will focus on the interior. I want to fix up the basement so it's more usable and not as scary/filthy. I want a new tile backsplash in the kitchen, which I've been dithering on for 3 years. I potentially want a new, deeper bathtub. I want usable storage in the basement to remedy the fact that we currently have had to cut a path through the junk to the workshop/laundry area.

I will post pictures soon. In the meantime, let's think about that waterfront lot.....