What I’m Reading

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The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud 36/104; The Glass Castle: A Memoir 37/104; Every Last One: A Novel38/104

I admit it, I decided to read The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud after seeing the trailer for the movie:

Sometimes when I can’t figure out what book to read next I just go to the Kindle store and click on random books until something catches my eye. That’s how I stumbled across The Glass Castle, and BOY AM I GLAD I DID. This book was so so so good. I found myself having to stop reading because I was getting so frustrated at the parents, and the fact that it’s a true story just made it so much more incredible.

I would suggest reading Every Last One if you feel like having a big ol’ cry. One thing though- the description of the book on Amazon/the back cover kind of gives away too much of the story, and all the reviews I read the reviewer took issue with this, so before I even read it I knew something unbelievably terrible was going to happen and as a result, I didn’t allow myself to become fully engaged with the characters. And now I’m perpetuating this for people who might read this book after me. YOU’RE WELCOME.

I’m still behind the pace to meet my goal, but I read all these books last week, so I’m definitely starting to catch up.

My Precioussssssssss

This morning we went out to Langley to look at puppies and WELP…

PUPPY!
Sorry about the blur, she’s squirmy!

I BOUGHT ONE. She’s an orange/chocolate sable pomeranian, and I actually just put a deposit on her, since she is too little to take home yet. She is a little snuggle bug, when I was holding her she kept wrapping her front paws around my hand and hugging it! AWWWWWWWW! When she grows up she’ll probably look like her mom, who is really orangey with a brown nose, and she’ll probably weight between six and seven pounds. Her mom weighs ten and a half, but her dad only weighs two pounds!

PuppyPuppy Mommy
left: puppy; right: puppy’s mommy

Now I need to pick a name. The two I’d been considering before I even met/picked her are Georgie (her name right now is Georgia, so it would be easy for her to learn) and Babby Fudgie, but that might just be too silly!

Smile & the World Smiles with You, Grimace & You Grimace Alone

When I got up this morning and brushed my teeth, I looked in the mirror and though “Wow! My teeth are looking really white today!”

My Teeth Feel Like This

I smoked like crazy for years before I had Symphony and I drink tons of coffee, and I can’t use most whitening products because my teeth are crazy sensitive. I’ve been pretty :/ about my teeth for years, so this is makes me feel really good. Well, it makes my teeth feel good. The rest of me feels like this:

The Rest of Me Feels Like This

Perfect.

I have been SO TIRED this week, every night I’ve fallen asleep before Taylor left for work and then had to drag myself out of bed in the morning. Last night I think I fell asleep before ten o’clock! Luckily I only have to get through one more easy day of work (just three kids) and then it’s the weekend, and unlike the last two weekends of crazy activity (ie weddings, trips to Seattle), this weekend I finally just get to relax and do whatever I want! The only things going on are:
-tonight Symphony has her friend Ali coming over for a slumber party
-we’ll probably go for brunch with Rich and Jenn on Sunday since we haven’t seen them since they got back from Thailand
-TOMORROW MORNING WE ARE GOING TO LOOK AT LITTLE POMERANIAN PUPPIES AND MAYBE PICK ONE TO BRING HOME IN MID-JUNE OMG I’M SO EXCITED. This is my first step to having my dream life with the house and the yard and the baby and a herd of puffy little dogs running around. The asking price for the ~dream house~ has gone down $20K so you know, it’s only a matter of time.

Seattle Visit

Lucky Stars
Hello Kitty Lucky Star Candies

Saturday
Our plan of getting up at five to get to the border early and avoid the inevitable long weekend lineup worked TOO well- we only had a half hour wait and ended up getting to Seattle at 9:30 in the morning! Since we couldn’t check into our hotel yet we spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon hanging around the Olympic Sculpture Park and eating donuts at Top Pot.

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Kichou used to live in Seattle with Taylor and he was thrilled to be back
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lol I’m squishing his face back
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I was weak with hunger at this point and SO MAD at Taylor because he kept stopping to take pictures when I just wanted to get donuts
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outside a glass-blowing place
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Kichou ruins a picture by lunging at other dogs
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Every time we go to Seattle we try to stay at a different hotel, and this time we went with Hotel Max, at the recommendation of a couple different people. The location was great, the price was more than reasonable, the hotel was cool and the bed was comfy. It was all perfect except for one thing: the bathroom had the world’s teeniest tiniest shower stall and no tub. I hate teeny tiny shower stalls. How are you supposed to wash yourself if the shower keeps rinsing all the soap out of your scrubby puff before you can apply it to your body? How are you supposed to shave your legs if you can’t bend over or sit down? This sounds crazy but honestly, if I’d known in advance about the terrible shower stall I might not have chosen this hotel!

Anyway, after relaxing for a little while we went shopping and had a grandma-style early bird dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. We’d basically missed breakfast AND lunch so we were starving by 4:30, and it worked out perfectly because there was no wait when we arrived, but when we left there was a huge line of swarms of prom teens waiting. I know some people don’t like The Cheesecake Factory because it’s a cheesy chain restaurant, but it was worth it jsut for the way Symphony shrieked “THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY IN SEATTLE??? THEY WENT THERE ON ICARLY!!!” when I told her (the restaurant on iCarly was actually The Cheesecake Warehouse, but same diff).

The rest of the evening was spent lazing around our room reading, napping and eating the cheesecake we’d gotten for take out and ordering pillows of the Pillow Menu (we chose not to order anything of the Spirituality Menu).

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Sunday

We slept in on Sunday morning and after walking Kichou we went in search of brunch. We were going to go to this place we’d been on our last visit in October, but they had a 45 minute wait, so forget that! After some wandering we ended up at the Cherry Street Coffee House, where we had delicious, huge and burning hot bacon, egg and cheese pita wraps. We both burned our mouths on them, but I think it was worth it.

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the mug had English writing on the other side

At one we were meeting up at the Pike Place Market with a bunch of people from the general discussion forum I’ve mentioned before. We were supposed to be at the pig at one, but we were a little early so we stopped at the toy store (this was when we bought Symphony’s pugs).

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they also had a case full of creepy Dolls-of-the-World

I’d only met one of the girls before, very briefly last February- I had my wedding shoes shipped to her house to save $100 in shipping. There’s always the possibility that these things will be weird or awkward, especially if you aren’t drinking! but it was fun. We visited the gum wall (barf) and left our mark, looked at the life-size cardboard celebs at the comic book store and then everyone got food and we hung out in the little park and watched an annoying street performer.

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why. WHY.
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I know some people will get this
Juggling!
A Picture of Us
one girl had a little instant camera
BANK!
this guy came up to us and was like “YOU KNOW MY NAME? IT’S MUFASA. TAKE MY PICTURE, IT’S GONNA BE WORTH BANK SOMEDAY.”
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When everyone left Taylor and I did some more shopping and then went back to the hotel. We didn’t want to go out for another meal, I didn’t want anything of the room service menu, and trying to find somewhere good to get takeout from seemed like too much work. We ended up just getting junk food and lying around again. lol, we are so not cool, at the meet up everyone kept asking what we’d been doing in Seattle and we were like “… nothing.” I like doing nothing though. I do too much something all the time, I need a break!

Monday
We woke up a little earlier on Monday morning and went downstairs to the Red Fin for breakfast, and then it was time to pack up and leave. We wanted to get on a the road a little early since Taylor had to work that night (boo) and I wanted to stop at the outlet mall and Target on the way home. Both stops were really quick, and the border line was only five or ten minutes, so we were back in Canada by around two-thirty and home before three-thirty. A total travel time success!

I ♥ Rainbows

I bought some royal blue acrylic tumblers at Anthropologie this weekend and it’s put me one step closer to completing the ~Rainbow of Dishes~ I started amassing last year. Before this I had a huge collection of vintage Corelle Spring Blossom dishes that matched my Pyrex, but were starting to look pretty shabby. I have to give thanks again to all the girls in a certain general discussion forum who contributed to my wedding gift, which I used to buy the plates and bowls that were the seed of this awesomeness.

Dish Rainbow

top shelf: boring plain CLEAR glasses; assorted Starbucks “city” mugs (Taylor’s) and my travel mug that I never use; white pasta bowls that desperately need to be replaced with red pasta bowls; brown bubble glasses from Urban Barn; hot pink acrylic Guzzini tumblers from Homewerx

middle shelf: orange Waechtersbach bowls from Chocolate Mousse Kitchenware; yellow glass dessert bowls that I found in the garbage (can you believe it???); yellow Waechtersbach dinner and bread plates from Chocolate Mousse Kitchenware, lime green Waechtersbach dinner plates and bowls Chocolate Mousse Kitchenware

bottom shelf: dark green Starbucks mugs; teal “grape” goblets from Anthropologie; sky blue Waechtersbach bread plates from Chocolate Mousse Kitchenware; new royal blue acrylic tumblers from Anthropologie; purple glasses from Ming Wo

Lucky & Puggy

Taylor chose all the presents we got for Sym in Seattle. Does that make me a bad mom… or a good delegator?? Anyway everything he picked out was perfect.

Lucky & Puggy

Tiny toy pugs (she named the black on Lucky and the fawn one Puggy) from the Dragon’s Toy Box, and Hello Kitty lucky star candies in a tin takeout box.

Last Friday & this Friday

Spaghett

Last Friday I didn’t make this for dinner. I actually made it on Wednesday and LET ME TELL YOU it was delicious. I’m not quite at the point where I’m making my own pasta sauce from scratch, so it actually came out of a jar. I added broccoli, orange pepper, baby corn and chorizo, plus a ton of garlic because I neglected to look at the label and see that it was ROASTED GARLIC tomato sauce. Oops. It was still super yummy though!

Today I had the day off from work and while it was awesome to not have any daycare kids around, I still had my own kid around because it was also a professional development day at her school. I was going to spend the day cleaning and packing because Taylor and I are going to Seattle for the long weekend, but instead I mostly just ran errands (picked up dog food and packing supplies, had some of my planet paintings scanned* so I can get prints made) and ate things (greasy diner breakfast, 3/4 of a pecan pie oh my god). Now it’s 9 pm and I still have to clean the whole house and pack, plus get to bed early because Taylor wants to leave at FIVE A.M. to try and avoid border lineups.

*Okay this was SO ANNOYING. The Jupiter painting is 12″x12″, which is too big for my regular-sized scanner. yesterday I called Kinkos to ask if they scan, up to what size, and how much it costs, and I was told that they could definitely do something 12″ and it would be $15 for the first scan and $5 for each additional scan. I was like, “great!” so I went down there after work and the INCREDIBLY RUDE man working the counter told me it would be $15 for each scan and anyway they couldn’t do anything larger than 11″. Ugh thanks for wasting my time! Since I REALLY needed to get this done asap, today I went to this repro place on West 4th Ave, TR Trades, and they were SO AMAZING. The woman there put a huge rush on it so I could pick up my paintings & disc this afternoon so I could ship everything to Florida this weekend, and even though it was more expensive, I think it was worth to have DECENT CUSTOMER SERVICE. I will definitely be going there to get my prints made from now on!

MY EVEREST

Finished all the paintings.
Sprayed with picture varnish.
Nailed hangers to the backs of the canvases.
Bolted the magnet board onto the sun.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Done. DONE. DONE.

I am SO THRILLED a) with how everything turned out, and b) to be finished! I think I’ll be taking a leetle break from painting for a while, before I start work on my self-portrait. I need some time away from paint!

Mood Booster

Sometimes during the day if I feel sad and lonely, I wait until all the kids are napping and all the chores are done, and then I curl up next to my sleeping husband and cozy dogs to read and it always makes me feel better.

Sleepies Time