Here and there.

• I bought vacuum cleaner. A Miele. I love it. It's black and silver, though I chose it for other reasons. However, it coordinates very well with my home's color scheme.
• I vacuumed the whole apartment the day I brought it home. There are no longer little rocks on the floor in the 3-foot (half) radius around front door. And Booboo was pretty comfortable around it, which is a huge change from how he was with the previous vaccuum.
• At the store, the registration process for the 10-year free warranty (!!!) asked for the reason for buying a vacuum. There was not an option for "My ex left me for another woman and took the vacuum cleaner with him." So the guy at the store said I should just choose "Replacing a broken vacuum."
• My new Miele rolls behind me so easily, like a happy little puppy following me around. It was on sale, plus I even got an extra $40 off because I took one that had an almost invisible scratch on the bottom. Honestly, I probably did more damage to it on its maiden voyage around the apartment the other day.
• You know the risk I talked about in the last two paragraphs of this post?

Around here (in no particular order).

• On Saturday, I opened the fridge and found the cocoa powder in there. Oops.
• I have only been to the grocery store twice since June. I have been to the market at the Old Port twice or so for fresh veggies and to the corner convenience store a lot. Somehow this is working for me.
• I am working on a challenging and fun artistic freelance project.
• Did the title of this post make anyone else think of Counting Crows circa 1994?
• I only have about a month more with Booboo and that thought makes me so terribly sad I can't think about it too long.
• This summer I finally found coffee beans that make coffee I really enjoy. I used to like the beans from this one place near my apartment, but then the coffee started tasting like dirt. After I inquired about why their coffee now tasted like "la terre," as I put it in French, I found out that they had changed the blend's mix of beans. Unable to find anything better, we drank overpriced, dirt-flavoured coffee with a hint of "burnt" for months. Finally, I decided to experiment with beans from a different place in the neighborhood. My first try was an improvement but a little weak; the second try was perfect. I am now on my third bag of that coffee. No more dirt coffee for me.
• I finally ordered beautiful embossed stationery with both our names on it in mid-June. A lifetime supply probably. I went with stationery instead of an address stamp, because I figured our address was likely to change at some point. It was a little too risky. I had the beautiful cream correspondance cards shipped to my parents' home, and they arrived just before everything exploded. I never saw the stationery, which is probably for the best. I had been so unreasonably excited about that goregous stationary with our names embossed on it. I guess it will get recycled.
• Thankfully I had also ordered some for myself with my monogram. My dad mailed that to me, and I have been thoroughly enjoying using it.
• My car turned 20 years old in April. But I don't drive very much anymore. Maybe once a week, often less. But the car works well still, much to my surprise and happiness.
• I find I love having a life that is so local. I love walking to work and having most everything I need a short distance from where I live.
• I am not looking forward to winter coming. I keep telling myself if I can survive 'til spring life will look better. I just need to survive this death of our marriage and my life as I had expected it and make it to spring and wait on some sort of rebirth.
• Shoveling. Ugh. Do I need to say anything more?
• I have a bag of green tomatoes in the fridge. I bought them to do fried green tomatoes. I have been unable to motivate myself to do that though. My level of energy is more on the basic sandwich-level of Maslow's hierarchy of culinary needs.
• Last week I spent $11 and some change at the thrift store and got a pair of jeans, a skirt, and a top that all fit. This helps. Baggy jeans do not.
• I was undecided on the skirt but thought that for $3, it was worth a shot. Once I got it home, I realized it is kind of the perfect skirt. It is black with thin pinstripes, plus it's quick drying and ideal for travelling. A pretty great find.
• It's still raining. I don't mind.

Booboo's favorite activity.

Booboo is always excited when I come home. He warmly welcomes me by immediately running to the bathroom.

Credit: Adventures Along the Way

Credit: Adventures Along the Way

Credit: Adventures Along the Way

It's nice to have someone to come home to...even if his eager welcome is mostly because he wants some fresh water.

Not cat-proof.

I had wanted to find a cat-proof solution for my plants this summer. So I was thinking of vertical hanging bags. But then S came up with this free solution using stuff we had already. Not as pretty as what I had envisioned, but it was okay with me and probably easier. And I liked that it was re-purposing the shelves the previous renters had left when they moved and did not clean all the random stuff and trash out of their/our storage unit. So...it seemed like a good idea.

I thought it was cat-proof. I mean, I didn't think there was enough room to walk around the pots on the shelves. I wanted to ask S to help me move the shelf to be centered in between the windows so that it was not close to either window sill, but that didn't happen before everything fell apart. So the shelf has stayed in its location.

It is clearly not cat-proof. 

That's Pippi on top of one of my my non-flowering daisy plants. 

I bought these daisy plants back in May. Well, they are supposedly daisies, but there are no daisies at all. I have two pots of leaves. Just leaves. Leaves that I try to remember to water. They appear to be pretty comfortable.

The daisies are refusing to bloom this summer. Maybe it is an act of solidarity?

Pippi is not this cat's real name. It's just what I named her. Her real name is probably, you know, a French cat name. But, even so, she seems to like the name Pippi too. She comes when you call her by it.

Does anyone else name the neighborhood animals you see around and then actually talk to them using their not-real names?

Pippi did not seem to mind too much that I got in her face with a camera.

At least someone is getting some pleasure out of the no-daisy daisy plant.

 

 

Boxed In and Other States of Being



Credit: Adventures Along the Way

Ah, Booboo. This is Booboo's favorite spot. He has several preferred spots, but he spends more time here than in the other ones. It cracks me up when he squeezes all the way in like this.

In other news, spring seems to be here. By that I mean that the snow has stopped (well, our last snow was a week or so ago) and they have just today cleaned all the rocks and dirt out of the streets in our neighborhood. Now there are only a few patches where the snow/ice has yet to melt. It is lighter coat weather (which, by the way, is what I used to consider a "winter coat" until I moved out of the south). Cafés are starting to prepare their outdoor seating areas.

I find myself thinking about planting some herbs and flowers on the back porch, but it is still too soon to actually get started. I am interested in sewing some hanging bags to attempt to get them off the ground so that they will stay cat-poop-free. I am inspired by these (scroll down to see the "smart wall pouch"), but have a different design in mind.

I made the best lasagana I have ever made on Saturday, using a former college roommate's recipe. And on Sunday I made the worst muffins I have ever made. I was trying to salvage some not-very-good cream cheese icing by mixing it into the batter, and the muffins were a disaster too.

As for pursuing dreams, my continued efforts to pursue my artistic career have had some return. I've had a couple of opportunities so far and have two more lined up. Life is feeling less splintery. I am ready to welcome spring.

An update of sorts.

• Earlier this summer I was fired up to write a post about how I was seeing a lot of rudeness in society these days. But....eh. I decided not to.
• This is partially because we escaped away from it all and spent a month in Australia. A month in Australia can do remarkable things, including reducing levels of annoyance.

Photo credit: S

Photo credit: S

• See? It does wonders.
• The jet lag I had after coming back was the worst I've ever had. It took me ten days to get back on our Canadian time zone. But hey, it was fun staying up to dawn again; it had been an unbelievably long time since I'd done that.

Ice Ice Baby.

Photo credit: Adventures Along the Way

I have a confession: our cat is an ice cube addict.

It started last year on one particularly toasty summer afternoon in our 100 year-old, unairconditioned apartment. Booboo had been lying around in that stretched out, tummy-up, lethargic position of a cat enduring a heat wave. So I thought I would add an ice cube to his water bowl so that the cool water might provide a little relief from the sweltering temperatures.

Booboo was hooked from the very first cube. Later, when we went in the kitchen, he followed us and meowed by the fridge. We indulged him every now and then because it was funny and cute—and it was hot, after all. The addiction let up a bit after it got cool and winter kicked in, but recently he has begun frequently meowing by the fridge again. And when we give him an ice cube, he rubs his cheeks against the cube, first one side then the other. Again and again. And yet again.

Today, after several (assumed) requests for an ice cube, I got him one, and he rubbed his cheeks against it repeatedly while purring loudly in sheer enjoyment of this small frozen-yet-melting miracle. After a couple minutes of happy cube–cheek rubbing, I made a move to rinse it off so I could drop it in his water bowl, and he complained with a loud meow. So I grabbed a towel to give my cold fingers a break and gave him some more time with his happiness-in-a-cube before dropping it in his bowl. After he realized the cube was in his water bowl, he had some water. Which is a relief because I have recently noticed him standing around by his water bowl, staring at it and not drinking, only to meow at me when I walk in the kitchen. Perhaps he has decided that he only likes iced water now.

I guess we could have worse problems than a cat who has become a water snob. Besides, having that much fun with every ice cube that life has to offer sounds like a pretty good idea.

Merci, finally.

 

We FINALLY finished our wedding thank you notes in April. It feels good to be done, even if they were unbelievably late. But better late than never, right? 

Thankfully, despite my mortification at it all, we have gotten a number of sweet, moving comments of appreciation for our notes. I am so deeply relieved that we finally finished because this important, unfinished task was hanging over me for way too long. And as if the act of simply finishing wasn't enough of a relief, the positive feedback has been a grace-filled reminder that 1) our community is loving and doesn't keep score, 2) wedding thank you notes really are a meaningful way to express authentic gratitude and love, and 3) some people really appreciate getting them...even when wildly way off the time line of what is etiquette-appropriate.

PS. This year I am working on finishing up some major tasks and projects that have been on my long  "To-Do" list. This was one of the items that had been on the top of the list. (Deep sigh of relief.)

Non-green thumb.

Apparently basil is easy to grow. And all I was trying to do was maintain a healthy plant S bought. I used to be okay with plants...until a few years ago when I tried to reduce my aloe plants because they were overtaking my apartment. Ever since then, I have been horrible with plants. Maybe the aloe is getting back at me?